An excellent idea. I thought about writing a Boulderdash type game and was wondering how I'd do it, but I hadn't really thought about doing it with a flexible sort of engine. Actually I hadn't thought much about it at all. But this sounds like a good idea for something to do after Project X is done.

In the meantime, try downloading Mesh: Hero's Hearts from Everett Kaser Software. This is my favorite computer game of all time (and my name is in the credits, actually, if you look at the 'about' section or 'help' section, or wherever it is). Besides being a great game, it has a VERY powerful programmable engine. Almost anything grid-based, non-real-time, and non-randomized can be done in the engine. You could even program games like checkers or chess (two player; getting the computer to play it would be insane) in which there is no "player" object. But the engine works best for games that do have player objects, like all the examples you name. You couldn't do Enchanted Forest, because of the necessary randomization, but you could simulate it by having as many pre-designed levels as you wanted and just allowing the player to play those predetermined levels.

Using the editor requires increasing amounts of skills, depending on how much you want to do. You can create new levels for existing games and with existing objects with only puzzle-designing skills. Creating new objects, however, requires artistic skills for the images and programming skills to describe the object's behavior. The MESH language is sort of a simplified C++ like language.

Check it out via the link below. The MESH: Hero games don't even begin to tap the *diversity* of power in the editor, but if you download "Hero's Hearts" and "Falling Hero," you'll at least see how differently the games work and begin to get a sense of how you could design different types of games.

Whatever I might do for RinkWorks would certainly be less ambitious than this, but I could probably do something that would still be more than worthwhile.