Game Design

Today we started working on a new game, the name of which will be "Karkuun", which means something like "Run".

It started with a discussion on touch typing (among adults) and how you could learn it. I came up with an idea of a simple game where you have a string of random characters that you have to type before a monster eats them. Then I reduced the idea to a chasing game with two characters where the game state can be represented by two numbers.

So I asked my daughter if she wanted to start working on a game and she was all in. She's currently drawing and cutting the game characters from paper. We're gonna scan them soon.

Here's our game design on paper (in Finnish though).

I started by drawing a number line starting from 0 and ending at 13. Then I suggested that the game is about you being chased by a monster. She dissed that. So the idea is that a Princess if being chased by a Lion. I put the characters P and L on the number line at positions 4 and 0 respectively. Then we concluded together that

• If L==P (L equals P), then the Lion eats the Princess
• If P==13, then the Princess wins

We also agreed that

• Twice a second L++ (L gets incremented by 1)
• When spacebar is pressed, P++ (P gets incremented by 1)

And finally that, in the beginning

• L = 0
• P = 4

This indeed is all we need and the rest is a fairly simple translation from human language to computer language.

Now I have to convince her that it's best to start with a text user interface and add the graphics later. Because that will be the hard part. But let's start by scanning the paper figures first. Wish me luck with this one!