So I came up with an idea for a new mini-game, but being an aspiring game designer I decided, as an exercise, to actually prototype it so it could be seen in action. I give to you… Traitstone Forging!
The .exe can be found here:
Traitstone Forging
##Proposal
Introduction
Due to your role in defeating Gorgotha (twice) and ridding the dwarves of Khaziel of his influence, they have decided to open their traitstone forges to your use… for a price. The dwarves require souls to power their magic forges, and gold for their tools.
Traitstone Forging is a mini-game designed to allow players to use excess resources, for a chance at getting traitstones that they might be lacking. While primarily aimed at higher level players with little use for gold and souls anymore, the initial cost to play is hopefully low enough that even new players to the game can enjoy it if they choose to.
General Description
Traitstone Forging takes the normal match three gems idea from the base game and from the Treasure Hunt mini-game and adds a slight twist to it. Rather than matching the gems as soon as a move is made, gems are only matched every 5 turns, allowing the player to set up matches they might not normally be able to. Also they are able to pay extra gold at the start to increase the range at which they can move a gem horizontally or vertically, as well as paying extra souls to increase the number of forges they are able to perform before the game ends.
Mechanics
Gems
There are eight gem types available, the five traitstone types (Minor, Major, Runic, Arcane, Celestial) and three new types, Dust, Shards and Fragments. They follow a similar progression to the gems in Treasure Hunt where three of a type will combine into one of a higher rank. The order goes Dust → Shard → Fragment → Minor → Major → Runic → Arcane → Celestial. Only gems of the first three ranks can be spawned on the board at the start, or when the board refills after forging. If the player manages to make a match of five or more of a type, then that type will increase by two ranks instead of one. While this is quite a powerful effect it not overly difficult to set up. However, it does mean that the player is using all of the five or more gems to create a higher rank, and they will likely be replaced with much lower rank gems. As a result, they will have a smaller number of higher rank gems, and be relying a lot more on random chance to get the types of gems they want.
Forges
Forges are the core of the mini-game, and are what the player will be spending most of their time setting up. The amount of forges the player has is set at the start, to a base value of 3. If the player chooses to spend extra souls on the start screen, they are given one extra forge at the cost of doubling their soul payment (e.g. starting at 500 souls for 3, 1000 for 4 forges, 2000 for 5 etc.). One major difference between Traitstone Forging and the main game, and treasure hunt, is that it is not possible to get extra moves while playing the game. This is done to hopefully counteract one of the common complaints about the treasure hunt mini-game, being that it takes too long to complete. Forge amounts are the main control knob for adjusting how much players are able to get out of the game in one play, so limiting the amount of extra forges would help prevent players from getting too many stones too quickly.
Range
Players are able to spend gold to improve the tools of the miners to increase the range at which they can move gems. This is an optional enhancement the player can choose to use or not. The base tools, with a range of 1, cost no gold to use. For 50,000 gold a player can upgrade the tools for that attempt to Rare, which give them a movement range of 2, or for 100,000 they can upgrade them to Ultra-Rare to give a range of 3. This applies to all moves made in the following game, but if the player wishes to have the upgraded tools again in a later game they will need to pay the gold amount again.
Results
The traitstones that the player receives at the end of the game are of a random colour, decided at reward time (similar to the traitstones awarded from Treasure Hunts). Any remaining dust, shards or fragments give back either gold or souls, with fragments more likely to give souls and dust more likely to give gold. The total amounts shouldn’t allow the player to recoup their costs in full, however.
Notes:
As this is a prototype there are a couple of aesthetic things I didn’t implement. The main one being the traitstone images, Ideally they would be a 6-colour version of the traitstone, similar to how we see 6-colour weapons for the hero and the Mega Gorgotha. I randomly picked blue for the prototype, and kept all the types the same to avoid visual confusion.
Also there is a bug that I’ve yet to be able to track down as it happens uncommonly. Occasionally a gem will “disappear” and there will be an empty cell where it should be. In this case it appears that the gem has actually fallen to the cell below. But I haven’t been able to reproduce it with any regularity. Unfortunately you’ll just have to work around the empty cell if this happens.
). The thinking behind it was that it would make it a bit too easy to get the longer (ie 5+) matches, meaning players could get too many higher level stones for too little cost. But I’ll admit I didn’t actually test it with the diagonal, so that might be something I’ll look at testing more thoroughly next time. And yeah, the prices could use some adjusting. I’m not that high a level of player, so I had to do some guessing about what is available to them normally based on various screenshots people have posted in these forums.