Da bomb

My most recent assignment is to create a number of puzzles based on the theme 'Da Bomb' .. Basically it must involve a timer, and a bomb of some kind to follow the theme correctly.

I started brainstorming a few ideas based around the idea of bomb defusal and working out a way to apply the concept to a paper based puzzle game. The first idea I came up with was a riddle / cryptic puzzle where a bomb with a series of wires of different length and colour attached; something similar to a hostage note. The cryptic puzzle would lead the player to cut the correct wire to defuse the bomb in X amount of time. I came up with riddles and drew out a basic concept of the game.

I then came up with a jigsaw puzzle style bomb game that at first had different parts of a bomb that the player would have to build in the time limit, but then I changed the concept completely and added a second layer of puzzles with a spot the difference challenge. The spot the difference would have a number of suspects and the player must find who the terrorist with the bomb is. So the puzzle would have two stages; jigsaw solving and spot the difference.

The idea I finally chose was a mathematic based puzzle, with a number of different coloured wires connected to a bomb. The bomb has a defusal device next to it with a three digit code. The wires have a starting value and the split off into various paths which pass through a number of boxes that contain mathematics such as '+2' or '-3'.

The player has to follow the wires and  work out the equation to see if it matches up with one of the digits from the device and then choose that as the wire to cut. A match from each colour wire must be found to solve the puzzle in the time limit.