josep93 2023-10-02 21:40
What the hell? I never imagined that it could be innovate the classic game of Tetris in this way. Also, I loved the design and the soundtrack.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Pixel Piles
By okshirl, gabriel-chan, iiandii and Cat Lab
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 154 | 4.01 | 140 | |
| Fun | 244 | 3.83 | 140 | |
| Innovation | 80 | 4.12 | 140 | |
| Theme | 82 | 4.38 | 140 | |
| Graphics | 182 | 4.23 | 140 | |
| Audio | 93 | 4.05 | 139 | |
| Humor | 261 | 3.54 | 132 | |
| Mood | 273 | 3.86 | 135 |
What the hell? I never imagined that it could be innovate the classic game of Tetris in this way. Also, I loved the design and the soundtrack.
Very fun. How have I not seen that before :D?
Really fun and super cool way to make a game like Tetris unique and it followed the theme perfectly!
The cat is so cute !! But the game is quite difficult for meow ^^ Anyway that's a good game with good feeling =)
Cool idea! It was fun playing. Music and graphics also fit well together. Jumping felt good and the animations were cute. Awesome game!
@josep93 @morris @triangle-point @helen Thank you so much for the comment! Thanks for playing :D
@mushboom it's definitely a harder game that takes a while to get good at, even some of our devs are struggling. thanks for trying it!
I liked a lot. The way you have to think of the blocks, while you dodge them, it's a simple but, at the same time, complex concept. Good Job!
I suck at Tetris but man is this game incredibly fun AND cute. Sorry poor kitty got squished a lot cuz I'm bad :((
Wowwww this is so cool!! I've played a ton of tetris but this was so unique it took me a couple of tries to get the hang of. I got 877 on my second try. Super nice art and such a cool idea. You guys should be proud :)
That is one adorable kitty! I love the jump animation; reminds me a lot of the Super Mario World spin. Very cool mixture of a platformer and Tetris-like. You guys should be very proud of this one! :)
Genius idea and super well polished, as someone that loved tetris this was great. Superrr hard though but it was definitely a fair challenge, definitely my favourite submission so far. Well done :))
@branquelo @biospheremusic @abdul-zakkar @chompdev @osh-studio Thank you all for the kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed our game!
This is so cool! Really great game idea, really hard though! I kept bumping in the side when trying to place a block on the side. But that is a skill issue.
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Cool concept indeed. Couldn't get any higher than 366 score. But really enjoyed this neat take on the classic Tetris. And yes I accidentally trapped myself a couple of times by placing blocks right on top while trying to beat my high score =D
A very nice and polished game with interesting mechanics. Good stuff. Very nice work!
I do be loving some tetris variations~ Very good job on creating this one, very minimalistic and cute. Love that you need to use walls to rotate pieces, so that making sure to be able to reach both sides fast is important. Inclusion of swap mechanic is very welcomed too. On the presentation side - outstanding job!! From the small animations and dialogues to the audio, very enjoyable.
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Oh this one is right up my alley. I really love *the other block game* and this one just really only adds to it in every way!
The graphics, the sound and the way it is played just feel really polished. When I think about the other versions of *the other block game*, that exist today, this one is definitely a different kind of beast!
I will definitely come back to this one trying to find out what the best course of action is to not get stuck and still rank up points (the thing I love-hate the most is that getting *The Big One* is like a skill-check because you can't jump 4 high - really good design) :smile:
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It's a really charming entry. Though I have a couple of gripes I'd like to point out.
- I think walking into the walls to rotate the incoming shape is very difficult to utilize. Maybe it would have been better to use a keyboard button instead. - I would have like some sort of indicator that the next block will spawn in x amount of beats
Otherwise a solid entry. Well done.
So good, I like all in this game! It feels so good to play and spend your time by getting pleasure )
I'm terrible at this, but the level of polish is great and I love the jump animation. Good fun!
This is so cool, it was hard and weird first try but the second time I got the hang of it and got a good score! so fun and cute
Game is super cute! The game mechanic actually seems very interesting, and I would have liked to play more. But after a bit of figuring out the controls and how to play, the game still turned out to be extremely difficult. Specifically, rotating blocks is way too hard. That on top of trying to use the hold is way too much cognitive overload. I think if block rotation happened just with a button press it would become rather enjoyable. Or even getting rid of hold and replacing that button with rotation. So I think the gameplay is a bit flawed, but presentation is excellent, and of course from a technical point of view, everything works very well and smoothly.
Really cool how you brought a whole new side to a classic game! I love it! My high score is 103 :)
I dig the idea! I just feel the game is super hard because of the fact that you have to use the walls to turn the pieces and maybe because new spawning falling pieces are super fast. Beside of that, a really good one!
I though "oh no, another tetris game, how are they going to make this original", well I wasn't disapointed. This is so cool :D
I got a Tetris, babyyyyy! Highscore of 1224 (because I immediately dropped the ball after scoring the tetris)
This was a lot of fun to figure out! As someone who has played a *lot* of NES Tetris (Recently, even) I really enjoyed figuring out the best ways to line up for a tetris, even if it usually resulted in my falling down the well and dooming myself.
Wonderful work, and I recorded myself to provide more feedback:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_YPTkJnAfU
I'm not very good at the original "other block game", and I am even worse at this one, but I was impressed with the innovation. The character is cute. The music is lovely. My only real complaint is that bumping the sides to rotate is quite punishing. You don't have much time in between pieces to bump a side and scoot elsewhere to prepare the next piece, and often it's because you have to traverse uneven terrain. Perhaps that goes away with skill, though. Anyway, very nice remix of a classic!
Well, my goal was getting a single tetris and I finally did it after over an hour of trying.
Screenshot 2023-10-03 at 21.28.01.png
Got very very close so many times but got screwed by misrotated held long piece or failing to drop it on the correct column (as it was so damn tight to do without falling to the pit).
Here is just a few of those barely missed attempts...
Screenshot 2023-10-03 at 21.20.06.png
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Screenshot 2023-10-03 at 21.18.54.png
That has got to be one of the steepest learning curves on a game I've ever encountered. It's not just one level up from normal tetris as there are multiple new things you need to manage. And I'm even from an old-school tetris players where there was no hold. So even figuring out which of the two next pieces the held one was going to replace and how it was going to drop (as you couldn't move it anymore) was quite much.
The block rotating really was the trickiest bit in my opinion. It took just so much time to triple rotate a block. And quite often one of the sides was kinda blocked so you needed to rush to the other side and more often than not it wasn't enough time to rush there, do at worst case scenario three spins and then rush back to the correct spot.
I think allowing 4 height jumps would have alleviated quite a bit of frustrations that the game caused for me. Falling to a pit while trying to slot in a long piece for tetris or just slipping and falling there while trying to do spins just felt so damn bad. And on top of that, most single errors cause a huge chain reaction and are pretty much as good as a reset. One time I did manage to get off there with some janky jump right at the falling block on top of me but don't think there was an intended way. Even if it wasn't just a higher jump, there could perhaps be some trickier corner boost jump or something you could do so you just wouldn't be shit outta luck if slipped in.
And slipping is bound to happen. Those block corners were a bit too slippery to my liking. Having to do precise block at the same time didn't give you the luxury of keeping that close attention to the character either.
Not having access underneath slides and t-spins really hurts. Sometimes you can even get kinda screwed right at the start when you get two pieces with holes in the bottom row. As good as a restart again.
The game looked great. Cute looking character that kinda reminded me of slugcat. And that line break effect was spicy! 🌶️🔥🔥
Good job, very well made game! 👍 I hated playing it so much but that doesn't mean that it was bad at all. I guess gaming doesn't always have to be fun. 😅
Maybe I'm just bad at tetris...
**edit:** Oh yeah and the "next block" thing was just not right. You could already see that same block and were moving it so it should really have been the one after that.
nice perspective on this classic game. seems a bit on the harder side to me, but thats just alright. good execution of the game the menu and restart are a bit buggy and one tends to get stuck in restart.
Oh, the jump animation of the cat is very cute.
its cute , but realy hard !
I love this, it's so cute. really hard tho. Reminds me of pullfrog
I'm very bad in this kind of game but i definitively love it ! :D
Cool tetris rebrending. And of cource it's a cat I love it
Very original !
@mrperry Thanks for the feedback!！ It was definitely hard to balance between how much platforming or tetris there should be. The next block used to spawn right when the previous block lands (similar to tetris logic) and we delayed it by a second to help with the reaction, but it isn't the first time a player requests more info on when the block is dropping. We'll definitely put that in our list of things to consider!
@nyxkn As someone who struggled to pass the 400 mark I totally agree! It's definitely a challenging game, and I've put down "adjustable difficulties - hard/normal/easy" as a possible feature to consider in the future! Maybe we will be presenting the rotation in a different format. Thanks for playing!!
@100th-coin I'm impressed! you may be one of a few that actually achieved that and I'm jealous. the video feedback is great, it's always helpful to watch someone playtest in real time. I'd also like to thank you for writing the vet advice on discord back in January. That, and your innovation in the past entries inspired me a lot!
@antti-haavikko WOWWW thank you so much for such a detailed comment!! you may be the only one in this comment section so far who has gotten **the mystery achievement and the big one！congrats!** :D As for the hold block, it's definitely a last-minute feature we decided to add just because why not, but it comes with many design flaws. We do have plans to address that later on!
Rotating the blocks being tricky is a common feedback we've been getting so we're trying to figure out a better solution to encourage the players to move and platform while balancing the trickiness of fitting in a block. So far we are trying to emphasize the importance of prioritizing survival over high score.
Our team also had a debate over 3-block jump or 4-block jump, while 3-block jump gives the player decision a bit more depth, it definitely steepened the learning curve. For the slipping it was a conflict between having forgiving hitbox while also maintaining accuracy for position in a terrain with constant high/low. We will continue to adjust that.
And yes, I 1000% agree with you on the next block not actually being the next block, I will report to the devs about that!
It's definitely not the game I'm best at haha but I'm getting lots of joy watching everyone else struggle at it :smirk: But thank you so much! I've been a huge fan of your past entries, so it was really exciting to see your feedback.
This is a fun little version of tetirs but man I kept getting stuck on one side, it would be nice to have like a wall jump or something similar to get around more easily, or maybe a drop button so I dont have to stay underneath something else for so long Overall I really liked it, good job
This is a brilliant idea! As some people pointed out, touching the walls to rotate objects does feel awkward to use. Personally, I'd say tying it to a button press would work really well. Other than that, the game is great and really fun to play.
First, super innovative experience yet did not take much effort to understand at all thanks to the tutorial. Managing to get a Tetris line, on the other hand... I'm sure you already got feedback about how it is really hard for a jam game - I think it's about how manipulating blocks requires you to be on the sides, which conflicts with the nature of needing to be where you want the block to be. Yet I can't think of a way to change it without fundamentally changing the game. Being difficult is not the same as being bad; maybe it is the player who needs to keep up. The thing is, I can't complain about the graphics and audio, and the game feels fantastic to interact with, so I don't mind going back and playing for a bit to try to beat it! The game frustrates with its difficulty yet taunts the players to come back to conquer the mountain, and all the while making them feel good with solid UX and game feel, while they're working to get that tiny bit of progression in their own skills. And that, I think is a great achievement.
Ok I'm back after a bit more gaming and I have more detailed and constructive thoughts about how to improve the experience (For an extended version which I hope you will make of course. I maintain the jam version is an achievement). I will separate them into two categories of changes.
**Type 1:** Improving user experience (regardless of player level). I think these would be good to add, not necessarily in the formats I suggest but any improvements that address the mentioned issues.
- Make the side control buttons push the player off after the block is rotated once. So you can tap *Left* 3 times to hit the wall and rotate the block 3 times, without needing to tap *Right*. You may even make it so you can just hold *Left* and it will keep rotating on a short cooldown. This is the biggest frustration I had, having to retreat and push multiple times and having the (usually great) walking controller work against me while I fight against time. - Being clear about where the anchor point of each block is. Blocks are anywhere between 1 and 4 tiles wide, depending on rotation. When it's 2 or 4 I usually don't know where exactly to stand to get the block where I need without trying it out and seeing it first. I guess players can learn and internalise it after a while, but still... I think either you should make it directly in the middle (I'm not sure if this will work), or you should highlight the anchor column so I know where to stand. It will help with playing flow without segmenting your brain for this "aiming" task.
**Type 2:** Making it *easier* (which may be relegated to an Easy Mode). - Double / maybe even triple jumping: This removes cases where you're stuck in a deep hole. I guess this depends on whether you find the losing condition of getting blocked in is a fair punishment for a misstep. Getting out of a hole right before the next block closes like a lid could potentially be fun? But that brings me to the next point. - The game as it is right now, is already extremely punishing against any and all kinds of mistakes. If I am off by a tile or get stuck in a hole (even if I manage to get out), the block that's dropping down is just a giant reminder that I am doomed as I'm scrambling to deal with the next one. Maybe you can give players limited powers to recuperate after their mistakes. An awful example I can think of: 3 bombs that you can use to explode a 3x3 area of blocks around you.
There, I hope this is constructive and again congrats on a great game!
Edit: Oh and I love the cute main character, iconic.
@gastricsparrow Thank you for the valuable feedback! We have been thinking of adding in an "easy mode" as a post jam version and these are very good suggestions!
Making the side control buttons push the player a little bit is a fantastic idea!
We originally wanted the blocks to be anchored around the center like you mentioned, however most of the blocks are an even number so we quickly found it wouldn't work. I do like the idea of highlighting the anchor column, that's something we could definitely explore.
Again, thank you so much for the suggestions, we will definitely take them into account and we hope you enjoyed playing our game!
@whalejam @enreh Thanks so much for taking the time to play and leave feedback! We've been having some great discussions behind the scenes based on what players have mentioned here. Wall jump, hard drop, and fixed rotation buttons are definitely on the table as possible future improvements. We all appreciate the feedback and your interest, we hope you had fun!
Cool Tetris variant ! This is a good creative way to reinvent the game, you have a good idea ! The pixel art pretty! We have all the parameters needed and the controls are clear. The music fit perfectly ! Good job, this is very a good game !
lovely and interesting game!
Good twist on the beloved Tetris game. Game felt well polished in every aspect. Great job!
I love the music !
Way harder than regular tetris, but it's a really cool game.
Really nostalgic and very curie game. So cool animation? but have some balance problems but i loved to play
Creative game idea, though it's really hard
As a not-fan of Tetris, I don't think there's a lot I can add to the discussion, but I think this game is very expertly designed in some aspects and kinda finnicky in others. First let me just say I LOVE the art and animation. The character is soooooo cutee I love the twirly jumps it does and that cover art. The music has a really nice melody but I miss some percussion! The game's chaotic nature could have lended really well to a dance-inspired soundtrack. Nevertheless, about the actual game! I think its very creative how you actually have to play Tetris while platforming. I had seen the idea of Tetris + platforming done before - an old flash game called Tuper Tario Tros comes to mind - but never one so tightly integrated with the other. I like the simple controls and the shadow of where the block was landing is very handy. Physics felt a bit slippery at times, and that + the fact that hitting the walls makes the blocks turn can lead to frustrating situations, like rotating your long block right before you were about to make a Tetris. Some amount of fumbling is OK in games about multitasking, but the wall-hitting rotation + the slippery physics made me feel like not all of the times I failed were my fault. x) Though I'm already bad at Tetris so it's not like I was expecting to do well either lol
Sorry for the messiness on the drawing I was afraid doing lineart would ruin it:
Captura de tela 2023-10-04 125703.png
This was such an innovative game! I have no real problems with it, just cause I'm generally awful at tetris lol. Overall, it was super fun and such a genius twist to Tetris! The art is amazing, especially the animation for the little cat! The music was especially very nostalgic. Amazing job!
@fupi thank you so much for the detailed comment! We definitely have some tweaking to do with the layers of mechanics in the game, I've personally felt very defeated when I accidentally rotated the I blocks so I feel that. and omg thanks for the drawing!!!
Game is so cool ! Good version of Tetris game :) Very good polish ! An very good concept,
The music is cool
cute character and good art i suck at tetris in general so i sucked at this game but it is very polished and easy to understand.
Yes tetris-type. Yes gorgeous cover art. Yes fun music. Yes!
Snímek obrazovky 2023-10-05 214921.png i suck in this game. but I have a score again which I think is a "nice" excellent idea
poor kitty, but she's playing great music there again
Wow this game is challenging! With rotation only being possible at the edges and there not being a lot of time before a block is near the bottom creates some very frantic gameplay! One small mistake and you're stuck in a hole or walled yourself in lol. Very interesting twist on tetris :D
It's really innovative that combines traditional Tetris with new things! It's challenging yet so fun.
Very fun and challenging game! Wish I could see more "next" blocks so I can plan my movement ahead.
Very clever mash-up of platformers and Tetris. Way too hard for me to succeed, but that's on me, not the game. Cute graphics and music add to the fun. Fits the theme well. Nice work!
A really fun reimagination of a classic. The gameplay is simple, but it makes you to keep playing. The mc is so cute I get mesmerized moving them. Gob job!
Really funny and cute! So hard by the auto-rotated pieces, but I love the concept!
Well done! Take a candy! :candy:
I love the spin when the cat jumps! So cute! I was so bad at this game but I tried a lot. I managed to get marginally better. Which is still really bad. The one thing I really wish was that there was a more obvious countdown for when the block is going to start falling. I felt like I'd try to line it up and be surprised when it started falling before I was ready. Anyway I had a lot of fun playing. It looks lovely, it's polished, the cat is so freakin cute, and definitely easy to learn and hard to master.
great game idea and cute character,I love this game idea so much
Very innovative and polished game! I had a lot of fun playing it!
This fun game is sooo challenging! The hardest parts to me are (seems same with some other players): 1. The rotation for some blocks required too many steps (4 types of shape in total), I was so slow to complete the rotations 2. Again, it's the rotation, I have to hit the wall to rotate, which constrained my movement a lot 3. It's hard for me to take care of both preparing to escape the incoming block and arranging a good position for it. It's so easy for me to get distracted by one of them😂
But this is very innovative and original game. I definitely love this game! I really love the concept. Art is cute and soothing. Music sounds cozy but it also provides some feeling of challenging. Well done on this entry!
Good game! I really liked your idea! I found it awkward to rotate the figures. Just in case, let me remind you that the owners of the rights to Tetris really don’t like it when their copies are made. They recently sued developers who wanted to make Tetris multiplayer. But I really liked the idea! Great graphics and music!
I build a shelter with bricks and hide inside, so no bricks can hurt me. But the cost is that the score is very low. xD
Brilliant creativity, and the animation is top-notch. I love the cat. Well done!
Cool idea, I suck at it tho. Was not able to clear a row. The rotating blocks definitely threw me for a loop. Still super polished game and loved the slugcat.
Brilliant idea. Never thought there was more room to innovate on tetris.
This was really cute. I loved the way this little cat character jumps. Really innovative! It took a while for me to find out the side bumpers changed the rotation of the blocks. The art is so nice and the audio is good. Overall an extremely strong entry. Well done!
interesting concept. I was starting to understand about canceling a part and then exchanging that part, I don't know if I could explain it, but I didn't completely understand how it works. Initially it's interesting, but in the long run it gets boring quickly. Or it could be that I couldn't get it to work as it should.
really hard Screenshot from 2023-10-08 10-07-53.png
Wow this is so much harder than that other block game! Awesome game though, and fun too, even though I was terrible at it :D
The controls are ingenious. When I saw some screenshots I imagined you would control the character with for example WASD and the block with arrow keys. This is so much better, I specially love how you need to hit the walls to rotate the block, that is such elegant design.
The graphics are very nicely polished, the character and it's animations are super cute. Nice sounds and music; basically the entire game is cohesive and well executed.
I really like score attack games that are very challenging, because then you can start going for your record quite fast, instead of playing through 90% of super easy to get to the challanging part :smile:
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Maybe not the best score, but I am pleased I managed to get above 500! Great entry :trophy:
Wow this is such a fun twist on tetris, I love the animations of Pixie they are really cute, also the gameplay is quite challenging great work!
Neat little game ! Awesome art !
A very fun game, it breaks all my tetris skills
Great game! Maybe there should be another way than hitting the sides for rotating the pieces, or maybe I'm just bad, but other than that it's awesome!
Haha, tetris, that's gonna be ez... *gets locked in self-made prison*
Nice entry!!!
Some random thoughts (maybe I'm repeating someone above):
* I didn't immediately guess why this game feels so pressing in comparison to basic tetris. Not to mention the obvious (the indirect control), imho, the difference comes from the case that falling block gets totally out of players control after starts falling. In basic tetris the block is controllable till reaches the endpoint. This distinction not only takes things out of player's control but also narrowes timing room to think.
* As said above wall-rotating mechanic is a bit frustrating when you have to go out of the wall to hit it again. I guess just rotating the block on each user button press after the wall is in contact should be enough to make the controlls more handy (for ex. `touch the right wall to first rotate` -> `double press D to rotate block 2 more times`).
But overall that's already a great experience!
I love this twist of tetris game, very original and addictive, great entry!
This is a brilliant game, one of the best I've played in Ludum Dare (not just LD54!) It feels extremely finished and works well. I only wish I was good at it :)
This is easily one of the cleanest looking game jam games I have ever seen. The first thing that caught my eye was the presentation of the credits, menu options, and tutorials on the sides. Usually I would recommend people to focus on gameplay first, but I definitely appreciate all of the polish that goes into the presentation!
The game idea is very unique and engaging. The only thing issue I had was I felt that the current piece being locked after it starts to drop felt rather restrictive. It may just be a skill issue lol, not a game issue.
A novel take on Tetris. Hopefully, someone from The Tetris Company notices your talents.
@moonlightbomber or hopefully not, given their reputation :)
(if you want to continue with this game, it's definitely worth checking what exactly they consider infringing on their tetris IP and avoiding those bits)
This game really effectively redoes Tetris in a way that makes it difficult!
Also the art is outstanding! It feels so polished for a jam game, nice work! SFX are great, music feels a bit more like Mario music than Tetris music, but it's not breaking anything so no harm done.
Had some issues with timing, turning, and aiming just because of the core premise. It should probably be easier to turn. Maybe rotate on any wall?
Anyway, nice work!
At first I didn't like the mechanics at all ("I need to bump on a wall far way to rotate? it rotates even when I bump by accident? I can't even move the piece while it's dropping!? how would I even complete a line here!?!?"). But, as I was playing it... the game grew on me a lot :D
The only thing I still don't like, and I kept making mistakes because of it, is that the "next piece" shows the same piece that's already visible above - at first sight it seems to imply that would be the next piece *after* that one.
tetris.png
Taking such most known game, and giving it adding a little plus to the gameplay was incredibly intelligent seriously, good game for this onw. The feedbacks are great, the DA is just on it, this little cat is funny and its controls are basic yet complicated. Loved it. Didn’t know I could be that bad to a tetris game until now. Great game !
An interesting variation of the classic tetris game.
The concept is nice, but it's too hard to consistently clear lines with these mechanics. You can't rotate swapped pieces, and jump height is too low which leads to character being stuck in a hole (though I guess it is limited space) - only managed to get a score of 600.
I think this game has a lot of potential, well done!
This was a really neat take on Tetris! The graphics were simple but clean, and I especially liked the twirling animation when jumping. The platforming also felt really smooth, making it easy to focus on block placement. I think the one issue is that after getting used to the platforming it basically just becomes Tetris with slightly harder controls, so it would be nice if the platforming was more central to the gameplay - maybe there could be power-ups to collect to slow down/destroy blocks? Overall this was a creative idea that was really well executed. Great work!
Nice little game. Would be better if you could rotate the incomming piece yourself, with Q and E for example. The thing about going into the walls to rotate doesn't seem to work very well: I trigger it when I dont want to and when I do want it, I'm sometimes too far to make it on time and back to the right position. Especially when you've filled half the screen already so things fall faster.
Really polished design and super cute art!
I never thought I wouldn't want the Tetris blocks to fall. This game has really nice art and fun gameplay.