Alphabet Soup

Alphabet Soup, a game for the 'use SDL' assignment by Jeff Carlson. Code help: cplusplus.com, gpwiki.org, "C++ In A Nutshell" (O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2003 ed.). Testing: Owen Durni, Dmitry Portnoy.

Goal

I wanted to create a game with depth (multiple ways to play) that used alphabetic input (using keyboard letters).

Method

Most software that involves action-based alphabetic input is considered "edutainment" (a la Mario Teaches Typing) and is fairly simplistic as far as arcade skill is concerned. I added a familiar arrow-key "dodge'em" that forces the player to manage his/her reaction time between eating letters (alphabet) and dodging (arrow keys).

Each phase involves more and more thought from the player about the roles that the letters play:

• The first involves only the arrow keys, and trains the player to ignore what letters are actually spawning.


• The second phase introduces the new inputs (in an early iteration, all 26 letters were fair game, but that crossed the line from fun to frustrating for both myself and testers). Successful players will be aggressive, eating letters right as they spawn, to keep the on-screen letter count low.


• The third phase (teleporting to vowels and then eating consonants) forces classification of letters, and adds more danger. Players who want a high score should allow many letters to pile up on screen, so that a lot of consonants can be eaten with one teleport.


• The fourth phase forces even more thought about what letters are where on the screen. The phase encourages the player to prune the letter pool until, ideally, all seven required letters are on screen with little other interference.

Novelty

This game uses a relatively unexplored control scheme (except in "edutainment") and asks the player to combine the scheme with arrow-key controls. The third and fourth phases of the game encourage complex planning that is rarely seen in arcade games.

Results

The game definitely has an arcade feel, and by only using letters from the left side of the keyboard, the player isn't overwhelmed. The difficulty (ease of earning points) seems to increase with each phase, as well as the amount of thinking (as opposed to raw reaction) involved. There are a couple of basic strategies to use in phases 3 and 4, which lend depth to the game.

Phase 2 seems a bit easier than phase 1, because the player can clean up the mess pretty quickly. Phase 4 is quite difficult to score a single point; a more advanced probability distribution of letter spawning, weighted against the current goal word, might make the phase a little more possible. And of course, the graphics leave a lot to be desired (I considered making the player some kind of spoon, but it didn't mesh with the top-down view).