Week 9 – Learning about puzzles vs. riddles, and remaking Carcassonne in Unity (With a twist!)

                For this week, we had learned about puzzles and the difference between puzzles and riddles. Professor Nacke also brought up solving a Rubik’s cube, which I loved to solve back in high school (usually solving it in less than 20-30 seconds). We also learned about the difficulty increase in puzzles, where puzzles should slowly but surely increase in difficulty.

Score screen when you finish the game

Top-down view of the game (default and only playable view)

                For the past week, my group and I had been busy working on models to be used for our homework 2 assignment, which was to remake a German-style board game as a casual game in Unity. We chose to do the board game Carcassonne, and added a twist to it. It is similar to the original board game, where you start the game off with 2 tiles, and you get to place the next tile, which is randomly generated from a list of possible tiles, wherever you want. There are 4 different color types of tiles, including green (0 points), bronze (1-4 points), silver (5-7 points), and gold (8-14 points) tiles. The goal is to create a path using the road pieces for the ball to travel on. The player will have a certain amount of time to place all the tiles, one by one, and then the gate will open and release the ball. Should the ball roll off the edge, you lose the game and get 0 points. Should the ball end up at the end point’s hole, you will get all the points that were accumulated when the ball rolled over each tile, as is also affected by cities and monasteries, which will give bonuses. After the game ends, it will assign a rank to each player depending on their score, and a score of 0 will result in a rank of peasant. There are other ranks implemented, such as knight, noble, king emperor, and godlike if the player can get enough points.

Close up view of the level (start and end points present, cannot play while in this view)

I had personally created the monastery (basic + upgraded versions) and the huge city (basic + upgraded versions), and also helped with the quarter city and the half city (with their basic and upgraded versions).

                That’s all for this week, stay tuned for more next time!