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'Sun Stones' is Coming to an App Store Near You!


We've been live just over a week, and it's high time we pulled back the curtain a bit on our first project: "Sun Stones" - coming to iOS and Android devices in January.  We've been working on the game more than four months now, but this is the first time we've talked about it publicly.

What is it?

At the core, Sun Stones is a puzzle game.  Players manipulate and arrange a set of stones in as few steps as possible.  When all of the stones are in the proper location, they transform into a magical glyph - each glyph is part of a group which, when viewed together, tell a little story.

Players have three types of stones at their disposal: common black stones, white stones, and magical "Sun Stones."  White and black stones may be moved around the board freely, using the touch screen.  Sun Stones are (slightly) more complex - the player is given a "well" of (usually) three to five Sun Stones.  If discarded or destroyed, these stones return to the well.  So players actually have an infinite number of Sun Stones, but may only have a few on the board at a time.

Transformations

The magic of the game is the way our three stone types relate to one another.  If you create a line of Sun Stones, they transform into common Black Stones.  If you put Sun Stones on either side of a line of Black Stones, the stones in that line turn white.  A few other recipes are discovered over the course of the full game.

This type of transformation really expands the potential for interesting solutions.  Most puzzle games provide you with limited material, and have only one solution.  Sun Stones, on the other hand, is a game where you can literally remove every starting piece, and then build the entire puzzle up from scratch using only 3 Sun Stones.  (In fact, we've been considering making that an alternate game mode...)  Of course, finding an efficient solution to each puzzle is another matter entirely!

Hopi Theme

In parallel with our mechanics, we felt it was important to really give a sense of thematic space to the project. Our original inspiration was a traditional Native American game called "pebble patterns" - which was essentially a memory game.  As it changed into a game about creating glyphs, I thought of the book Arrow to the Sun - which I quite enjoyed as a child.  We looked into applying Hopi / Pueblo People aesthetics to the game, and it seemed like a very good fit.  Our color scheme, soundscape, and artistic choices for the game have all been influenced by this Hopi aesthetic.  Along the way we've taken pains to educate ourselves, which has been a rewarding process on its own merits.

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