The Tincture

The Tincture is a Minesweeper-inspired 2D puzzle game created for the PirateSoftware Game Jam 15, a 14-day game development challenge. The themes for the challenge were "alchemy" and "shadows", and I had to incorporate elements of both.

I have a longer blog post about my experience during the game jam here.

Technical Implementation

I built the game using the Construct 3 game engine, a browser-based game engine that uses a visual scripting system. I've played with other game engines like Unity and Godot before, but this was my first time using an engine with a visual scripting system.

I did not find it to be much simpler than just writing code, and it also introduced extra headaches, having to figure out how to do things with Construct's premade blocks. I often found myself dropping into JavaScript, accomplishing more in a few lines than I could with a dozen blocks.

Ultimately, if you want to implement logic, whether it's for a web application, a mobile app, or a video game, you have to decide exactly what you want the application to do and specify every aspect of behavior. This is inherently complex, and you can't make it simpler by turning the behaviors into drag-and-drop visual blocks. That just gives the illusion of simplicity.

It can be fun, though. The game Autonauts has its own visual scripting language in the game, and it's very entertaining.

Challenges

The art was a huge problem for me because I'm not an artist. All of the best art I've ever made was for this game.

Besides that, one of the major challenges for a game like this is making sure the user experience is intuitive. The player should be clear on how the puzzles work and understand what their goal is, even if they're not sure how to solve the puzzles.

I implemented several features to make the game easier for the player to understand. There are hint annotations outside the play space in the early levels. The dialogue between Cassius and Rosemary and a "help" menu also serve to teach the player.

The game also reveals its complexity gradually, introducing one mechanic at a time. There's a mechanic in the game that lets you reveal any symbol, at the risk of revealing the opposite of an adjacent symbol, which would make you lose. I initially envisioned this as a core mechanic of the game. However, to help players learn the game gradually, I made it a special element called Prismalium and didn't give the player access until the third level. Time pressure is only introduced near the end.

The final challenge was code organization. A challenge in any project, and I felt the visual scripting language worked against me here. In a regular project I can grep for anything, but Construct is more limited.

Reflection and Future Development

While I'm proud of what I accomplished in two weeks, there's always room for improvement. If I were to continue developing The Tincture, I would definitely switch to another engine, work with a real artist, etc. I would focus on adding more mechanics to add puzzle variety, such as more elements that have different effects.

While I'm not a game developer, working on The Tincture made me appreciate game development as a medium. Every bug fix and every new feature has a direct impact on the player's experience in a really tangible way.

You can play The Tincture and download the original game design document at taylorgl.itch.io/the-tincture.