So I guess I’m on a puzzle game tear this week.

I recently had someone ask me something along the lines of, “where do you get your ideas?” I know from the literary tradition one is supposed to disdain this question, as though the process were a tortured and impenetrable thing. The artist does not question the muse, or some such.

Perhaps I’m only a craftsman then, but I actually think quite a bit about where my ideas come from, especially since I’m on the hook to post one a day for a while yet. I’m going to dedicate a post to this (maybe next Monday…tune in), but the short answer is curiosity and time (and a copious supply of notebooks, post-it’s and pens).

The curiosity is wide ranging. I read a range of magazines, books, and blogs that cover everything from pop culture (my own and others) to economics, physics and biology to people who collect rocks that look like shoes (I wish I could find that site again. That guy was funny). Throw in some television, movies and other random cultural ephemera. I also spend a fair bit of time playing games, and demos of games, and watching other people playing games OTS (over the shoulder).

So with curiosity covered, the next step is time. I make time a few days a week to go for a walk in the morning with the express purpose of thinking about game design. Sometimes I pick a subject, but usually by then end of the walk I’ve wandered far away from the original seed. And then comes the writing-stuff down-phase, which sounds simple, but is really crucially important and often overlooked. I can’t count how many ideas have been lost to “I’ll write that down later.”

In this way, I am my father’s son. He’s a retired minister who has carried a notebook, bulging with loose notes and held together with a rubber band, for as long as I can remember (Hi Dad!).

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us back to today design, the genesis thereof. This design is inspired by three games, one book title and getting rained on during a walk.

The games are Sim City, Burnout Legends and Katamari Damacy. The book title is from a tome I haven’t read, James Lovelock’s “Gaia’s Revenge”. The walk was…wet.

On with the show!

First a disclaimer. It is not a teaching game and it’s not a political message game. It’s a game about unleashing the destructive forces of nature in awesome Destruct-o-Vision with slo-mo replay and having a great time doing it.

Now another disclaimer: The odds of getting a game like this made after Hurricane Katrina are about as good as the odds of V for Vendetta getting made after 9/11. Which is to say, it would take a certain thirst for controversy. It is probably a Teen or Older rating.

I see this as a console title.

You start the game as a young spirit of the earth, a mere few thousand years old. Gaia has a fever, and there’s only one cure: destroy the sources of pollution that are raising her temperature.

Inspiration number one: Sim City

After spending hours building a city, it was time to trigger the natural disasters; earthquake, fires, floods and twisters. The question: would it be fun to play the part of the natural disaster? What would your goals be as a vengeful earth?

Inspiration number two: Burnout Legends

Cue Aside: I hate racing games. I find them boring and repetitive, and I’m really not that good at them. I realize I have forever spoiled my chances of working on Project Forenza Racing: Colin McRea’s Midnight Rally Club. So be it! But I love cart racing games and my, oh my, do I love Burnout: Legends. And why? because, especially in the case of Legends, it is a number of different games cleverly disguised as car games, fighting games, puzzles games, and yes, a little racing thrown in around the edges as decoration.

I’ll focus here on the crash puzzles. I love these because they are very physical puzzles, puzzles that you have to solve with your brain, but implement with your reflexes. I find this very entertaining, especially with the wonderful visual cookies they dole out.

I see Gaia’s Revenge: The Game having physical puzzle game play.

You start out only being able to whip up strong wind storms. You start with a High Pressure symbol at the bottom of the level. You have a storm cloud that you can nudge with the analog stick (here’s the part where this isn’t a learning game). The High Pressure area acts as a kind of gravity well for your little storm cloud. You can navigate your cloud to orbit the High Pressure symbol, and as you do, it picks up speed and mass. With a flick of the stick, you throw your storm into play. I imagine the Revolution controller would be a great interface for this game. As the game gains in difficulty, you have multiple pressure systems to navigate off of and that affect your course once you release.

Like Burnout, once you have launched the avatar, you have some limited control, like english, but the die is largely cast. The goal is to destroy key polluting targets, SUV Dealerships, Power Plants, Paper Mills and the like. The Storm moves on its course, deflecting off terrain features, gaining in power as key targets are destroyed. Success is measured by percentage of targets destroyed.

As you advance, you gain lightning, which can be triggered by the player as the storm moves on its course. Other effects are added, floods, earthquakes, which are triggered somewhat like the crash-breakers in Burnout. At a certain percentage of destruction, the new effect is made available as a one-off.

Explosions and fire would spawn off mini-storms of their own, these smaller storms would have the chance to merge into larger cells.

Inspiration number three: Katamari Damacy

The main inspiration I draw for Katamari Damacy is the gradual increase in scale as the game is in progress.

As you get better, you can build the size of your storms significantly during the course of a single puzzles. You can start with a local downpour and work your way up to a category 5, start with some big wind at sea and build up to a full hurricane. The scope of the puzzles changes accordingly.

Wow. This post is rapidly turning into War and Peace, and yet it feels like I’ve just scratched the surface. There are only so many hours in the day, and I’ve used mine up. See you next time!

-game over-

Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.