Day 8 Game 8: 30 games in 30 days using Grids
This is what Grids did for us today. What can Grids do for you?
In Game 8 you play as an amoeba. The aim of the game is to grow your amoeba and to take over the other amoeba.
The game is in fact built on a triangular grid. The cell movement is based on a neighbor-toggle mechanic. Because the mechanics are not 100%, it’s difficult to play the game, and as such, we felt showing the grid explicitly did not add much to your understanding or ability to win, and it’s an exciting opportunity to hide the grid.
The entire game is constructed from a single blob-like tile. Each triangle has four blobs – one in the centre, and one for each edge. The edge amoebas only switch on if there is a neighboring cell in that direction with the same colour. The idea of using overlapping circles was inspired by another game, Wang Commander, that use 3D spheres to get an organic effect. To make our amoebas alive, we rotate and scale our blobs slowly, and by different amounts and out of synch. This makes the discrete aspect of the game very hard to see – not all grids have to be rigid and straight!