Good day gamedev, this is not a generic "I need an idea" thread, instead I have a game, I have two game modes. I want to add a couple more game modes before i ship it, but I just don't know what i can add.

several of my friends have suggested I do some form of multiplayer, but I simply don't want to do anything with the internet, i'm already working on two other games that rely heavily on internet, and i'd like to not have to deal with that for this game.

So, here's gameplay footage of both game modes:

[video]

anyone have ideas on making some more game-modes?

I was thinking of an extended classic that featured more than 4 colors, the goal is still to match 4 colors to a single cube, but with more colors, it makes things a bit harder. i could apply this to the tetris mode as well. (granted right now the state of the cube fits nicely into a single byte).

however i'd like to add at least a third fundamentally different mode, but i really don't know where to go.

How about a snake mode, where you try to connect as many triangles of the same color as you can without making a square?

Is there a situation in your game, when it has no legal moves? In games like this: Tetris, Match-3, Lines, so on, there is some kind of no-legal moves situation. Usually it's where game ends. I think adjusting rules, so such situation arises may improve gameplay. For example some idea: You can rotate block only if some block pops down during that rotation (either rotating or neighbor). Blocks pop down if at least 3 their sides match sides of neighbor squares. And, yes, you can't exchange color on sides. It's untested, but may serve foundation for more refined version of rules.

The tetris mode does have situations where their are no moves, which is probably another reason i like it alot more over the classic mode. I'll see if i can work your idea, I'm thinking something along the idea that you can only rotate blocks, and they pop if all the sides line up with all the neighbor sides.

How about a snake mode, where you try to connect as many triangles of the same color as you can without making a square?

could you elaborate on this, how would the triangles be considered connected?

I recall from my misspent youth a spatial intelligence test where you had to assemble different shapes together to match the picture provided.

Is your game necessarily limited to the square or can shapes be formed using the triangles as moving, rotating and flipping the shapes provided to match the picture as a Spatial Intelligence mode might be interesting.

or you could provide a template to which people need to match with colours in the right place i.e. 3x3, 4x4 etc using your existing rotating, swapping.

Also the introduction of a novelty triangle which when matched up with 3 other matching novelty triangle unlocks a virtual reward such as a new skin colour.

unfortunately the game is built around the cubes/grid format, so i can't assemble other shapes. I could do something like randomizing a grid, and having players re-build it.

edit: i've implemented WildField's idea(or at the least the interpretation i got, not 100% sure i'm on the same page as he is), anyway, it's a really great addition, matching the surrounding triangles adds a ton of challenge that classic doesn't offer.

How about a snake mode, where you try to connect as many triangles of the same color as you can without making a square?

could you elaborate on this, how would the triangles be considered connected?

Any two triangles of the same color that shared a side would be considered connected. It's like one of those games where you rotate pipe or wire segments to get water or electricity to connect a source and a target:

The source and target is optional, you can instead score by number of triangles of the same color that are connected (touching).

ah, ok, i see, i think i can make that work=-)

edit: after staring at the game for a bit, i don't think i can actually make this work.

for example:


the second column in, i made a long green "snake", how exactly would i analyze this chain in a meaniful way?

as well, their are tons of smaller chains scattered across the board.

In order to do it, i think i'd have to essentially create a list of all chains, until i've exhausted all possible triangles. The performance for doing this every time that their is a minor change on the gameboard could be a bit insane.

I'd be happy to incorporate this idea if someone could give me some pointers on how i might best approach analyzing the board?

Well, what do you want the goal of this gameplay mode to be? There could be a "submit" button that causes the entire board to be scored and snakes longer than N to be removed and replaced with random triangles. Or there might be only one active snake, and only that active snake would be scored and removed. Or there might be a time limit, and the whole board would be scored when the limit expired. Or there might be time constantly running out, but each snake submitted added some time back to the timer based on how many triangles it contained. Or you could add goals and score the board whenever a snake connected 2 goals. Or you could allow the player to add a goal wherever they wanted the start and end of their snake to be, and score that snake when the second goal was added.