Gameplay Description
To train, and more importantly entertain, newcomers on Mars, our team has developed an agriculture simulation module. Our game focuses on harvesting as much corn as possible, while blasting away any alien pests that have developed a knack for human crops. The user has a water cannon to his/her disposal, as well as a mega-blaster that can blast away all the pests at once.
The rules of the arcade game are relatively simple. The user uses a steering wheel to select one of three individual lanes, indicated by the wheel position LEDs and lane LED strips. There are two buttons which represent “fire” or “water”. Pressing the water button causes the corn in that lane to grow one tick. After five ticks, that corn is considered “harvested” and recedes back to the starting position while increasing the score by one. At the same time, several aliens (represented by blue LEDs) will descend upon each lane at random intervals. The user can use the fire button to blast the alien back to its original position. If at any point the alien reaches its bottom position, it will consume the corn in that lane (returning it to its original position) and continue to decrease the score until the user blasts it back. Finally, the user is provided the “mega-blast” feature. The mega-blast has a fixed cooldown period and can only be used when active, as indicated by the yellow mega-blast status LEDs. The user can place his/her palm on the hand scanner and pull the lever simultaneously to activate mega-blast. Mega-blast will blast aliens in all three lanes back to their original positions. The game is over when the sixty second timer expires, and the game will temporarily display the user’s final score before returning to the welcome mode.