FBGD Numbers Competition (June 2014 – August 2014), 250 $ 1st prize

[Ryan]

If anyone wants to be really inspired, you should check out MathRL written as a Megazeux game. It's a roguelike with arithmetic driven combat. Pretty fun concept.

[vdecampo]

I'm in. Dusting off my FreeBASIC skilz.

[nkk_kan]

Hmm Numbers...
Probably some puzzle game but thinking it would be cliche 
Trying to think of something out of the blue..

The Numbervold was really cool idea!
I remember playing it on my old old P3

[Ryan]

A couple of phrases came to mind that could be fun to tease out into competition games:

* Strength in Numbers (take a friend!)
* Massage the Numbers (i.e. to make a balance resolve at 0)
* Your Days are Numbered
* Take a Number (get in line)
* Numbers Don't Lie

And for one horribly awful pun - you might consider a dentist wielding Novocaine to be a mouth number.

[Clay Dragon]

I should resurrect Numbervold.

I tried your game and I believe it could have been a really good idea for this compo!

Also, thank you for brightening up my mood! I'll find a good idea soon enough!

[Ryan]

Brainstorming here, interested in feedback.

My current idea is "Dominionoes." It would play as a turn based game combining dominoes with a tile based map like you might see in Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne. The idea is the tile map provides a picture of a country side that you have dominion over, but it's up to you to create industry and supply chains to make the land as productive as possible. Tile maps and the sort order of dominoes would have replayable seeds so players can challenge one another for a high score on any given seed. I think it would be nice for a concept like this to be multiplayer, but I'm going to stick with a single player target for now.

I'm thinking I'll use a double-six domino set to begin, allowing each game to take up to 28 turns. You'd have a small hand of dominoes (four or five) that you can choose from to make your next move. The board would likely be a reasonably sized grid - if it's 10x10, you'd have 100 spaces on the map with 56 total spaces of dominoes (each domino covering two spaces when placed).

To start the game, I think you'll place the "6:6" tile somewhere on the map to represent the city at the heart of your dominion. Each turn, you choose an additional domino and place it in any orientation on the tile map, with the only requirement being that you must place at least one of the numbers on the domino next to a matching number on the board. (I haven't decided yet if both dominoes should be required to touch only matching numbers or not - it seems like that would require much larger boards, as you'd end up with more gaps.)

The strategy lies in how you build your chains of dominoes, as each tile on the map will have some natural resource assigned to it (think lumber from forests, food from plains, gold from mountains). The dominoes represent your supply chain, with resources naturally traveling "upstream" to higher numbers. Perhaps a better way to think of it is imagine a taut sheet held out with dominoes representing weights, the heaviest being the 6 and lightest being 0. Resources will collect at the heaviest points they can reach.

Ideally, you'll get valuable resources to route to your castle, but you may end up with pools of resource at other places. You'd probably see towns or trading posts spring up in those areas, which would still score points, just not as much as if you enriched the trade of your main city. I may have other terrain features influence score, such as rivers facilitating trade, applying a multiplier on the point value of resources carried by river to represent "speed to market" influencing the value of goods.

Ultimately, this is a solitaire strategy game, but with the seeds being replayable, it can also spark challenges. I'm not sure I'd use FreeBASIC to create a multiplayer version of the game, but if it plays well enough single player, I may try my hand at a multiplayer version later on.

Any ideas? Details are a bit vague, as this is an unfiltered first conception. 

[Lachie Dazdarian]

I like the idea quite a bit. But I think it would be very difficult to compile the dominoes in that way for them to run the resources upstream too often. But maybe one can judge better after testing. I could suggest this solution. Resource can move toward the castle one digit lower number as well, but maybe loosing 50 %...and so on each consecutive step.

[Mitchell]

Brainstorming here, interested in feedback.

My current idea is "Dominionoes." It would play as a turn based game combining dominoes with a tile based map like you might see in Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne. The idea is the tile map provides a picture of a country side that you have dominion over, but it's up to you to create industry and supply chains to make the land as productive as possible. Tile maps and the sort order of dominoes would have replayable seeds so players can challenge one another for a high score on any given seed. I think it would be nice for a concept like this to be multiplayer, but I'm going to stick with a single player target for now.

I'm thinking I'll use a double-six domino set to begin, allowing each game to take up to 28 turns. You'd have a small hand of dominoes (four or five) that you can choose from to make your next move. The board would likely be a reasonably sized grid - if it's 10x10, you'd have 100 spaces on the map with 56 total spaces of dominoes (each domino covering two spaces when placed).

To start the game, I think you'll place the "6:6" tile somewhere on the map to represent the city at the heart of your dominion. Each turn, you choose an additional domino and place it in any orientation on the tile map, with the only requirement being that you must place at least one of the numbers on the domino next to a matching number on the board. (I haven't decided yet if both dominoes should be required to touch only matching numbers or not - it seems like that would require much larger boards, as you'd end up with more gaps.)

The strategy lies in how you build your chains of dominoes, as each tile on the map will have some natural resource assigned to it (think lumber from forests, food from plains, gold from mountains). The dominoes represent your supply chain, with resources naturally traveling "upstream" to higher numbers. Perhaps a better way to think of it is imagine a taut sheet held out with dominoes representing weights, the heaviest being the 6 and lightest being 0. Resources will collect at the heaviest points they can reach.

Ideally, you'll get valuable resources to route to your castle, but you may end up with pools of resource at other places. You'd probably see towns or trading posts spring up in those areas, which would still score points, just not as much as if you enriched the trade of your main city. I may have other terrain features influence score, such as rivers facilitating trade, applying a multiplier on the point value of resources carried by river to represent "speed to market" influencing the value of goods.

Ultimately, this is a solitaire strategy game, but with the seeds being replayable, it can also spark challenges. I'm not sure I'd use FreeBASIC to create a multiplayer version of the game, but if it plays well enough single player, I may try my hand at a multiplayer version later on.

Any ideas? Details are a bit vague, as this is an unfiltered first conception. 

That's a horrible idea, because there's no way I can beat that in gameplay.

[Jonge]

I like your idea Ryan!  I think you just have to test it out to see what works.

My game idea is based around some sort of a number memory game(a bit like memory games where you flip two cards to find a par). The idea is something like you have to find 4-5 numbers in the right order(if you flip the wrong tile then it flips back). You will be doing this by moving a character around the playing field. I would also like to add things like enemies, traps, obstacles that needs to somehow be removed to clear the tile you want to flip.

I started on a engine today and this is what it outputs   


The big tiles are the ones you can "flip". The theme of the game will probably be some sort of dungeon/fantasy/rpg/demonic memory game 

[Ryan]

I dig it - and kudos for already moving on the engine! I've been enjoying an iOS game recently that merges dungeon crawling with crossword puzzles, using the successful guessing of letters to deal extra damage in enemy attacks. It's a few bucks to give it a whirl, but if you want some inspiration on merging dungeon crawling / combat with a non-traditional mind game, you might give it a whirl: http://www.crossworddungeon.com/

I found it because its creator blogs a fair bit about game development and roguelikes. His blog's worth a follow: http://www.nolithius.com/

[ssjx]

Nice ideas Ryan and Jonge!

I'm making a test version of the odd/even space inavder type game i mentioned, unfortunately it is seeming more suited for a colours comp than a numbers one at the moment.

Tempted to scrap the idea and do a turn based Hero Quest/Space Crusade type game or something else instead...

[mysoft]

heh, memory game will be present in my idea as well, but i'm making an adventure (mini challenges game) kinda like Wario (but not platform)
so numbers will be used in different situations, i'm still throwing ideas, but i know that the name will be "PipeVenture"

[vdecampo]

I will hopefully have a BETA of my game ready to post by this weekend if I can just stop re-doing parts!

-Vince

[BadMrBox]

Awesome that you guys are making some progress

[berrian]

Brainstorming here, interested in feedback.

My current idea is "Dominionoes." It would play as a turn based game combining dominoes with a tile based map like you might see in Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne. The idea is the tile map provides a picture of a country side that you have dominion over, but it's up to you to create industry and supply chains to make the land as productive as possible. Tile maps and the sort order of dominoes would have replayable seeds so players can challenge one another for a high score on any given seed. I think it would be nice for a concept like this to be multiplayer, but I'm going to stick with a single player target for now.

I'm thinking I'll use a double-six domino set to begin, allowing each game to take up to 28 turns. You'd have a small hand of dominoes (four or five) that you can choose from to make your next move. The board would likely be a reasonably sized grid - if it's 10x10, you'd have 100 spaces on the map with 56 total spaces of dominoes (each domino covering two spaces when placed).

To start the game, I think you'll place the "6:6" tile somewhere on the map to represent the city at the heart of your dominion. Each turn, you choose an additional domino and place it in any orientation on the tile map, with the only requirement being that you must place at least one of the numbers on the domino next to a matching number on the board. (I haven't decided yet if both dominoes should be required to touch only matching numbers or not - it seems like that would require much larger boards, as you'd end up with more gaps.)

The strategy lies in how you build your chains of dominoes, as each tile on the map will have some natural resource assigned to it (think lumber from forests, food from plains, gold from mountains). The dominoes represent your supply chain, with resources naturally traveling "upstream" to higher numbers. Perhaps a better way to think of it is imagine a taut sheet held out with dominoes representing weights, the heaviest being the 6 and lightest being 0. Resources will collect at the heaviest points they can reach.

Ideally, you'll get valuable resources to route to your castle, but you may end up with pools of resource at other places. You'd probably see towns or trading posts spring up in those areas, which would still score points, just not as much as if you enriched the trade of your main city. I may have other terrain features influence score, such as rivers facilitating trade, applying a multiplier on the point value of resources carried by river to represent "speed to market" influencing the value of goods.

Ultimately, this is a solitaire strategy game, but with the seeds being replayable, it can also spark challenges. I'm not sure I'd use FreeBASIC to create a multiplayer version of the game, but if it plays well enough single player, I may try my hand at a multiplayer version later on.

Any ideas? Details are a bit vague, as this is an unfiltered first conception. 

That's a horrible idea, because there's no way I can beat that in gameplay.

Infact, the worst idea ever.