Applesort, the second weekly game by Sarah Scialli, with code help from Jim McCann. Starter code from the first weekly game, Buried Treasure!, which used started code from nest and some code from nest demo. Minimal code help from cplusplus.com and the SDL tutorials. Sound player code from http://www.libsdl.org/intro.en/usingsound.html. Art, music and Sound fx by Sarah Scialli
Try to sort your apples into green and red baskets, but make sure you throw away the rotten ones before time runs out. But hurry up, the longer you take, the more apples will rot.
There are green and red apples in the center of the "farm." The player must pick up the apples and move them to one of three places. If the apple is fresh and green, it goes in the green basket to the right. If the apple is fresh and red, it goes in the red basket to the left. If the apple is rotten, it goes in the trash at the top of the screen. But in this game, fresh and rotten apples don't look any different. The player has to determine whether the apple is fresh or rotten by listening to the sound the apple makes. If it makes a chime sound, it's still fresh, but if it makes a trumpet sound, it's rotten. Over time, some of the fresh apples will rot. Controls: Arrow keys move the player's basket around. Spacebar picks up and drops the apples.
I think the novelty in the game has to do with the apples' sounds. Although many sorting games exist, I think adding an extra sense in the sorting makes the game more challenging and forces the player to concentrate harder. I found myself absentmindedly forgetting to pay attention to the sound, and losing a lot of points. The mechanism of knowing the 'essence' of the apples reminds me slightly of a mini game in Majora's Mask, where you can listen to the thoughts of the dogs at the dog race, but in Applesort, you have to use those sounds on the fly and keep track of them.
I think the game accomplishes the feel that I was going for. I like that it makes the user feel like they have special knowledge about the freshness of the apples when they discover a rotten apple. I am pretty proud of how this game turned out, and think it's pretty addicting. If I were to expand this game, I would add in more complex features, like perhaps different stages of rotting or different kinds of fruit.