Assignment 1: Upgrading a Toy \"Boomshine\", found on Blackboard. In its current
ID: 3914374 • Letter: A
Question
Assignment 1: Upgrading a Toy "Boomshine", found on Blackboard. In its current state, there is some Try out the skeletal game basic activity, but the software is strictly a toy: there are no goals. Your task will be to design some structure to enhance the game. For this assignment, YOU DO NOT NEED TO IMPLEMENT ANYTHING, only suggest some design ideas. Be creative but realistic; try to preserve the harmony of the game, and provide a variety of suggestions, not just a single one that you describe in detail. Do be specific, though; provide enough detail that someone could attempt an implementation of your ideas. If you are adapting an idea from a game you know, say what game the idea c ame from For this assignment, we will concentrate on four aspects of the game: goals, choice, resources, and variety of encounter. Structure your response as follows: provide an initial overview describing the basic gameplay you envision, followed by four more sections, one for each design direction. Try to consider the following questions: Goals: what goals does the player have in the game? Can you include multiple goals, both short-term and long-term? What obstacles prevent the player from easily reaching all goals? Choice: what choices does the player make? Are there choices with long-term consequences, or is everything immediate? Are there multiple good choices? Are the choices only performative? (Try to include some strategic choices, not only performative ones.) Resources: what resources are in the game? How will the player spend the resources? How will new resources be acquired? Can resources be converted between types? Your designs here will potentially have an effect on goals, choices, and variety of encounter, identify connections wherever you can Variety of Encounter: how can you increase the variety of encounter? Identify possible sources of variety (maybe levels, enemies, player powers). If different enemies are a source of variety list some ideas for different enemy types; try to make them as varied as possible Your design should be 1-2 pages single-spaced, probably about 300-600 words. It can be slightly longer if necessary, but should not be any shorter f it is that short, probably you have not given many ideas or have not given enough detail on each idea.Explanation / Answer
The game Boomshine is basic and can have a number of design improvements. The overview of the game would be to enlarge every moving dot that the initial dot comes in contact with. Once a dot is selected by the cursor, it should enlarge and cover a wider area than it began with. This should create a chain of actions of the same kind by the adjacent mobile dots. The game can be improvised to have a number of short term and long term goals. To add more details and design ideas, I am using a few features that I have seen in Candy Crush.
The first design detail that can be added is to colour each dot a different colour. The colour palette can be pastel and subtle with a light background, or bright and glaring with a darker black background. This can further be improved. We can add the optional detail that when a dot starts to enlarge they turn a pastel version of the bright colour with which they started. This can also have a darker black or brown background. The opposite may also be implemented, that starts with pastel dots and when the chain reaction starts, the dots enlarge to brighter versions of the initial colour.
In order to make the game more challenging, we may choose to place the dots farther than usual, such that, as the levels pass by, it becomes more and more difficult to strategically create a chain reaction to enlarge and highlight the dots. The player will have to observe the direction of the dots and the direction to which they ricochet carefully in order to achieve the goal of completeing the level by creating a certain number of chain reactions. Therefore the player spends a lot more time on completing a later level than on the first few levels.
We can also add short term goals as well as long term goals. The short term goal of the game would be to cause a chain reaction of a certain number of dots in order to complete the level. In case the player fails to do so, the player will have to repeat the level until the goal is achieved. When a player creates more chain reactions than is required to complete the level, then the extra reactions are added to give the player a chance to win a golden, silver or bronze crown based on the number of extra reactions achieved.
Another design level could be added to play against players around the world. The players would compete against each other to see who achieves the most number of chain reactions. The winners can also be put up on a LeaderBoard that shows the highest number of reactions achieved by players.