In Zellige: Tilemaker of Granada, you’ll need to design complex, striking tiles to cover palace walls and impress the nobles. Luckily, some good tools will help make that a bit easier than it sounds.
Taking you back to 14th century Granada, a small city in Spain, the game casts you as a tile maker looking to satisfy noblemen and turn their palaces into something more colorful and impressive for the events they are looking to throw. Your first job is quite a big one, despite being new on the job. You are tasked with creating the tiles for an entrance hall in a massive palace for the wedding of your client’s daughter. It is a lot of pressure, as this is a massive event and you need to get things right. However, creating tiles is quite easy in Zellige.
Once you have picked a wall and walked over to it to select the tiles on it, you are able to open a menu that shows you how to customise your tiles. There are loads of different sizes and shapes to choose from, which allows you to create a variety of different tiles and patterns. Along with your size, you are able to select paint colors to put on your tile, but before that, you will find yourself creating a design.
The tile that you are looking at has tons of different points on it. You can use these points, through connecting them with a tool, to define different areas to be colored in later. This is how you create your base for your design. There is a way to delete your lines after they have been placed, giving you options to toy around with designs. You can also look at some of the design prompts on the side, which can help you get a better idea of what you can design. There isn’t a set time, so it’s really up to you to create your pattern until you are happy with it!
Then, it’s time to add color. Zellige has a bunch of different, really beautiful color palettes that can be swapped in and out. I really liked the tones and colors picked, to be honest! When you are done, you can see your designs appear on the walls around you.
In the demo I played at EGX, I felt that Zellige had a lot of potential. There is room to have feedback from the client, more clues as to what will please them, the ability to unlock more shapes and palettes – it could be quite fun to design rooms and add bright pops of color through the beautiful tiles. I look forward to seeing Zellige grow.
Zellige: Tilemaker of Granada is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can follow its creation on the game’s site.
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