Cargo Caper - Concept

Game Working Title – Cargo Caper             

Cargo caper will be a puzzle game where the player controls a warehouse worker navigating through ever increasing challenging obstacles. First level will be introductory, to show the basic mechanics behind the game before moving on to the real challenges, which start from 2 onward. I am planning to have a minimum of 5 levels to start with.

The genre of the game is a puzzle-tile game in the spirit of Sokoban. However, instead of the game ending when boxes are in their designated spots, I instead intended for the puzzle to reveal the exit of the level. From here, the player should be able to continue to the following level.  

The game concept was developed when I remembered playing the Pokémon games (Red, Blue and Yellow) growing up. In those games there were game elements wherein the player had to push object into certain areas to complete puzzles (Victory Road), slip on ice to reach a destination (Sea Foam Islands) and teleport to correct rooms to unlock doors (Sylph Co). Using a subtractive design, I decided to make a game that focused on that puzzle design, rather than the collecting aspect of Pokémon, and through research found an entire sub-genre of puzzle game called Sokoban, which further influenced my decision to make a similar game. (please see below for images that are inspired by Sokoban and might make it into the final game)

The target audience for this game is anybody who like a challenging puzzle game. The game will require more in the way of mental gymnastics rather than quick response times and as such will suit those who like to plan out their moves in advance rather than rush headlong into the unknown. Age range should be anywhere from 12 to 80. The goal of the game will be to push the box objects into areas where they can then be bypassed effectively and will be scored based on how many steps the player took, with a low score being the desirable outcome.

References

Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Red,_Blue,_and_Yellow  

Sokoban – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokoban

Sprite sheets generated by Bing AI image generator - https://www.bing.com/images/create?FORM=GENILP