Zellige: Prototype

Zellige: Prototype (originally released as Zellige: The Beauty of Tiles) is a relaxing virtual toy, an exploration of mosaics and tessellations in the style of traditional architecture from the Islamic world.

Players are invited to draw a design which they can then admire being automatically tessellated and painted, from a selection of three historically inspired color palettes.

I developed this for my Master's course, with original music by Aaron King, and a title screen designed by my sister Alice Torres Tailfer.

I developed Zellige: Prototype over the span of a month during a module entitled "Code Camp". This module, which came early on in the course, was intended as an introduction to programming.

Inspired by a holiday to the Alhambra in Spain and my years living in the Middle-East, my goal with this game was to provide players with the tools to achieve something similar to the intricate designs of traditional Islamic mosaics.

This project allowed me to dive into tessellations and graph theory, and to make rudimentary forays into Dijkstra's pathfinding algorithm, in order to identify the shapes that players draw.

I enjoyed this virtual toy so much that I decided to expand upon it for my degree's final year project, becoming Zellige: The Tilemaker of Granada.