Crystal Caves

Crystal Caves

Overall Vision

• Summary:

The player must travel through two caves, gathering treasure as they go, to reach the end.

• Genre:

Crystal Caves fits more into an exploration/adventure kind of game rather than the turn-based RPG it was based on.

• Target Audience:

This game is easy to play for all ages, as the controls are simple and intuitive and the overall game is extremely easy.

Mechanics: Rules of the Game World

• Character Goals:

Poochyena (the player character) has woken up in a cave with no idea where they are. They must travel through it to reach the end, but nobody said they couldn’t collect a few things along their way…

• Abilities:

The player character’s only abilities are movement; they are unable to attack and must dodge enemies or take damage to reach the treasure they seek.

• Obstacles:

The cave seems to be the home of quite a few Buizels, and they must be avoided in order to reach the end. In addition, the exits seem to change every time Poochyena wakes up in the caves, so they can’t rely on their previous knowledge to escape.

• Items:

Two items are available in Crystal Caves; treasure boxes and oran berries. Oran berries heal the player for 50 health, while treasure boxes can be collected for 200 points. Both items play a fun little tune when picked up.

• Resources:

The player must manage their health points. This game is not particularly difficult, and oran berries are placed often enough that the player shouldn’t need to overly worry about them.

Dynamics: Interaction Between the Player and the Game

• User Interaction:

The player must use the WASD keys to move around the map. As the game is very simple, it can be played on any computer. There is a page for controls on the title screen that informs the player of their goals, what items do, and the controls.

• Proficiency:

Anyone with basic video game knowledge (how to move the character) would be able to easily complete this game.

• Gameplay Data:

Health points and Treasure points are displayed at all times at the top of the screen. A treasure box icon (the same as the actual treasure boxes the player collects) signifies the treasure points, and a small pixel heart denotes the health points.

• Controlling the Game:

The player starts the game from the title screen. There is currently no pause function, but the danger in the game is very low, so one isn’t really necessary.

Aesthetics

• Overall:

The game is made to feel very similar to the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. Crystal Caves uses assets from said game, in order to create the nostalgic feeling of older pixel-art Pokemon games.

• Game Art:

This game uses solely pixel art, and has a mix of bright and dark colors to symbolize a damp, dark cave filled with sparkling crystals. The victory screen uses even brighter colors and a picture of the outside sky in order to give the player a sense of accomplishment, and helps them feel as though they have truly escaped the caves.

• Sound:

Similarly, all music and sound effects were also taken from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. Each tileset corresponds to a specific music track in the original Pokemon game, but I often used a few tracks that did not correspond to the tilesets (such as in level two, where I used the music track for Temporal Tower rather than the Zero Isle South level that the tileset was taken from) in order to create a more cohesive feel.

• Plot:

A Poochyena has awoken in a mysterious cave and must escape!

• Emotional State:

Crystal Caves tries to inspire the joy of exploration in the player! Said feeling was what made the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky games so enjoyable.

• Fun:

The player gets to collect a number of mysterious treasures on their quest to escape the caves.

Credits

All assets were taken from the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky games and found on The Spriters Resource website. The Poochyena player sprites, Buizel enemy sprites, and the start screen’s crystal background were uploaded by user redblueyellow, The items (the stairs, treasure box, and blue oran berry sprites) were also uploaded by user redblueyellow along with user Null. The end screen’s blue sky was uploaded by user Hauntfuck. Tile sets for level one and level two were uploaded by user SilverDeoxys563.

All music used for Crystal Caves was found on YouTube. Music for the start screen, item pickups, level one, and level two was uploaded by user PocketMonstersMusic.

Reflection

I’m a little sad that I didn’t get to spend as much time on this game as I would have liked. I’d love to improve on it in the future by adding more features that were present in the games Crystal Caves was based on, such as more items with numerous status effects, more enemies, a hunger system, and randomized maps rather than just randomized exit locations. Unfortunately, other responsibilities got in the way of Crystal Cave’s creation, so these features were unable to be implemented in production.