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Omelette Design Notes (Part 2)
Well, I had a game up and running, and the soft "plunk! plunk!" was kinda hypnotic, but there was no challenge. Did adding an extra specie of egg help?
Well, it wasn't a bad idea, but the game was still too easy. "Deadlocked" boards almost never appeared. The problem was really that most puzzle games use increasing speed as their difficulty level adjuster. In Tetris for example, or Lumines, the pieces drop faster and faster as you progress through the levels. But Omelette lacked this option — I really didn't relish the idea of having to race against a clock by hammering away at the little controller — guaranteed to raise anger levels, not entertainment. Besides, what can you do as a player to avoid "deadlock" anyway? It's not really under your control, and that's never a good way to treat your players.
Omelette Design Notes
Omelette was interesting to write. The technical side wasn't too complex — unlike most "embedded" work, the Apple TV is a pretty robust base to build on — but from a design side, there were some challenges. I wanted Omelette to run as much as possible on a "vanilla" device: Omelette only needs a modified Apple TV because there's no official way to install third-party plugins. In all other respects, it's a regular Apple TV Appliance, it launches from the main menu, it relies on no other modifications, add-ons, peripherals or non-standard behaviour. I wanted to make something that would feel like a part of the Apple TV, like it "belonged" there.
Breaking Eggs
New, over in the free stuff area, is a game called Omelette.
Now, before you get too excited, bear in mind, it's for the Apple TV, and you need to have modified the device before you can install the game. So, there's an audience of, I dunno, about 2 people on the planet who have the device, the technical wherewithall to hack it, and want to play simple puzzle games on it. But it was fun to make, so there.