The current prototype is working quite well. Multiple playtesters have told me though that it's tricky to get the hang of what tiles are supposed to interact with each other when everything is just text, and I agree. I'll be working on adding some stand-in art next, and in the meantime I'm taking a closer look at the artistic direction of
Elemental Tiles and looking to other games for inspiration.
I was immediately reminded of another tile sliding game I've played called
Cryptica. The mechanics, rules, and objective are all different from the game I'm making, but I like the look and feel of this game. The stone tiles motif matches what I was thinking for my own game, as well as the sound effects of stone sliding against stone. It gives it a feeling of being ancient and mysterious.
As for the symbols that would be on the tiles, I want them to be simple and iconic so they'll be easily recognized by the players. I immediately thought of the symbols used to represent different types of energy in the Pokemon trading card game. For most of them you can take a pretty good guess at what each symbol means. And for the ones that aren't quite as intuitive (like psychic, dark, steel, and dragon energy) once you learn what that type means, it's easily recognizable in the future. There are other examples that can be drawn from as well, such as the elemental symbols from the show
Avatar: Last Airbender and even simple symbols from ancient hieroglyphics and pictograms.
Though simple, I want the tile and board designs to be well done. I could probably whip something up myself, but I'm hoping to work together with a digital artist to produce the graphics for this game.
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