Well met,
as a recent newcomer I think an introduction is necessary. So here we go, my name is Toni and I joined forces with Black Trumpet Games to bring you a new puzzle game called Runick.

Runick is a 3D isometric simple, yet challenging puzzle game. The idea is to use the available shapes to adequately mark all the tiles on a given board. The shapes the user interacts with adhere to certain geometric principles and are as follows:

• cuboids, which can be flipped over and mark all the tiles they cover

• spheres, which can be rolled in a certain direction and mark all the tiles they roll over

• pyramids, which can teleport over tiles and mark the tiles they cover, since we all know pyramids can teleport in real life too  (the capsule is used as a placeholder)

The player has to mark all the tiles appropriately to complete the level. Sounds quite simple right? It certainly can be, but also doesn’t have to be!

I challenge you to complete all the levels in the demo. Who doesn’t love a challenge, now you have to give it a try.

As you have noticed each shape can have a different rune (color) which makes things interesting and in the later levels more difficult. Shapes can change the rune (color) of an already solved tile turning it into an unsolved tile, this forces the player to think about each move ahead.

The Idea

So why this idea and how did I come up with it.

I am already a full-time game developer in Exordium Games and I love to make games so much that I also wanted to make even more games. That means I would have to make a game in my limited free time.

I built my idea on two constraints. First, the game must be simple, with easy to understand rules. And secondly, it should use geometric shapes and colors to communicate the rules to the player.

Games with geometric shapes and colors, as indicators of how the game should be played, always fascinated me. Those two constraints were used as the basics of the initial idea.

On top of all that I wanted the player to have the luxury to play the game whenever and wherever, that meant no time constraints and the ability to take a break anytime and pick it back up without penalties.

All of this resulted in these limitations:

• a small scope

• simple but interesting and challenging

• uses geometric shapes and colors

• can be played anytime, anywhere without pressure

The more constraints I had, the more my imagination flourished (weird, right?). At the beginning, I got the idea of a cuboid flipping on a board trying to mark all the tiles on it. This resulted in me making a prototype and testing it out. Then came the idea of 2 cuboids with different colors and markable tiles. The ideas just kept on coming and it seemed like the game was designing itself. Once I had a couple of levels I immediately uploaded it to my smartphone and showcased it around for feedback. And that’s how Runick was born!

I hope you liked the introduction of our new game, the next blog entry will cover level design, and boy do I love to talk about the level design of Runick. So be sure to follow us for more updates.

Toni
(@kiphla)