New favorite game.. July 16, 2008
Posted by jennahoffstein in fun games.Tags: fun games, game, games, grow cube
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I played this a few weeks ago and thought I would share
http://www.eyezmaze.com/grow/cube/
The purpose of the game is to add all 10 of the things to the cube in the right order. You can tell if you’re on the right track by how high a level all the various elements get to.. it makes more sense after you’ve played it a few times 
Enjoy!
Game Design Challenge: 10 Sci-fi Crates July 7, 2008
Posted by jennahoffstein in Game Design Challenges.Tags: challenge, crate, design, game, sci-fi
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Update: Woo! One of my crates was listed (among with many others) as one of the best in the bunch, check it out (I’m the first one on the page, Jenna Hoffstein)
http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/576/results_from_game_design_.php?page=3
I recently discovered that Game Career Guide has weekly game design contests and promptly put in my response to the one they had last week. Here is a link to the challenge:
http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/565/gamecareerguidecoms_game_design_.php
Long story short, the challenge is to come up with 10 sci-fi alternatives for a crate (ie something that can be use for “storing, blocking, building, climbing, throwing, smashing, and more” and is “versatile, movable, stackable, and stable when situated on the floor.”
Here’s what I came up with:
1. Hover Platforms – Would take up the same cubic volume as a crate
2. Mood Cubes – Left over from early experiments in AI, can be coerced into helping you or into exploding in anger
3. Large Batteries/Power Source – Could be used in puzzles where the player needs to power something on
4. Giant Robot Pieces
5. Compacted Trash Cubes – Inspiration goes to Pixar for this one
6. Cages around Tears in the Space/Time Fabric – Created by messing around with time travel, can be busted apart and used on enemies.
7. Kryptonite – A natural substance mined into blocks that’s harmful to an enemy alien species, placed strategically to protect the city/colony/whatever
8. Interstellar Storage Container – Specially designed to protect objects in the jump to hyperspace!
9. Mined Meteorite Blocks
10. Clean Air & Water Storage Cubes – Weight would vary accordingly (and the ones containing air should float in water) and could be used in puzzles
Game Design #1: Starry Night March 18, 2008
Posted by jennahoffstein in Game Designs.Tags: board game, constellation, constellations, game, game design, star, stars
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Game Design #1!
The theme of this game is constellations, and the premise is simple – match groupings of stars. Ironically, it’s probably better suited to be a board game than a computer game.
The board is made up of a series of tiles layed out face-up in a grid (something like 15 x 15 might work best). There are only two types of tiles – blank sky and starts. So as you can imagine, the board looks something like a starry night sky, and ideally the board is like one of those nifty Scrabble boards that can rotate around so each player can view the board from any angle.
Each player is dealt from a deck of constellation cards. On each constellation card is a particular lay-out of stars. Constellation cards could range from two-star arrangements up to more complicated constellations that have 10 stars. Constellation cards only designate the arrangement that the stars have to be in – the grid spots in between on the board could be either stars or blank sky.
Players go in turn, and each player’s goal during a turn is to match one of their constellation cards to a corresponding layout of stars on the board. When a player makes a match they get to take all of those stars off the board, and then replace the tiles with new ones from the pile of extras (these should be chosen and layed out randomly). The player can then draw another constellation card for their hand. If a player can’t make a match they can replace one tile with a randomly-chosen extra tile.
The first player to get 50 stars wins!
I would love to actually playtest this game at some point, and I mostly just made up the numbers above so I would be interested to see how it actually plays out. I’m not a programmer so I’m always excited when I can think up games that I can actually playtest without writing any code.
