WHEELS OF NATURE
A game concept for mobile devices
Category : Game concept
Role : Game Designer
Duration : 3 days
Presentation :
As part of a recruitment, I realized a game concept for Dreamtronic from different constraints.
The game had to be adapted for tablets and smartphones, for 7-10 years old, with a nature theme and with one and a half minute games.
In Wheels of Nature, you play as Reka and her sister Diana, two spirits who master different elements.
You must combine these elements to create resources that will satisfy the needs of the animals. Each animal has different needs.
The player then places the animals around these resources to satisfy the animals. The more animals the player can satisfy, the more points he earns.
The design of the main mechanics
With a nature-themed game, I quickly thought of ecosystems. However, the time constraint of one and a half minutes and the target audience of 7-10 years old forced this concept to be simplified to the extreme.
The idea of making tiles of animals that we would place on a board came to me from the desire to represent the ecosystem and the place that an animal can have in this ecosystem. Indeed, in an ecosystem, the resources are in certain places and the animals must place themselves in relation to these resources.
Also, I originally intended to have a predation mechanic where it would be impossible to put predator animals next to prey animals. This would have added complexity in the management of the placement, but it was not an idea compatible with the constraint of very short games.
In order to respect the constraint of short games, I decided to make sure that each animal would be defined by simple needs. Usually a specific food need and/or a particular household need.
I then decided to start with needs varying from 1 to 3, because that seemed to me to be the right number to have enough variety without being too complex.
To define these needs, I started from what characterizes animals. The rabbit eats grass, the forest, the bear eats fish etc.
It was also necessary that these needs be as much as possible usable by several animals so that the same resource tile can be exploited to the maximum. This is how you end up with the grass that serves for the rabbit and the deer or the nest that serves for the finch and the eagle.
We thus end up with the following list of animals:
Once the animals were defined and the resources they needed, it was necessary to decide how the players were going to obtain these resources.
A first option would have been to have infinite resource generators placed on the interface. However, I wanted to do something more interactive without requiring the player to manage resources.
That's why I decided to go with a system of wheels that allow you to combine different elements to create the necessary resources.
There are therefore two wheels which each have three elements. The elements of each wheel can be assembled to create a particular resource.
To combine items, the player spins the wheels until they line up the items needed to create the desired resource. Once the wheels are aligned, the resource appears in the middle and is constantly renewed as soon as a player takes it.
With two wheels and three elements per wheel, we end up with nine different combinations of which here is the list:
Finally, there is a point system at the end of a game. Once 30 minutes have elapsed, the game ends and the game indicates the number of bridges won.
The player earns points as soon as an animal has all its needs met. The more needs an animal has, the more points it earns.
The player can also earn bonuses if a resource tile is perfectly optimized. That is to say, when its three sides are used to satisfy the need of an animal. They are then indicated in yellow.
It is also possible to lose points if at the end an animal is placed on the field, but does not have all its needs met and is therefore indicated in red.
With all its elements, we get a final score and an end of game screen that looks like the image below:
