Glimmer
For ages, the people of Elithium have lived in harmony with the guardian of their island, the Archdragon Melborn. But greed corrupted the dragon. He asked more and more glimmer from the people as tribute and when they couldn’t meet his demands anymore, he grew wrathful. Now he terrorizes the lands. Play as either Myrna or Khar, and save the Elithium from the greed for glimmer!
Glimmer is a casual match 3 game, developed by Ludomo Gamestudio and published on Big Fish Games and various other portals. It adds a twist to traditional match 3 gameplay; instead of moving gems directly, you move entire rows or columns.
When I started working on Glimmer, the setting, theme and basic premise were already in place. It was a fantasy world with a dragon and the gameplay was about collecting shiny stones, hence the name Glimmer. The basic story was that of the protagonist (either a lad or a maiden) saving his (or her) little sister from the dragon. With these foundations I started to weave.
I am an avid supporter of the “cliché + 1″ theory and I could use that for this story. The narrative has the archetypical hero’s journey, slaying the dragon, saving the damsel, as a foundation, then adds twists on top of that to make it fresh and novel. I won’t spoil too much, so just go play it! One of the things I implemented from the get-go was the variable damsel in distress. The character you wouldn’t choose would fill this role. So if you played as the maiden, you would actually save the man in malaise.
What I like about casual games like this is that the story always has such a prominent part in them, relatively. Many other types of smaller games are usually all about the gameplay, but for these games there’s also a focus on presentation and story. The gameplay is abstract enough to support all kinds of narrative. As a narrative designer, it is my challenge to bring gameplay and story closer together in these games!
I’m very curious to see how well Glimmer will perform. It has topped at number 13 in the Big Fish hitlist!
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