Pyrotomy
DESCRIPTION
A puzzle game where you must fully extinguish the flame covering each formation of square tiles. You can only extinguish a few tiles per turn, and after each turn the flame will spread again.
Developed for the Thinky Puzzle Game Jam 4.
MY ROLES
Game Design
Programming
GENRE
Puzzle
TEAM SIZE
N/A (solo)
JAM DURATION
8 days
Core Concept
The game is a turn-based puzzle which tasks the player with fully quenching the fire in each level by extinguishing tiles in a grid formation one by one. However, the fire also periodically spreads, forcing the player to strategise in order to gain the upper hand over the inferno. This concept is intended to simulate the real-life process of putting out a fire while subversively eliminating the time aspect, leaving only the tactical side (anticipating how it will spread, targeting ‘weak points’, etc.).
Mechanics & Systems
The player can extinguish one tile at a time by clicking on it. They can only extinguish a certain number of tiles per turn, with this number varying between levels. The player is restricted to this ability, with the rest of their agency depending on their ability to formulate and carry out an effective strategy for each level.
All tiles are ignited at the beginning of each level. For each turn, the player can extinguish a certain number of tiles, with this number varying between stages. After each turn, the fire spreads to all tiles which are currently adjacent to an ignited tile before the player can begin their next turn. Some tiles are initially lowered: these are ‘gates’ and can only be raised by extinguishing their respective ‘switch’ tiles. The fire can spread between two raised tiles or two lowered tiles, but not from a raised tile to a lowered tile or vice versa. The level is beaten when all tiles are extinguished.
Post-Mortem
Overall, I had a lot of take away from the development of this project. While not a particularly deep game mechanically, I think the core idea is communicated well. From a technical standpoint, I consider the mechanics to be perfectly functional and coherent, and I 5 was unable to find any bugs. There is a good amount of strategy required to beat the later levels especially, and most importantly that sense of strategy arises naturally from the systems and levels design. Once a player understands the core mechanics, they should generally be able to think on their own about how to clear each level by studying its layout and thereby properly anticipating the implications of every possibility for their next action.
I believe the final state of the game demonstrates a simple but solid gameplay core while adding a handful of new mechanics and offering level variety within a concise play duration, all to help prevent the gameplay loop from becoming too repetitive. While the project was of a reasonable scope for the time allotment provided by the jam, I still feel like I could have done more with the core concept by having greater mechanical variety.
However, the game is certainly not without its flaws. I received feedback about some levels having tedious sections, as well as the tiresome practice of having to press a button between turns rather than the fire spread being automatic which hurts the flow of gameplay. In hindsight I would have worked to prevent these issues during development. Other flaws include a large amount of symmetry in the level design as well as the fact that levels can be tedious to complete due to most of the player’s progress being inevitably undone in many of the later stages.