The Game
Calcubelator is a puzzle game I developed for the course Advanced Game Design during my Master’s.
In each level, you have to find the right path to arrive at the target tile with the right number on your cube. However, you are only allowed to visit each tile once.
By rolling onto a tile, you activate it. For normal tiles the activation simply means you can’t visit them again, but there are several tiles with additional effects
By rolling on a tile saying “+4” for instance, you will add 4 to your number (which is displayed prominently on each face of the cube).
Then there’s also the reset tile, which resets the activation of all tiles (but leaving your number unaffected), meaning you can visit them again.
You can download and play Calcubelator here:
Development and Playtesting
One thing that became obvious during playtesting was, that players are going to make a lot of mistakes while playing Calcubelator. For most levels, a single wrong move means that you can no longer solve it – and restarting the whole level because of a single mistake caused a lot of frustration.
The challenge of Calcubelator should come from thinking about the puzzle – trying the solution out should be as smooth as possible and not further complicate things.
However, the solution was quite obvious – it jumped me in the face while playing Baba is You (Arvi Teikari): Just provide the player with an undo button!
By pressing z, the player can undo one move at a time, problem solved!
At the beginning of this project, I had a skeuomorphic, Dieter Rams like aesthetic in mind. The level should resemble a modular calculator, certain tiles should look like buttons you physically press by rolling on them, the cube has a 7 segment display, etc.
However, after implementing the basic rolling movement and playing around with the camera projection, I figured that a more minimalist look could also fit the abstract nature of the puzzles and not unnecessarily distract the player. I added some soft glow and gradients to make it more visually pleasing. If you squint hard enough, it might even remind you a bit of Monument Valley (Ustwo Games).
As of now, there are 6 levels in the game, gradually introducing the player to the mechanics and slowly increasing in difficulty.
There are of course a lot of things you could still improve. For example, the readability of the number on the cube is a nightmare. Also, the design space is pretty limited, though I think it could be enriched quite easily by introducing new types of tiles or varying the shape of the cube (remember Bloxorz?).
