Developer Diary #14: Tangram Puzzle Design
As you can tell by the title, tangrams were the next puzzle type that we experimented with for New School Blues. Much like tracing puzzles from last post, tangram puzzles are a staple of elementary schools and every class seems to have them! If you don’t know already it is basically a game where you have seven pieces that need to be placed in a certain way to match an outline. It’s easy to learn but trust us, some puzzles are downright devious.
Much like with tracing, we wanted to keep things looking as much as possible like an actual worksheet students would get in grade 4. Players would have had to click and drag on pieces to place them while right clicking to rotate the shape. We toyed with having numerous puzzles in succession escalating in difficulty, but realized having any more then one would really slow down the game. Here’s a rough draft we made up that shows the basic layout.
After a few attempts we ended up scrapping this puzzle idea due to schedule conflicts. The design was sound but implementing such a system into UGAGS, when we are still fairly inexperienced at using this brand new engine, would demand too much time. We’ve since pursued another line of puzzles which will stay under wraps for now. Tune in tomorrow for more daily info on NSB!