Design Journal - Polanoid Game Concept

Polanoid is a game I came up with while playing Pac-Man, it follows the lines of other such casual games where the game is fun and addictive, the target audience would be people who are looking to keep their minds active as it is a puzzler game but nothing that they cant alt-tab out of in an office environment.

The idea of the game is fairly simple, the game playing verse has a large grid with squares all around a large rectangle with a few solid blocks scattered haphazardly. The only moving or colourful thing you see is a “ghost” walking around the grid in a straight line leaving a trail as it goes. As the ghost hits a solid block it changes direction perpendicular to the way it was previously travelling and keeps on travelling in that direction. The only other thing on the field is a small block the same colour as the ghost in the very centre.

It is your goal as a gamer to guide the way the ghost moves by placing in new blocks to change its direction. Any blocks that are already on the field cannot be changed but blocks you place can also be removed. You must get the ghost to the home plate in the centre. A trick to the game is to place 2 blocks down so the ghost has no choice but to take a particular direction. So what is the catch? If the ghost touches its own trail you loose the game and have to start over.

As the game advances and you finish levels new and rules are introduced to make the game harder. These rules introduce new ghosts up to 8 travelling around at once as well as special blocks that do certain things: teleblocks that teleport the ghost to another location, death blocks that make you start again, colour change block that changes the colour of the ghost to the same as another so it has 2 paths to avoid ect.

The end of the game comes as the player advances levels, there would be no set number of levels and the game would be dynamic so that it increased in difficulty as time went by, adding more blocks to the screen/adding more ghosts.

This style of game would be along the lines of addictive games such as world of warcraft. The aim of the game and the end game comes when you are satisfied with your efforts and have beaten your previous high score.