GCPP:Proposal-Porgy
Puzzle Codename: Porgy
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| Username: | Aenor |
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| Project forum thread: | http://forums.puzzlepirates.com/community/mvnforum/viewthread?p=930292#930292 |
Game concept
The Shoemaker and the Elves! Who doesn’t love The Shoemaker and the Elves?
Objective
Direct your elves to produce as many items of clothing as possible before the sun rises.
Gameplay
A game in the style of Pikmin/Diner Dash. As the game begins, there are the raw materials for clothing randomly placed around the room. The player starts with a team of elves, who need to work to make the clothing.
The following raw materials are found around the room: Reams of cloth, both fancy and regular Boxes of needles Work benches
Elves are given assignments by clicking on an elf to activate it, then clicking on a location in the room, or an object in the room. When the elf reaches the object, it will pick it up to carry it. If two elves bump into each other, they fall down and drop any objects they’re carrying, wasting valuable time.
To complete an article of clothing, a needle and one or more pieces of cloth must be brought to a work bench. Then click on an elf, click on the table, and the elf will start sewing the article of clothing. The objective of the game will be to keep all of your elves as productive as possible to maximize efficiency. To further complicate things, the elves have different attributes which make them faster or slower at certain tasks. One elf might be a fast runner, for example, but is a weakling and therefore very slow when carrying anything heavier than a needle. One elf might move very slowly, but be strong enough to carry anything without losing speed. Another elf might be slow and weak but fast at sewing. You’d like to use each elf to do only the tasks he or she is good at, but time and space constraints won’t always allow it. I think there should be six to ten different elves, each with a distinctive look so an experienced player will recognize immediately which elves are better at which tasks.
Scoring
Scoring is based upon the number of items produced, and the quality of the item. To steal an idea from Diner Dash, the workbenches will have color(s), and if the color(s) of the cloth used to make the clothing item match the workbench the item is worth more points.
Variability
The puzzle will be different everytime, as items and benches will be randomly placed around the room, and new items appear in random locations during the course of the puzzle.
Perhaps the player should have the option to choose at the beginning of the puzzle which elves he will work with, or perhaps part of the puzzle will be dealing with the combination of a randomly selected group of the elves, and using good teamwork to utilize their strengths and weaknesses. I think I prefer the random team idea, to prevent players from merely mastering only a few elves, forcing them to learn how to best utilize each one’s strengths.
End criteria
There is a fixed time limit. There is a clock at the top of the puzzle. When the puzzle begins, it is midnight, and sunrise is at 6:00. Items not finished by 6:00 are not scored.
Difficulty scaling
As the player’s rating increases, the puzzle becomes more complicated, as more steps are added to the process. For example, the cloth must be cut from the ream with a pair of scissors, and the needle must be threaded from a spool. Also, fine cloth begins to appear at higher difficulties. Fine cloth is more delicate and requires more time to work with, and if an elf carrying fine cloth bumps into another elf, the cloth is ruined. Naturally, clothes made with fine cloth are worth more points.
To compensate for the added tasks, the higher ranked player has a higher number of elves to work with. A beginning player might only have 3 elves, but a Legendary and above has 6.
Possible bonus items: Some golden thread, which increases the speed an item is sewn. A temporary speed boost or strength boost that affects whichever elf walks over it first. A flute, which if played by one of the elves slightly increases the attributes of all elves in the workshop, but obviously means the elf playing it is not working. A small bell, which if bumped into wakes up the cat, which scares all the elves away causing them to stop what they were doing, and wasting valuable time.
Crafting type
Tailoring
Known problems
How to deal with colorblindness. I’d like there to be as many types of cloth in the puzzle as there are in the game. But how to make it so it doesn’t unfairly punish the colorblind?
Notes
For multi-player, two people could play at the same time on the same board. They each start with their appropriate number of elves, palette-swapped to identify which elves are whose. So two Ultimate Tailors would have a total of 12 elves in play. The board will be very crowded, and they will have to coordinate very well to keep their elves from bumping into each other. But if done right, two players controlling 12 elves can be much more efficient than two individual teams of 6. This prevents the problem of multi-clienting, I think. I’m not sure how to allocate the scoring for two players.
Images
