Kit-109 Worlds Hardest Game Clone

Kit-109 Dev-log

Overview

I will be making a top-down puzzle game involving the player as a square who needs to navigate a series of levels by dodging enemies that will be set up in different formations or with different behaviour each time. There will be items to collect prior to the completion of some levels to force full engagement with puzzles. This will be a game clone of the ‘Worlds hardest game’ with my own spin on some of the puzzles. Introducing ‘dodge em or give up’.

Concept Creation Process

I was looking for something very simple to make so I looked at old games I played as a kid. Games like the original adventure quest where it’s effectively two sprites fighting with a menu or the early 2d scroller sonic games. Due to being quite stressed even making pong, I opted for an even simpler game, ‘The Worlds Hardest Game’. I spent hours on this as a kid and I thought it would be fun to attempt my own levels. The main idea that got me to decide on this game was the practical we did involving hinges, I almost immediately thought of a design for a level, making a row of balls act like a door swinging open and shut, which I had not seen in the original game. After modelling the game, I was confident that it could be done with a few extra features in the back of my head in case everything else went smoothly and I had extra time.

Audience and Competitive Analysis

The target audience for my puzzle game is pretty much anyone of any age. From what I’ve seen and read puzzle games appeal to children and adults however, to make sure I can feasibly attract both the levels will become more difficult as you progress. I know that as a kid more than half the original games levels were nigh impossible for a kid to figure out but there was always enjoyment in the earlier levels. The addition of a ‘score’ in the form of your number of failures made it competitive regardless of how far you got, as you could always be compared to your peers. For example, Timmy might only get to level 6 of 30 but did it with only 12 failures compared to Josh who did the same with 21 failures. The main focus of this game is to make it engaging even at early levels while making sure there is a sense of achievement for the more skilled players.

Game Treatment and Concept Art

The puzzle game will exist within a top-down environment with generally simple structures. The environment isn’t the enemy or the confusing part. It should always be clear what the objective is and where you need to end up. The difficulty comes from enemies but, even they are very simple, just small blue balls moving up and down or left and right or maybe even spinning together in a pattern. The early levels should be very simple but require precise timing whereas, the later levels will be more confusing. For example, figure 1 shows the very first level of the original game I’m drawing inspiration from.

Figure 1- Worlds Hardest Game: Level 1

As you can see there arn’t many elements in play and each of those blue balls is moving left to right and hitting the walls at opposite sides so they all form a straight line in the middle. The objective is simple, slip through the gap. The window of opportunity is small but the goal is clear.

Figure 2 shows level 6 and is starting to look more daunting with picks up involved and having to backtrack. Any point of failure resets all pick ups requiring you to repeat the pattern of movement until mastered. While this is more difficult, once again the goal is clear. Figure 2 also displays the spinning I mentioned earlier using a parent child system. All the balls are rotating around the middle ball of each group.

Figure 2- Worlds Hardest Game: Level 6

Figure 3 shows us the complexity the balls can bring. The goal is still clear but how to get there is not. Unlike previous levels this now requires the player to carefully study and track all the balls separate movements and was the point of failure for almost all kids in my school.

Figure 3- Worlds Hardest Game Level: 13

Figure 4 is my own design using hinges that I mentioned in an earlier section, each row would swing back and forth sometimes overlapping but providing clear times to dash in for a pickup or get to the exit. The speed of those swinging hinges would be the main scaler for the difficulty of this level.

Figure 4- Level Concept using hinges.

The player character is the red square that has movement in 8 directions. This allows for more risky angles of movement rather than constant tapping down and across that can get tiresome.

The enemies (blue circles) will follow their set pattern for movement and since I will be using many these sprites, I will prefab the base design and add the necessary elements for each movement as I go. The actual back and forth movement, I will try to script it specifically instead of relying on locking their trajectories and letting them bounce.

The pick-ups (gold coins) will also be prefabs as I will be using them frequently. They will communicate with the player/score-zone so the level can be completed once all have been collected.

I hope to make 5 levels in total to scale it efficiently but am willing to cut it back if getting the different scripts working takes to long. Once I have the first level complete the base mechanics should all be in place and the only adjustments should be to the enemies (blue circles) movement.

References

Link to the original game, it has a level select option for easy viewing of all specified levels I used.

https://www.coolmathgames.com/0-worlds-hardest-game