Gem Gather is a game that will be developed by Blue Bean Apps. The development will not start until January, 2015, after our current work in progress, Swimmy.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay will be the same as in the thousands of Bejeweled remakes our there - you will match 3 or more similar gems to destroy them. You will be able to upgrade gems up to a certain level (probably up 5 or 10). You will also be able to combine certain gems together to make stronger gems that will give more rewards for destroying them. You will have many spells you could cast that do various things that aid you. There will also be a ranking system for your player where you level up when you earn a certain number of total points or by completing certain actions. There will be 50-100 achievements to complete. There will be 1,000+ different combinations of gems to match, which means 1,000+ different ways to gain experience to level up and 1,000+ different ways to complete certain achievements. With all these ways to match gems that you will never match every combination of gems, so this should keep the game interesting!
This is probably a pointless post (no oneās going to get excited about a self-admitted Bejeweled clone months before its development has even started). And itās definitely in the wrong forum.
I have not started work on it yet and I wonāt until my current WiP, Swimmy, is done. I just posted this so that people can spread the word about, but I did not put it in the WiP thread because it is not currently a WiP. I will make a WiP thread when I start development.
I posted this so early because I want people to give suggestions on what gems to have. You can see what I mean in my next post.
No, hold on, this thread isnāt appropriate for the game design forum in this form. At the moment it reads like an ad, and the formatting is pointless and annoying.
If you want people to give you suggestions for different types of gems then thatād be appropriate, but pitch it that way - i.e. as a question - not as a post mostly full of ācoming soonā space-wasting. I already deleted a thread like this one in that forum.
I do ask for suggestions on gems in my list of gems post. I listed the gems I have in mind to let people know what Iāve already come up with and they can base some of their ideas on those gems. I could take out all the coming soon stuff to make it less like an ad. And what forum should I have this thread under, if not this one?
And yeah, the formatting on the list of gems post got really messed up somehow. I intend to fix that. For some reason, since the bulleted lists didnāt want to center align, I indented them to try to make them centered and it looked fine in the edit window, but then the post came out looking like it does and I donāt know why.
EDIT: I deleted the coming soon stuff from the first post and deleted the whole post for the list of gems. I hope this is better.
Youāre doing it in a super-offhand way though. Like, your post (before you deleted it, anyway) was a big infodump of a list of kinds of gem, and then at the end youāre just like ālet me know if you can suggest more!ā Itād be much better if you posted a more direct request, explained your constraints - for example, is it the case that you specifically need sets of 5 thematically linked gems, or will any number in a set do? - and actually lead with what you are asking instead of posting a load of stuff we donāt care about and then asking at the end. Explain your problem first, sorta thing.
If youāre coming here specifically to ask for ideas of different gem sets you could include in your game, or (even better) advice on how to come up with / be inspired to think of the sets on your own, then thatās a Game Design post.
Itās the center align - and the purple text - that Iām talking about. Why are you doing that? It makes it look like you care more about how your post looks than about what it says. The center-align in particular also makes your text harder to read.
Formatting aside, your first post is better now, but Iād still look at that and go āā¦and why are you telling me this?ā Whatās your actual purpose posting all that stuff?
You mention āspreading the wordā but nobodyās going to do that when all you have is a paragraph about a match-3 game with some vague ideas about novel mechanics - if you had screenshots or a prototype to show then you might have something in the WIP forum, but you donāt, yet.
Are you looking for feedback on the design? In that case youāre going to need to be a lot more specific about how your mechanics work, because theyāre far too vague to discuss at the moment.
@superpig Would coming up with ideas for the game (brainstorming) count as working on it (would it make it technically a WIP)? Iām basically brainstorming things to I could include in the game. I could post comments on new ideas Iāve come up with as I think of them.
Anyways, can this whole Gem Gather thread be deleted? Iāve decided that it is a bit too early to be doing something like this and Iāve recently decided to start writing on an ebook I could sell on Amazon to make money to publish my current WIP, Swimmy, so I am taking a bit of a break from game development as it is, so this whole thread is pointless. Creating this thread was one of those things you think is a great idea at first, but once you make it happen, you realize it doesnāt really work out in the end.
Hopefully, I can create the Gem Gather WIP thread soon, and actually have screenshots to go along with it, but patience is a virtue.
Well, if you want to use a single WIP thread as a kind of ādevelopment journalā then I think thatād probably be OK. But I wouldnāt recommend doing it when youāre only at the brainstorm phase - itās too early, just like what youāve found with this thread
Iām going to leave the thread here. I donāt think itās pointless - maybe it will help to inform others about the best way to discuss their ideas - and I donāt think itās anything you should be ashamed of. Many ideas fail; itās an inevitable part of learning.
Do your ebook and finish Swimmy, then come back with Gem Gather and decide how the community can help you make it happen. Good luck