Puzzle Craft has taken over the hearts and minds of the mobile gaming community. I am not immune. When I close my eyes I see patterns of pigs and wheat and trace imaginary lines through them. Professionals have long called this Puzzle Fever. The first documented case in the 90s involved phantom Tetris Attack blocks.
It will take most gamers 10-15 hours to construct the Puzzle Craft’s penultimate Castle, thus “ending” the game. That’s a more than respectable amount of gameplay for a $0.99 purchase. But players have a fever! The only solution?
More Puzzle Craft.
Luckily Chillingo and Ars Thanea’s puzzler has several obvious ways the experience can be expanded and improved. We have compiled our thoughts on some cool directions Puzzle Craft could go. Share your own thoughts in the comments below.
Rare trophies & collectibles are a natural fit for Puzzle Craft & would boost replay value.
Allow players to construct a treasure/trophy room in their shiny new castle. Finishing it would cause unique treasure pieces to drop at random in the farming and mining minigames. Filling in and completing an entire treasure collection would give players a shiny new trophy for their collection and perhaps a special boost or power-up.
Players could construct a Treasure Hunter’s Lodge and hire a group of Treasure Hunters to increase the treasure “drop rate.”
Finally, if players hit a string of bad luck and simply can’t get the final piece of a desired treasure, a light social trading system could be implemented. If you get a duplicate treasure, simply trade it away to a friend for one you still need.
A Dungeon Raid-style fighting puzzle is a no-brainer.
Your castle doesn’t need to be the kingdom’s only mega-construction. Why not introduce more? Once constructed, besides providing eye candy and bragging rights, each could open up a new puzzle game, representing an entirely new phase or gameplay season for Puzzle Craft.
An obvious addition would be a coliseum-style Battle Arena, introducing a brand-new one-on-one combat puzzle. Like previous mobile puzzler Dungeon Raid, players could match swords, shields and other items to damage enemies, block incoming attacks, heal up and more.
To keep players interested and invested in farming and mining, a variety of Arena add-ons and support structures could be available for construction. An upgradable item shop introducing new weapons and items to help players progress through The Arena’s ranks would be one easy inclusion. Food could be spent in a player-built sparring room to level-up your hero and boost his stats.
A Battle Arena add-on could potentially span several Puzzle Craft updates. Once players master and complete the arena with one hero, more classes, each with their own special board-clearing abilities, strengths and weaknesses could be introduced to encourage players to develop and manage an entire roster of champions. Heroes could be sent on automated missions, bringing back resources and tools the next time players sign into the game.
Imagine constructing a massive harbor and unlocking a new diving puzzle game for your trouble.
Every good city needs a harbor, making it another obvious gameplay-adding mega-construction. Once constructed it could open up a new fishing or diving minigame.
Just as players spend food to progress through the mines, players could spend mining resources like silver and gold to make “dive suits” for use in the diving minigame. This keeps Puzzle Craft’s core gameplay loop intact. Spend farm food in the mines. Spend mining goods to dive.
To make the diving minigame feel distinct blocks could fall from the bottom-up. Collect fish, pearls and the occasional treasure chest (complete with unique treasures as outlined above) while avoiding nets, sharks and other obstacles. Matching helpful air bubbles could extend your dive. Deeper depths contain greater dangers but also greater treasure.
Like the battle arena, a variety of supporting structures and workers could be introduced to further develop your fledgling harbor & improve the puzzle game. An upgraded dive shop could allow for the construction of diamond Dive Suits for big diving sessions. Constructed frigates could be sent on trade missions, returning a few hours later with whatever material you need most. Upgraded trading vessels could bring back even more goodies.
If we consider Puzzle Craft’s initial 10-15 hours of kingdom building Phase One, and the ideas above potential concepts for Phase Two and Phase Three, it’s easy to imagine where else the game could go. With the kingdom in place, players are left with the simple task of running it!
More puzzle games, buildings, workers and tools could be slowly introduced to allow players to raise an army & wage war, develop the cultural arts & build a museum, begin investing in technology & science and plenty more.
The fear might be that all these additions could hamper Puzzle Craft’s pure fun factor, throwing into doubt its ability to appeal as a light and breezy time-killing puzzler. One potential solution is to parcel these updates out slowly and steadily. Both in realtime, and in-game. No hint of a Battle Arena or Harbor would need to be present in-game before players construct the Level 25 castle. After gamers complete one major milestone the game could simply send the player on to the next, while still giving them reasons to farm and mine.
Zombies already have a long & successful history in the puzzle genre.
Timed events could be an easy way to keep Puzzle Craft fresh and fun. It could be as simple as swapping out carrots with pumpkins or jack-o-Lanterns in October, complete with new one-month-only pumpkin treasure. But a more elaborate Halloween event could also be created.
Zombies might be overdone, but imagine the world of Puzzle Craft under attack from an undead horde? To fight them off players could collectively raise massive piles or resources to support the war effort. If all Puzzle Craft players can globally contribute, say, 10 million pieces of iron before the month-long event ends then everyone is awarded a cosmetic decoration as a reward. Simple.
Not all Puzzle Craft changes need to involve major content drops. A handful of practical improvements would also be quite welcome.
Players should be able to move buildings, for starters. The building swap could be paid for with in-game resources that don’t have much use right now like Wood or Dirt. This makes sense from both a gameplay and thematic perspective.
Users should also be able to sell tools for a small amount of cash or at least break them down into raw resources. Given how generously the game hands out tools at high levels this might lead to balance issues. But the alternative is forcing gamers to live with 100+ useless rakes.
Finally, additional town customization and personalization would be very welcome. The flowers, fountains and bushes we have now are nice, but more would be even nicer. An even more ambitious option would be to allow players to unlock or purchase new skins for your buildings and workers. This could allow players to run a steampunk town or evil Mordor-esque empire. These options, perhaps available as In-App Purchases, could even re-skin the puzzle games.
Despite all attempts to parcel out content at a reasonable pace there will always be some players that race well ahead of the pack. They might be gamers with too much money, buying $25 packs of in-game coins. They might be gamers with too much free time, unlocking every new building and upgrade as soon as it becomes available. The bottom line? Puzzle Craft needs some serious resource-sinks to give these players something to sink their teeth into!
An endless tower is one potential solution. Once players have built everything else, allow them to get to work gathering the resources needed for Floor 1 of a tremendous tower to the heavens. After Floor 1 comes a slightly more expensive Floor 2. Then Floor 3, and so-on. With each floor requiring more goods to construct than the last, truly hardcore Puzzle Craft players could compare their towers against one another as a visual representation of the current GameCenter high score leaderboard.
What do you think? What do you want to see from Puzzle Craft once you construct your castle? Leave a comment below and let us know. But be sure to dream big!
Justin is Editor of IGN Wireless. He doesn't want to be cured of his Puzzle Fever. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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