Pushbox 3D

Pushbox 3D is a game aiming to help young children (7-12) to establish a strong interest in physics and mathematical geometry.

Comment

Inspiration

It is widely observed that children today have an extremely poor interest in physics and complex mathematical problems. I, as a gamer, decided to develop a game that: balances out the fun of gaming and the early concepts of physics and geometry. I gained inspiration from the famous game Tetris, Portal series and most importantly, Sokoban. As a result, I decided to make a gravity-controlled Sokoban game that includes special tiles to stimulate children's geometric intuition in a creative way.

What it does

The game includes 3 well-designed starter levels and a custom level builder. In the 3 pre-made levels, the player can freely explore the 3D space, step on teleportation tiles, and solve the problem either on their own or with the help of hints.

The Rules

The rules are simple. Push a box, Make a way to the goal, you win. WASD for 4-directional moving, Hold left button & swipe gives you a clockwise/counterclockwise rotate of the scene. Hint button gives a thorough hint of the pathway using highlights. However, some special rules are made for the 3D world:

  1. The player and the box are both allowed to fall off the tiles. However, it will eventually fall back to the last tile it was standing on.
  2. For teleportation tiles specifically, one must move the box to the tile in order to activate the teleportation. The player is NOT allowed to teleport!

How we built it

Game idea and levels are created fully by me. Some assistance in C# coding from AI is included.

Challenges we ran into

It is hard to find the algorithm for the hints. Some research is done, and found some past examples of hints used by other open-source games.

It is also hard to design levels, since the combination of physics rules in the game and use of special tiles must be carefully planned so no one outweighs the other in importance.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a prototype that works relatively fine, and created mind-blowing levels that requires careful considerations.

What we learned

I learnt how hard it is for individual developers to create a game like this, and I learnt that lots of games have hidden educational purposes (Minecraft, Sudoku, Kerbal Space Program, etc.)

What's next for Pushbox 3D

I plan to add more functional tiles (such as piston tiles or elevator tiles) and special mechanisms to the game (such as gravitational rotation or 0 gravity). I would also complete the miscellaneous sections (such as the music and the art style).

Share this project:

Updates

Submission history