IT NeŠkola

Learning goal

Screening, not teaching. As the programme's entrance test, the map looks for logical thinking, creative thinking and, in part, responsibility. Each minigame states its goal and leaves the method to the candidate, so what the test observes is how someone reasons their way to a rule and what they do when a first attempt fails.

My role

• Unlike the other lessons this is a large project with several people working on it. I helped out on it with the logic of the minigames in the part before the player gets inside the church.
• Wrote the logic for minigames outside the church: the number sequence, the clue-led statue search and the button-driven horse grid.
• Inside the church the chain carries on with several more minigames, in which the player finds the notes of a melody to play on the piano. From the church door onwards the logic is not mine. After the melody the player reaches a third part, underground, working to unlock a door to a treasure; that logic is not mine either.

Systems I designed

• Three parts in sequence. First the minigames outside and the church door. Then the interior, with several minigames of its own, in which the player finds the notes of a melody to play on the piano. Then a third part underground, where the player works to unlock a door to a treasure. My part is the first one, before the church opens.
• One shape, different kinds of reasoning. Every minigame states a goal and leaves the method open, but each asks for something different: number sense in the sequence, reading and elimination in the statue search, spatial planning on the horse grid.
• The whole test sits inside a recreation of the pilgrimage church on Zelená hora, modelled outside and in: the tiled floor, the vaulted ceiling, the altar and the organ are all in place. A voxel knight on horseback appears in it as well.
• The horse puzzle is not played out in the world but on a board seen from above, with the buttons that drive it sitting at the ends of the rows and columns.

Core mechanics

• Number sequence. A run of numbers the player completes by typing in the value that belongs in it. Working out what generates the run is the puzzle; the input is a single number.
• Statue search. A key lies underneath one of the statues in the map, and a set of clues is the only thing that says which. The player reads the clues, narrows the statues down and looks under the one left standing.
• Horse grid. A 2D grid with a horse on it and a goal square to reach. Every row and every column carries buttons, and pressing one shoves the horse along that line one way or the other. Some squares are blocked, so the solution is an order of button presses, not a path walked.
• Key collection. A solved minigame hands over a key, and the church door is what the keys are for.