Buried Treasure!, the first weekly game by Sarah Scialli, with code help from Jim McCann, help getting started from Jon Miller and Xiaoyuan Jiang, and idea help from Michelle Burroughs. Starter code from nest and some code from nest demo. Minimal code help from cplusplus.com and the SDL tutorials. Help getting the code to run in the cluster from Karen Liu. Art by Sarah Scialli
Buried Treasure is a short fun game where the player races against the clock to try to dig up the most buried treasure possible!
There is a grid on the screen representing different areas of dirt that you can dig in. There is a number on each, which shows how many shovelfuls of dirt are on that square. If the treasure on the square has not been picked up yet, there is a $ on the square. The player uncovers the treasure on each square when the player has dug all of the dirt off of it. But, whenever the player digs a square, the dirt from the player's shovel gets thrown to a nearby square, making other treasures harder to get. Controls: Arrow keys move the shovel around the grid. Spacebar digs a shovelful of dirt.
I think the most novel aspect of my gameplay is that dirt that is dug up gets put on top of other treasures. Although the player could brute force the entire puzzle, there are more efficient ways to go about digging so that the player can organize the thrown dirt better. I think digging and throwing dirt is an interesting, original and easy to understand game mechanic.
The finished game accomplishes everything I wanted to accomplish. It's easy to get the hang of, and allows a lot of room for thinking of strategies. I would have loved to be able to increase the excitement of the game, so it doesn't feel like you are just hitting spacebar a number of times. Perhaps ways to increase the excitement would be to have special bonus objects, or have the point value change based on the starting amount of dirt. I also would have loved to do even more with the aesthetic look of the game, so the "Buried Treasure" concept is clearer.