Welcome to my Snowflakes game overview...
This mini game was built with Microsoft XNA (XNA Creators club) using the Marblets starter kit. The main aim is to clear the snowflakes at the bottom of the screen by matching to a snowflake at the top. Matching is initially based on colour, then matching based on shape, then back to matching on colour and so on. The challenge comes as the time allowed to make matches decreases and you must switch between matching colours and matching shapes more frequently. Although the rules of the game are simple to learn, matching based on shape can be quite challenging, leading to an engaging game.
Except for the individual snowflake images (taken from dezignus), all other graphics and audio were designed by me.
The initial idea was inspired by idea 5 of my game idea a week project. You can install and play the game by downloading it from this game zip file, then extracting the data and installing it. Also, the entire source code can be downloaded in this source code zip file. Below are some screenshots from the game with descriptions of how the game is played.
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This start screen, showing current high scores, is the first step into the game. When the game is started a set of instructions are shown to explain how to select and match snowflakes or generate a new match snowflake up the top. |
The game begins by asking players to match the top snowflake with one of the bottom ones based on colour. The player has time limit on finding a match as shown by the yellow bar at the bottom of the screen. Initially players have a lot of time to make matches, this is reduced as the game goes on. |
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After an initial period the matching rules switch: players must now match snowflakes based on their shapes, not their colours. This phase of the game is harder since many of the snowflake shapes look similar, but are not the same. |
When a correct match is selected, both snowflakes are cleared. A new top snowflake will be generated to match with the remaining bottom snowflakes. Once all the bottom snowflakes are cleared, the player gets a bonus life and a new set of bottom snowflakes is generated. |
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If the player is able to find an exact match of both shape and colour, they will get bonus points. As the game progresses the amount of time available to match snowflakes decreases and the game forces the player to switch between matching shapes and matching colours more frequently. |
If there is no match, the player must generate a new snowflake at the top of the screen. The player continues to do this until a match can be made with one of the bottom snowflakes. Sometimes it can take a few snowflakes to find a suitable match, which can lull the player into a generating a new snowflake so quickly that they miss a possible match. |
