Part 2: C2 Production
This is a step-by-step Game Recipe that will build a "raw Collapsing Blocks game prototype"-- all of its logic, rules, data structures as the Game Mechanics (i.e.: the Events and Event Sheets) and user interactions as the Game Framework Display Mechanisms (i.e.: the Scenes, Layouts, and Layers). All you'll need is your own bespoke Artwork Theme assets.
As I stated before in Part I, Collapsing Blocks (aka "SameGame") games are just simple "flood-fill tile-matching" puzzles; how can anyone create an interesting game from such a simplistic game mechanics? The answer is composite construction -- combining Collapsing Blocks with an engaging background story and other interactive gameplay mechanics. As you've already learned from the workbook's Part I, Action games hold the lion's share across the International gaming community in the US and EU markets, while Japanese gamers favor RPG to the same extent. So let's add the "Action" and "Shooter" game mechanics to our Collapsing Block game for the US and EU markets; and RPG -- "avatar dialogs and interactions" -- into our game for the Asian market channels!
Background Story
A "Space Force Marine" takes the NCC Pandora science cargo vessel to a new duty assignment. En route, NCC Pandora main computers suffer data corruption from ion magnetic storm and attempts to "reboot". Corporal <x Player's Avatar's Name x> awakes from stasis and attempts to defragment and regain control of the ship's six main computers before total system failure in 30 minutes.
The background story uses a dynamically generated story line; it changes the background story each time a gamer enters. You can experience the variety of different story lines here, read a tutorial how I do this (with C2 and C3 example files to download) or simply play a demonstration example in the Arcade.
Game Mechanics Used:
- Primary game mechanics is "Collapsing Blocks" -- the initial fragmented ship's computer core memory -- the gamer's avatar explores the space vessel and "defragments" each of the six system computers by consolidating "common memory blocks" into each home computer's core memory queue. All the while fighting, interacting, or running from, hostile alien species and robot droids as a secondary game mechanics for Action/Shooter and/or RPG.
- Secondary game mechanics is an "Action Shooter" -- as the gamer's avatar explores the space ship's corridors, they'll find: roaming alien species (either hostile or friendly using RPG elements) who have escaped from their stasis pods; various "toolkits", and "ship robot droids" (either hostile or friendly using RPG elements). Depending upon how ambitious you are, this secondary mechanics might include the shooter mechanics as either: a "First Person", "top-down", "isometric", or a simple "platform" (which I highly discourage based on information provided from the workbook's Part I). I'll leave that to your preference.