g4mr 2018-04-24 02:16
Actually a really good idea, minus a few bugs I think you could turn this into an actual game. I think a fueling system done by a mini game like bejeweled is pretty clever.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD41 → threeSpace
By hs-dave
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 813 | 3.22 | 51 | |
| Fun | 881 | 2.95 | 49 | |
| Innovation | 643 | 3.28 | 49 | |
| Theme | 626 | 3.56 | 49 | |
| Graphics | 806 | 3.09 | 49 | |
| Humor | 944 | 2.12 | 42 | |
| Mood | 472 | 3.41 | 48 |
Actually a really good idea, minus a few bugs I think you could turn this into an actual game. I think a fueling system done by a mini game like bejeweled is pretty clever.
This is a really cool fusion of two totally different genres, and could definitely work as fully fledged game!
Test it and was pretty good ! Maybe that some informations at the begin of the game could be great. And obviously the Theme of the LD is really respected here ! Nice job.
Man, reading about all you had planned really makes me want more of this. Right now it's a bit empty, but I could really see this becoming something real cool.
Nice, you should definitely add more features to it! I enjoyed the sci fi feel!
I definitely intend to work on this further and implement the missing features :) Both the space simulation and the match3 could use some love to make more engaging!
What a wonderful game idea! I've not really played space exploration games since captain blood on the Amstrad! However, I found this actually quite relaxing and enjoyable, and despite not being typically married together, the the genres ended up working well together! Would be interested in seeing how it feels with all the features implemented that you had dreamed up! Good work bud!
This is really neat! With a little more fleshing out you could see this being a full game. Kind of sparse at the moment but the premise is interesting.
This was a relaxing treat. With enough content I could probably *ahem* space out and play it for hours. I did find a weird issue, though. Statistical anomaly, or a bug? bugforld.gif
Neat game, match 3 always works and I think the sound effect from matching is really satisfying. Good job! :dog:
thanks all for the continued kind comments!
@djfariel it's definitely a bug - the game tries to prevent too many insta combos by checking tiles around a new tile - this means depending what is surrounding an area some times it reaches a situation where there is only one "good" tile spawn one after the other, at least in the order it's checking. Will definitely get that fixed :) Thanks for the clear report!
I dont have anything really to say other than to echo the comments that this could be something really fun!! Check out our first entry https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/infinite-typer
@HS_Dave : I ran into the same tile-respawning bug three separate times, twice with fuel and shield tiles and once with capacitor and shield tiles.
I like the space graphics, as well as the background sound -- very neat.
I encountered an issue with the capacitor: I couldn't seem to match tiles fast enough to charge it up, even when not flying.
I also don't know if this is intentional or a bug -- but usually tile matching games don't let you keep switched tiles if no matches were formed.
The mood, sound effects, and space visuals were all done so well here. The whoosh sound felt good whenever I made a match. Most of my criticisms are from the match three game play itself.
First of all, while the sounds were nice, I felt the animations were too fast. If the blocks dropped rather then appeared, it would give more of a weight to your moves (Not the easiest to program, did a matching block puzzle game for my last jam as well. I had the tiles on the grid not have a visual element and had the visuals lerp towards where they are supposed to be every frame.)
Also, for match threes like this I always feel that it is most satisfying to set up big combos and then trigger them. Often times I would set off a big chain on accident which kind of stopped me from wanting to set them up if they would just happen without my input. Also, those combos can feel great with the slower animations.
I like the idea of combining the two genres. I think I woudl have liked to be able to see both the puzzle and the space scene at the same time instead of having to explicitly switch screens between the two. I liked the generally relaxing mood but found the audio clip of combining the nodes to have a sharper sound that didnt' match the relaxing mood of the music and vibe of exploring space. Great start to a game!
I like the combination of the 2 genre good job! Perfect in this theme
Thanks for the feedback all!
@TheMonsterFromTheDeep the restoration points you get definitely need re-scaling for sure, they are very combo reliant in this build. For all stat types (fuel/cap/etc) you restore icons_broken * combo points back - so do one break and it hardly charges but get a large combo and even the cap (which currently has a max value of 800 versus every other stat at 100!) can nearly fully fill in one go. I will be smoothing out these values :)
I was wanting to play with the "no match" tile moving mechanic a bit but fully ran out of time. I'm uncertain if I wanted to prevent moving tiles completely because that means you can get an impossible grid and I'm not sure I want everyone's game to come to an end due to bad spawn luck. I have considered it costing cap/fuel/points to make a move that doesn't match or perhaps a 25% chance of a tile moved without a match turning into a broken module tile that inhibits some aspect of your ship until you've fixed it. It is likely I will have selectable difficulty levels that handle this in different ways with perhaps the hardest indeed not allowing the move at all!
@kleinzach the match3 aspect needs a lot of love - I definitely spent too much time creating a method to generate 7 classes of star versus actually sorting it out ;) but over all I just didnt have time this jam anyway :( There is truely no animation at all on the match3 grid, its just an array and things swap around instantly with a small delay after each iteration just to make it a little more sane. There is also no visual indicator of combos although the game is tracking and rewarding them. I'd like a visual particle to zoom from broken tiles to the relevant stat bar as well as having full moving animations for the whole grid - this is something I can promise will be implemented! :)
Nice entry. I liked the music, that makes an athmosphere to the game. But I think the travel and the charging is too long.
Cool entry, keep coding :)
Good atmosphere, and getting that sort of 3d first-person space travel working must be crazy hard. Building up resources through puzzles and then spending them on gameplay is a good way to fit the theme. Music made this really relaxing.
My main criticisms would be that doing well in the puzzle relies mainly on getting lucky chain-combos, and that there should be a more tangible reward for doing combos with 4+ pieces. Maybe a bit more interplay between the puzzle and the main game would be nice, like having what star you're on affect what tiles you get or something.
Edit: also good name. I clicked because of the 3-space math reference.
The atmosphere and idea is neat, yet it takes requires some amount of luck and travelling takes somewhat quite long time. This way it gets repetitive quite fast.
By making travelling a bit faster, it would actually get quite more lively.
Of course as others pointed out a bit more animations could make it nicer, but there simply isn't enough time for everything in game jam.
Keep up the good work!
I really like the aesthetic of the game. No tweening in the match 3 side was a little jarring, and I felt like it took way too long to get anywhere. Wish you could do something on uninhabited planets, or that they'd influence the match 3 side somehow
I could play this game for hours, peaceful ambience and vicous gameplay. I had some issues where some circles disappeared, but when i completed its line they where regenerated. Really good job with this game!!!
the game progression is very very slow. Maybe this is on purpose since this is travelling in space, but considering there is no much going on once you reach a planet, except discovering it, i think you should either cut the time, or make some more rewarding things once you reach a planet
Really love how chill this game is, and the warping graphics are very nice. but would like to feel more rewarded for doing things in the game.
There's actually quite a lot of potential for this concept, I like the atmosphere! Currently it's lacking the interplay between space travel and the match-3 - department, which it sorely needs more of.
Time was short on your part and you did good with what you had. I can see you have a lot of stuff already planned for the future too, so I wait to see what you come up with. Well done!
I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.
I hope you continue with the project.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape
I loved everything about the game except how slow it was to fuel up. I didn't get very far in the game because it started feeling monotonous before I had even fully charged up, so I'm not sure exactly how the game progression works but I would expect maybe shorter charge times for the first few destinations. Other than that, great game!
This game is amazing! o.0 Like... Honestly it had me playing was later than i had anticipated. Full score on mood and music cause it just draws you straight into a super chill flow, really atmospheric and ambient. What you guys did with the gameplay is also really refreshing, at first i was blindly going for combinations whilst trying to figure everything out and then it totally hit me that combinations were meant to recharge all your systems, great stuff! (Also, randomly getting huge chains by chance when new tiles drop is super satisfying, lol) <3
Again thank you all! Regarding slow (esp for @Mohamed_DKD ) - I've been playing it a bit and actually this is a flat out BUG. When you jump into a system (including when you first run the game) and it generates it things get placed at a random radius around the sun - during part of the algo there is an old, hard coded number that never got replaced with the var that was later made and tweaked and its the max distance from sun - it has an extra digit in it! So, by random chance, you could end up with objects significantly far away! This is fixed in my local build.
My local build now also has vast improvements to the match3 game with several bugs fixed and new animations for swapping tiles and animated falling of tiles when other tiles break beneath them etc. I do not want any of this to unfairly mar my jam score so I will share a newer build at the end of the voting process :)
I'm not a fan of match three but I actually had fun playing this, the monotony of match 3 had a purpose, I would like to see the more finished version! Great work!
Chill space exploration at its best! The music, hud, planets, debris effect while moving, all excellent work! There are a few typos here and there, not a big deal.
I would have liked to see actual mysteries hidden on the planets and enemies lurking about ready to strike. Not something you had time for of course.
Then there is the match-3 portion of the project. What a letdown! A barebones, humdrum, clickety-click fest. There is no tension to it, no challenge, no need to think, just click fast. Even pattern recognition is out the window as it is possible to swap tiles even when there is no match. The visuals are worse too...
This mix is certainly close to incompatible as these modes add nothing to each other. High points for that, otherwise the match-3 side drags everything down.