Introduction

One night, I was procrastinating and playing this cool flash game called Squares2. For no discernable reason, I got inspired to clone it. So, I downloaded PyGame, learned how to use it, and in a couple of hours had a working clone which I called Squares-Too!

Download

Click below to download the game.

• download SquaresToo for Windows (2014k)

Installing

Unzip it somewhere and run squares.exe!

Game features to add

Helpful Powerups

• Pacman power: red squares run away from you, but you can also eat them
• Helpful Resize: Blacks become bigger, reds become smaller
• Red-Thwapper: Can bounce red blocks around
• Electrified Bolo: A metal ball on an electrified wire that can eat blacks and kill reds (makes them respawn)
• Reverse Time: When you hit a red square, magic happens and you reverse the flow of time for 1.5 seconds (cursor goes back to where it was)
• Magnetic Path: Any black squares that touch your magnetic path get sucked into you
• Acid Path: Any red squares that touch your path melt

Irritating Powerups

• Confusion: Swap the meaning of red and black (as well as the colours of all of the reds/blacks on the screen)
• Colourblind: All squares lose their colour and become outlines (can't tell which are good or bad)
• Evil Resize: Reds become bigger, blacks become smaller
• Weighed down: Cursor becomes a rock, and mouse has a tether that pulls it

Variations on the basic gameplay

• Katamari style: squares that you capture attach themselves to you
• Time attack mode: you have x seconds to get y blocks
• Degrading cursor: cursor starts off big and gets a little bit shaved off of it every time it hits a red block (having a smaller cursor should be a detriment... could become harder to control or slower)

Misc. stuff

• Drop-shadows for squares, based off some fixed light position
• Trippy tracers off all moving things
• Different colour schemes (flourescent day-glo black-light styles)

Bugs to fix

• Use floating point for square positions so that huge-FPS doesn't fuck up the integer math

• Have the game speed up over time (or score)

• Limit framerate, add VSync

• Make cursor trail timer-based

Engine features to add

• Event-based animation system
• Menu system (options, high scores)
• Objects define how they react to other objects (i.e. when Cursor hits Square, things happen)
• Compose scene using alpha-blended layers
• Effects-design tool for playing with 3D code (that can be implanted into the game code)