Tile-based game

From Freepedia

A tile-based game is a game that uses tiles as one of the fundamental elements of play. It has different meanings depending on how it is used. There are many traditional games which use tiles, but when referring to video games, normally a tile-based game means a game which uses tiles as part of its graphic output.

Contents 1 Traditional games 1.1 Traditional Tile-based physical games 1.2 Tile based games that use non-rectangular tiles 1.3 Tile-based board games 2 Video games 2.1 Tile-based video games include

Traditional games

Traditional tile-based games use small tiles as playing pieces for gambling or entertainment game. Some Board games use tiles to create their board, giving multiple possibilities for board layout.

Each tile has a back (undifferentiated) side and a face side. Tiles are usually rectangular, twice as long as they are wide and at least twice as wide as they are thick, though games exist with square tiles, triangular tiles and even hexagonal tiles.

Traditional Tile-based physical games

• Chinese dominoes games
• Dominoes
• Mahjong (may be played with special playing cards instead)
• Rummikub
• Scrabble

Tile based games that use non-rectangular tiles

• Blokus
• Exago
• Triominos
• Tantrix

Tile-based board games

• Alhambra
• Betrayal at House on the Hill
• Carcassonne
• Diceland
• Fjords
• Zombies!!!

Video games

A tile-based video game is a specific type of video or computer game where the playing area consists of small rectangular or, more often, square graphic images, referred to as 'tiles.' Tiles may be laid out adjacent to one another and usually some are allowed to overlap, for example the tile representing the player's character. These types of games usually try to simulate a top-down view on the playing area and are almost always two dimensional.

The first commercial game released that used tile-based graphics was Ultima I. By far, almost all of the early tile-based games used a top-down perspective. Later, they evolved to a simulated 45-degree angle, where you could see both the top and one side of objects, to give more sense of depth. This style dominated NES and SNES role-playing games. As computers advanced, pseudo-isometric tile-based games became popular, such as Ultima Online (which mixed elements of 3D (the ground, which is a tile-based height map) and 2D (objects) tiles). Some entirely 3D games have been seen that could be called tile-based; however, these are rare.

Some games, like side-scrollers are, technically, also tile based (that is, the playing area is made up of graphic tiles), but are normally not referred to as such.

Tile-based video games include

• Centipede
• Civilization series
• Dig Dug
• Heroes of Might and Magic series
• Pac-Man
• Rogue
• SimCity
• Ultima series

Tile-based games are not a genre unto themselves, but rather refer to the technology a game uses for its visual representation. For example, Ultima III is a role-playing game, but visually it is tile-based.

Early tile-based games shipped with pre-constructed levels or generated levels at game startup (for example, with SimCity and Civilization) or on the fly (as with Roguelike games). Recently, however, most games come with an editor that allow players to construct their own levels. While completed levels for a game may hide all traces of tile-based technology, use of an editor for such a game strips away all polish and reveals a game's tile-based framework.