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A great deal of time was spent designing the game and thinking about what would work well and play well. Some of the key design tenets are listed below:
- ZooCube was designed for universal appeal
- It introduces the concept of juggling, with which everyone is familiar, to a video game
- It is a metaphor for problem solving, most people with busy lives are juggling constantly
- It is a great stressbuster
- It has been “designed” from player’s viewpoint
- It is very forgiving
- There is total freedom in the strategy for stacking shapes
- Visual and audio cues are provided throughout the game
Reminds you of Tetris?
Many people have commented that playing ZooCube reminds them of Tetris. However ZooCube is a totally original game, and when one examines the game mechanics one can see why it is different and innovative in its own right:
- The action takes place in three dimensions
- The fundamental premise is quite “exact” – similar objects explode whilst dissimilar objects stack up
- There is a lot more variety in the game, by way of goodies and power ups
- The player primarily controls the central ZooCube – that to which falling objects stick to rather than the falling objects themselves
- There are more controls to master
- At its simplest it caters for novices while at its most complex it caters for experts becoming faster and more complex to sustain the challenge
- The game actively scales the further one progresses via pace, complexity and variety
- The game can literally play as fast as the player can handle it
- It is regularly possible to perfectly clear all stacked objects
- It is possible to deal with more than one falling object at a time
- Succeeding requires a high degree of multi-tasking
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