Prototype Game Rules

This is my understanding of the rules after meeting tonight and some rounds of user testing.

Mechanic
1.) Normal Play
Hidden cards are placed in a grid. The player tries to match 2 or more cards. The turn is over as soon as the player turns over a card that is not the same as the first card. If a successful match of two or more cards is made, those cards are removed from the grid. Any cards above the matched cards will fall down one space to fill in the gap.

2.) Bonus Play
One type of card is of the bonus type. Matching a pair of bonus cards will reveal all the cards to the player for a limited time (5-6 seconds).

• bonus option a - the player may try to select as many cards that match as possible (more than one type is allowed)
• bonus option b - the player may not select any cards when all the cards are revealed (the bonus just provides a memory hint)

We should decide which option is preferred. Option b seemed to be the preference of our two playtesters tonight.

3.) Timer
One new "row" of cards will fall from the top of the grid at a specific interval. If a row consists of 4 cards, that means 4 cards will fall from the top.


Scoring
A match could be awarded with 10 points. Matches greater than 2 could be scored in the following way:

• 3 cards = 10 + 20 = 30 points
• 4 cards = 10 + 40 = 50 points
• 5 cards = 10 + 80 = 90 points
• 6 cards = 10 + 160 = 170 points
• just double and add to 10 for every additional card

Matching two bonus cards = 50 points.

Levels
A level is completed based on reaching a target score. The target scores for each level have yet to be determined. Difficulty may be increased in the following way:

• the number of different types that may be matched
• the interval at which new rows are added (maybe this could even decrease over the course of given level like Tetris)