Alex K. Gustafson

Project Role: Sole Creator

Mastery of Simple Mechanics

The goal of Color Chaos is simple; earn as many points as possible before the time runs out. Players earn points by manipulating the play-field of blocks using a queue of pieces. There are 2 primary different types of pieces the player can use; Destroyers and Changers. When a Destroyer is triggered on a block of matching color, the block, and all cumulatively adjacent blocks of like color are destroyed. When a Changer is triggered on a block of non-matching color, the block, and all cumulatively adjacent blocks of like color are changed to match the color of the Changer piece. The chain-reaction effect that occurs as a result of these 2 primary actions provides a space for players to plan their moves and set-up huge Destroyer and Changer combos for massive amounts of points.

When the play-field has been nearly destroyed, the game advances to the next Level by restoring all of the blocks, allowing the player a full play-field of color to manipulate. When several Levels have been achieved, a new Stage is unlocked. This adds a large amount of time to the countdown and allows the player to remain in the flow of the game.

Advancement

As a player advances through the Levels of Color Chaos, overall difficulty is increased by the slow addition of different colored blocks. The game begins with only 3 colors; red, blue, and purple. At its most challenging, 3 more colors are added to the play-field which limit the extent of chain-reactions and piece placement. Each chunk of time that is added to the countdown is also slowly reduced as the player advances through Stages. This ensures both that the game will ultimately end, and that the faster the player moves through the Stages, the more time he or she will have saved up for the final sprint!

Achievement

Color Chaos possesses 3 different difficulties: Trance, Dance, and Hardcore. The harder difficulties reduce the starting duration of the countdown, and reduce the bonus time earned for clearing a Stage, but they increase a value which the total score is multiplied by before the final score is computed. This creates 3 tiers of players to compare within the High Scores table included with the game. Also before final score is computed, a plethora of bonus points are awarded for remarkable performance. The most beneficial and important being Fastest Level, which is how long it took the player to clear the entire play-field on his or her fastest play.

Project Development

Color Chaos was created by myself with the creative feedback and constructive criticism of three of my peers and A2M’s Patrick Fortier. The initial prototype was created within the first month of development, and the final version was developed over the following three months after a complete overhaul of code and mechanics. Color Chaos was pieced together using a variety of tools including Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer, Adobe Photoshop, and Linux Multimedia Studio. Additionally, a special thanks to Auston Montville for creating the main gameplay music.

Throughout the course of this project, I learned a great many skills including:
+ A much stronger sense for programming logic.
+ Stronger scripting skills.
+ Rapid prototyping.
+ Accepting critique and criticism on a regular basis.
+ Focus on tight mechanics and controls.

Can You Play Hardcore?

The creation of Color Chaos was an excellent experience in making functional prototypes to test gameplay and mechanics. More information on how Color Chaos evolved from a boring and strategy-less experience to the entertaining puzzle game before you today will be available soon.

Additionally, you may download and play Color Chaos as a .zip archive from the link below:

Download:  

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