A guy who we will call Kevin was at one point a regular at a game night I went to. We talked about making a game for devices. One idea was to make something like a citybuilder but as a little puzzle game. I came up with something and we tried it and well a few of us enjoyed it but it didn't seem like we should pursue it; it didn't seem like it would end up having broad enough appeal. I am sharing it for no good reason in this semi-public place.
It has no art or anything. It's just a bunch of haphazard levels with no frills. There is no button to rotate your board relative to the terrain, someone will immediately want that. It is playable though. It's an abstract game of figuring out the best way to arrange some shapes.
http://projects.wode.com/townlaunch/TownLaunch.phpWhat you are doing is, you are placing buildings on a grid, to get a score. You can place multiple copies of a building and can rotate them by clicking, before or after dragging. You drag a building to the grid (or move it on the grid, or drag it off the grid to get rid of it). There is no passage of time or anything. There is no cost system beyond the space the buildings occupy.
The basic deal is that Houses require Farms and Factories, and then Offices require Houses. So three types of things all connect to Houses. And there are alternate varieties of the main buildings, and buildings can care about other stuff. When you have everything aligned, you will get a nonzero score. Your goal is to have such a high score that you get four stars. Four stars represents either the most points one of four or so people were able to get, or else a smaller but high number in cases where someone beat that score after the last time the program was updated. Anyway it will be hard, you will not just immediately get four stars, it will seem impossible.
Buildings have a number, but your score is just the Offices (or similar); the other numbers just uh get you there. On level one:
Farm: Worth 1 per connected Farm, counting itself.
Factory: Worth 1 per adjacent building (not diagonally okay).
House: Worth the minimum of the points of Farms or Factories next to it (if there are two Farms, add them together, etc.).
Office: Adds the values of adjacent Houses.
So just plop down one of each with the House touching the rest and you've got points. Then figure out what to actually do. Later buildings:
Orchard: Like a Farm but worth 1 per adjacent grass or water square (board edges don't help it).
Pasture: Like a Farm but worth 1 per connected grass.
Mill: Like a Factory but worth a flat 8.
Mansion: A House but gets double value from Farms (plus Orchard, Pasture).
Ranch: A House but gets double value from Factories (plus Mill).
Embassy: Like an Office but counts Houses (and Mansions/Ranches) even if it's not adjacent to them.
Bank: All buildings adjacent to Bank are adjacent to each other, look out. Think of it as "road."
Bridge: The two buildings pointed to are connected (but not other buildings adjacent to the long sides, even the ends). Can go over water. It seems intermittently buggy score-wise and so I would save these levels for last.
The two colors of grass are the same okay. Water is an obstacle. The black square lowers all buildings with a clear path to it by one. It shades areas in case that helps.
There appear to be 34 levels. Like I said they are just haphazard, added to see the new buildings and test out the idea. The first few levels have mostly the same stuff and mess with obstacles, which turned out not to be too interesting; then there's a patch where it goes through combinations of some new buildings, and well you can just skip to whatever level, don't feel like you have to go in order. The level names are just whatever Kevin typed in. Some levels are larger; smaller is better. I don't know the formula for stars beyond four meaning you hit the high score.
From my experience the way to get maximal enjoyment from this is, play some levels and post your best scores, and then other people will post their even better scores, and then you will try to outdo them. Of course you may be able to do better than the score that gets you 4 stars; I know you can for some of them.
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Topic: TownLaunch (Read 8145 times)