I came across a game design blog I haven’t seen before, Lost Garden, with the latest post being a game design challenge. Sweet! I need more stuff to do (or an excuse to not do the stuff I already am doing). I looked through a few posts and liked what I saw; gotta read more, but until then, it’s now on my blogroll. —>

So what really caught my eye was this challenge. I may do it for a nice prototype on my portfolio, as well as proof that I can code stuff. So the basic idea of the game this: Mushrooms are planted on the 2D board and if they’re in the sun for longer than a second, they wither and die. Once the player contacts a mushroom, it uproots and follows the “rugged mushroom farmer”. Over 15 minutes, the day progresses, and thus, the shadows change. The goal is to collect as many mushrooms as you can and return it to the safe spot by the end of the day.

The author of the blog, Danc, is a game designer and he came up with this idea for Shade and sent out this challenge to anyone willing to make a prototype to see if this design concept will stick. Maybe I’ll give it a go in Blade3D, shouldn’t be that bad, mostly coding, since the art is all relatively simple. Who knows?