GCPP:Proposal-Whitebait

Puzzle Codename: Whitebait

Contact
Username:	Bronzebeard
Additional contact info:	Peglegpaul on Midnight, but I check the forums a lot so just PM me there
Project forum thread:	Discussion

Game concept

Foraging puzzle based on Snake, but with ropes and fruit. Also, this version is multiplayer.

Objective

Guide the ropes to the fruit, avoiding the other person's rope and your own.

Gameplay

Gathering fruit

Each player starts with a rope of length 3 which slides onto the screen. They then guide it using the arrow keys around a square grid (20x20, although this could change if it is too small/large). Fruit will start appearing at the vertices of the grid and the rope must be guided to the fruit to forage it. Each time a fruit is collected, the length of the rope increases by 1.

The board would start something like this, with the two length 3 ropes entering on either side of the board, and a few fruit on the board

Losing a rope

If the rope at any time hits the side of the board, the other person's rope, or the trailing end of their own rope, then they will lose a life and their score multiplier will reset to 1. In the case of a collision between you and your partner, the person who loses the life will be the one whose rope "head" is involved in the collision (so that if two ropes collide head on they both lose a life).

Fruit

Coconut: Basic, and most common, point scoring fruit

Banana: Increases the Banana Multiplier

Lime: Slows the game speed, but decreases the score multiplier

Rambutan: Halves the length of your rope

Passion fruit: Increases the game speed, whilst increasing the score multiplier

Pineapple: Explodes into an assortment of coconuts on contact

Gold: High scoring and rarest piece which must be passed through by each player in succession. Once one player hits it, there will be a limited time (10 seconds?) for the other person to rope it in too.

A typical board might look something like this:

Communicating

A later addition to the game could be some way of telling your partner that you want to collect a particular fruit so that you don't end up going for the same one. You could click a fruit making it blink and a speech bubble would come out of your characters mouth, alerting the other person that either you want them to take the fruit or to leave it for you (right- or left-click depending on which).

E.g. here playerone for some reason wishes to grab the line, so she clicks the lime

it blinks and the corresponding command is called out -->

Scoring

The score of the players will be combined.

Basic scoring:

The coconut have a base score of 1 for each collected. Every 5th coconut collected by one player increases that person's score multiplier.

5 coconuts = 2x

10 coconuts = 3x

15 coconuts = 4x etc

However, the score for the fruit will depend on the combined multiplier of the two players to encourage the players to share the fruit and not have one player do all the work while the other spins in circles out of the way in one corner.

E.g. if one person is doing all the work and collects 40 coconuts they will score 5x1x1 + 5x2x1 + 5x3x1 + 5x4x1 + 5x5x1 + 5x6x1 + 5x7x1 + 5x8x1 = 180 points whilst the other person scores zero. If they alternate and take 20 each they will score 5x1x1 + 5x2x2 + 5x3x3 + 5x4x4 = 150 each giving a total of 300 points.

The banana, lime, passion fruit, rambutan, pineapple all have a base score of 3.

Banana Multiplier:

The banana multiplier starts at 1. Each time a banana is collected, this is increased by 0.1.

The overall score for each piece is then given by (base piece score)x(playerone multiplier)x(playertwo multiplier)x(banana multiplier)

Rope:

Any remaining ropes (lives) left over at the end of the game will have a base value of 10 and will be multiplied by the final multiplier and added to the overall score

Gold:

Has a base value of 50 points but must be collected by each rope in turn to score

Variability

Different fruit will have different abilities such as shortening the length of the rope, increasing score multipliers, slowing down the rope.

End criteria

Each player has a certain number of lives each. Once both players lose all their lives, the game ends. If one person loses all theirs, then the other person can continue, but the score multiplier of their partner will be 1 for the rest of the game. To stop the game running on indefinitely, there will be a 10 minute timer and 3 lives each, and whichever runs out first ends the game.

Difficulty scaling

As the game goes on, the ropes increase in length with each fruit they collect. To get large multipliers, both players must have long ropes. You can risk scoring higher by going for passion fruit, but the game gets faster and harder then.

Also, it may be feasible later to stretch the game to more than two players or have each player control two ropes using the arrow keys and WASD keys.

Crafting type

Foraging

Known problems

Scoring seems a bit crazy at the moment, as I have no idea how high the scores are gonna get with two great players.

Not sure how a rope will re-enter the board after a life is lost (perhaps both ropes will have to re-enter, but with the one that didn't lose a life maintaining its length and score multiplier?)

Extending it to more than 2 players is gonna be messy.

Notes

Would be good if this was implemented in such a way that a good final score increased yer chance of foraging something good

Could also work as a single player game with one person controlling both ropes

Gonna try and think up some sort of combo system to add more depth, where perhaps the coconuts are numbered and must be collected in order

Images