Alchemy

Image via WikipediaAlchemy is a game made by Popcap Games, the same creator as one of my favorites, Bejeweled. It is a casual game that can be played online or can be downloaded for a fee. The game is played on a grid of squares and the goal is to turn all of the squares gold. Squares turn to gold when the player places a "rune" on a square. Runes are letters of the greek alphabet in a particular color. Runes must be place next to squares of either a similar shape or similar color. Points are scored when runes are placed on a board. When a column or row is completely filled, it disappears. This gives the player more space for placing runes. There are wildcard runes, and every now and then, a skull. The skulls must be placed on top of a rune and they destroy whichever rune they are placed on top of. If a rune will not fit anywhere, it can be discarded. A player can discard up to 4 runes. After that the game is lost.

This was a fun casual game to play. I enjoyed the fact that there was no clock involved and that the challenge in the game did not involve pushing arrow keys within a certain amount of times. Games with a visceral quality such as Alchemy hold my attention much longer than games where I must push sequences of buttons within a certain period of time.

Alchemy is similar to Bejeweled in that the player is working with pieces on a grid, and the player must recognize similar shapes. I like working with magical themes and with symbols like the greek Alphabet. I guess its sumbliminal programming from all of those Calculus classes. I was intrigued by the fact that the goal for winning the game was somewhat separated from winning points. I guess the points could be used if you were trying to compete against people. If that were the case, the winner would probably play for longer just so that they could earn points. Isn't that a twist.

I've been reading that these types of games are highly appealing to women and older players. It's not difficult to see why. This is the game you play for 15 minutes at work when it's 3:00 on Friday, and you just can't look at another line of code.

This is off-topic, but Popcap games is really taking a Web 2.0 approach to gaming. Games are offered on several platforms: pc, mac, online, offline, mobile. The games appear to be written in Flash. Finally, Popcap has its own freely available API allowing developers to make their own games. This last feature is a very smart move on their part, because players who are rabidly into their games and have some programming expertise will probably want to try their own hand at making a game.

I'm going to play around with their api and see if I can't make something "fun" with it. I've been having real trouble with Gamemaker, not because it isn't a good application, but because I think the types of games that can be made with gamemaker are so incredibly boring. I'll post a later update about whether or not I was able to use it. Since I have to create a game for a final project, I'm hoping that the Popcap framework will pan out.