Game Idea: Metromino

Yesterday we released an asset pack of Metromino Tiles, but what kind of game are they really for? For a few years now, I’ve been mulling over an idea for a game where you move around tiles to complete metro maps of various cities. However, since I’m probably never going to make it (except maybe for a game jam) I thought I’d share the idea in case it inspires anyone else!

The first step in developing each level of the game would be to create a “finished” map from a set of tiles like the one below. As you can see the game would be played on a fixed grid with the metro lines being a little more rigid than they are in real life (featuring only straights and corners).

Then, before the player sees the map, it would be scrambled by moving whole rows and columns a number of times in code. Think of it like a 2D Rubik’s Cube.

Once the level is scrambled it would look something like this:

This new scrambled map is how the player would see each level. They would then have to solve the puzzle by moving whole rows and columns of tiles at the same time, again like solving a Rubik’s Cube. Since we used this method to scramble the level in the first place, the puzzle will always be solvable because the player could simply perform the moves in reverse order.

However, the neat thing about this idea is that the game would detect a “win” not if the map looks exactly like the one we designed in the level editor, but simply if the map is a valid metro map. If each coloured line and station are connected end-to-end with no gaps, overlaps or problems, the game would declare the player a winner.

This means that every puzzle would potentially have many, many solutions. No single player will have exactly the same experience with the game as any other!

This idea scratches an itch I’ve had for a long time to build a game about metro maps, maybe one day I’ll see it come to life.

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