Back in the day games when games had no cutscenes to help drive the narrative of the game forward. For the most part this relied on a booklet or the gameplay of the game. This week we had to take inspiration from a one screen game (like Donkey Kong or Bomberman) to create a gameplay-based narrative.
I decided to base my game on Joust.

Dracula’s minions have invaded a heaven and stolen the souls of innocent people. It is up to the Arch-Avian to kill the minions and take back the poor souls.
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The gameplay goes like this: you must navigate through the map by pressing space to float up and press the left and right keys to move. If you hit the minions from the top, they disappear and drop a soul which you must collect. If they hit, you from the top you lose your health.

Soul Wisp

Background

Game Concept

First of all please download the template below:

The game starts out like a proper Ludo game; 4 pawns are put on their respective starting areas (in this case the coloured planets). In order to take out a pawn a player must roll a 6. It is then to be placed on the square with the arrow on it and always moved in that direction around the board.

When two players are on the same square they enter an attack phase. They roll a die each and whoever gets the bigger role gets to stay in place the other goes back on their planet. If the number is the same, players must reroll.

There are a few perks if you already have units on the grey planet (Ludia). During the attack phase you add the number of pawns you have on Ludia to the roll you got.
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If a player is part of an attack in their territory (area indicated with a lighter shade of the colour) they add a +2 to their roll.
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There are eight coloured circles on some of the squares. These are wormholes. If a pawn of the same colour gets on a wormhole with one on it, the player rolls again. If they roll a six, they can move to the wormhole with a two on it. If they fail to get a six, they can try again in the next rounds.

If a pawn lands on a wormhole of a different colour it will be unable to move in the next round.

​There cannot be two pawns of the same colour on one square.

to win all four pawns of one colour must be on the grey planet.

• Put the card in front of their main deck, next to the drawn card of their opponent and redraw another card from the top

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• Choose to attack the opponent.​

​The players must repeat the process of drawing cards and attacking until a player is left without cards. In order to win, the opponent must lose all his cards in the main deck.

• The powers can stack. Ex 1: if someone attacks with a queen and draws out a Jack (instead of a number card to act as a base value) he can use the power of the Jack which is to draw two more cards. Ex 2: However, it is important to note that, if a player uses a Jack and then draws out a King and a card from A-10 (number cards) there is an exception for one of the rules above.  “….the player holding the king must draw another card….” In this case the player does not draw another card but use the other number card as a base value. This also applies for the Queen.

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• If a player has a power card (Jack, Queen, King) as his last card he is left with a base value of 0, but the powers of both the King and Queen still count.

• If the Attack values are the same the players will take the cards they used and put them at the bottom of their main deck.​

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• If the last two cards of both players are the same the game is a draw.