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Raft Blaster!
Raft Blaster!
By alchemic, gizmolo, chume33, wiredoverload, xxAtrain223, karkadan, Arnenia and Montjuleant
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 487 | 3.65 | 45 | |
| Fun | 609 | 3.39 | 45 | |
| Innovation | 322 | 3.65 | 45 | |
| Theme | 123 | 4.31 | 45 | |
| Graphics | 326 | 4.02 | 45 | |
| Audio | 355 | 3.54 | 43 | |
| Humor | 565 | 2.89 | 39 | |
| Mood | 740 | 3.32 | 41 | |
Comments
Nice entry!
raftblaster.png
This was a really interesting halfway point between Match-3 and a frantic putting-out-fires game. I really liked how you built the raft up as you went, and that it slowly filled up with junk faster than you can combine things leading to very hectic gameplay.
I do wish that time stopped or slowed while you were placing new raft segments. Near the end, with a large board, I would frequently get random builds at inopportune times, and be forced to navigate the UI for a couple seconds while the raft explodes around me.
Art is charming and the tiles are well-designed so that the different objects look very distinct. Music also fits the mood of the game very well. I'm always impressed with games that feel very cohesive made by large teams; you must have had some very effective communication/project management to keep eight people on the same page.
Great work for 72 hours!
This fit the theme very well. Space is very limited, even after some raft expansion. I love how the game looks and I've never played anything like it. Pretty chaotic but everything works and the game plays well. Great work, impressive!
The art is great, its interesting and very challenging. It'd be great if the items stopped while youre placing a new raft piece. Really well designed game :)
The concept is solid. Almost everything is there. Just a few things bug me. It does the theme well, with space limited and maneuverability limited. But I think the movement is a bit *too* limited. You can only push one block at a time, so if you end up with a 2x2 square then you can't push any of those anymore. Being able to better manipulate stuff on the raft would help. Or maybe making diagonals count to the match-3 would help a bit. I played on easy mode but it still felt impossible. Everything else besides some fixable gameplay issues is perfect.
stvup
2023-10-03 02:58
Really solid game! I really had a lot of fun micro managing the space. Fits perfect with the theme.
lexyvil
2023-10-03 03:56
Fun action puzzle game! I got a high score of 255 on normal. It does get challenging with all the bombs. Very good submission and fitting for the theme.
qaolin
2023-10-03 06:52
The game is great, although even on easy it was pretty hard for me :D Id like the platforms building ui to not keep me from moving my character but im sure it was due to controls and limited time, good job :D
This was a challenging game but I like how it fits in with the theme. It took me a few playthroughs to get the hang of it, but once I did I was enjoying the experience. Overall, great work!
Hey @themixedmaster unfortunately we forgot to write it in the instructions, but you can pick up an item and immediately place it back down to swap positions with it which can help quite a bit in that situation. Hope that helps!
@wiredoverload oh wow thanks for letting me know. I'll be sure to give it another try later!
henk-fan
2023-10-04 15:01
Fun puzzle game with a clear showcase of the theme limited space! I love the gameplay loop and the artstyle
jrf
2023-10-04 15:05
A nicely polished, fun and hectic game! I feel like the difficulty could use some more tuning. I was playing on easy and got quickly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff on the raft.
Really nice concept and take on for the theme, I wouldn't expect a candy crush style game being made for this theme but it worked flawlessly! I love the character design and the mechanics, it was a bit hard even on easy but that was just me being bad at the game, after the items started stockpiling on the raft it became really hard to do anything, but I really loved the mechanics of the game! Good job!
Awesome graphics and really chill music made this seem like it'd be a fun little puzzle game but it got really intense. Every time I retried I though I was going ok then after a few minutes I was completely overwhelmed - but it always felt like it was my fault for managing poorly.
Good work :)
evil23
2023-10-05 13:11
Great artwork! The controls felt a bit stiff and I accidentally switched positions with objects when I pressed space to quickly because of the fast gameplay. I agree with the others that the board placement should pause the time, so that you get a moment to relax and plan your next move. It gets overwhelming quickly! Apart from that, good game!
vary
2023-10-07 17:37
Very interesting game. The controls are challenging but once I got them it became really fun and satisfying navigating the raft and doing the match 3.
I played several rounds on easy/normal and the game always ended the same way - being stuck on a new raft piece that I had nowhere to slot. Unless I'm missing something, it feels really bad and punishing further into the game to match logs to create new pieces that just have nowhere to go. Sure I can maybe pick a config that will fit, but the select screen covers part of the raft sometimes so I can't be certain what space I have. On top of that, sometimes logs match themselves and I'm busy clicking elsewhere when that happens and a piece gets selected for me, so I have no control over it. And, I can't do a controlled burn with the bombs to make space because other pieces can auto match themselves and put it out. So then, I end up just waiting for my raft to fill up while I can't move. In this case, it feels like the player is being punished for doing too many matches, which feels really bad in a game of match 3. There's enough to juggle between navigating and fires and losing squares that I shouldn't ALSO have to worry about not having space for a raft piece. I think just letting the player lose the piece is fine, it lets the game continue and the player can still lose by being too slow and getting overwhelmed. Again though, if I was just missing something in the controls and there's a way to back out of the piece select, then pay this no mind!
Despite that one thing, this game is honestly so fun and I could see myself playing more!
alzhu1
2023-10-07 21:55
Pretty cool take on the match-3 style of games, I like that there's a character you have to control to move pieces into rows/columns of 3 to get an effect. The character felt really sensitive though, so it made it hard to be accurate with moving around. Also, I thought that the controls with the spacebar felt a bit unintuitive; I was expecting to be able to move around while carrying an item, but instead I just placed items down after picking them up, which felt odd. The switching with an item was also kind of weird too.
I just played the easy mode, but even then I felt like I was getting overwhelmed with items really quickly; maybe the easy/normal modes could be better balanced so that you don't get too many materials all at once, that way it would be a gentler introduction to the game and mechanics. Overall though, very solid submission and I had fun with it, good job!
xelaurt
2023-10-08 10:53
Very good game. Music, art and gameplay, everything is excellent. The only thing that i would like to admit is that the main character moves too fast and it is difficult to control the situation. On easy difficulty it was hard XD, but fun. I played it with great pleasure. Nice job, well done!
joror
2023-10-08 14:30
Really intense and fun matching game! I wasn't terribly good at it - the controls were a bit finnicky at times, with me often overshooting by one tile. Even on easy mode, I felt pretty swamped immediately. But I can see that a good quick person would do well!
The graphics were really nice, and the music light and appropriate. Well done!
A very good game with a nice execution of the theme. I really liked the game's art. The game turned out to be quite challenging even on the easy level.
Very well polished, I especially like the graphics.
ivan-b
2023-10-17 15:01
The game is really fun and the art style is great for the game. I had a blast playing it and I have only one small complain which is the controls. I often got confused because they are not super intuitive and using spacebar for more than one task led to some awkward situations where I moved items but I just wanted to put out fires. If it was remapped to another button I think I could see myself playing this for a good while more!
shaggy
2023-10-19 14:02
Very neat, great work!
Besides the clever ideas this game oozes personality in its art, well done.
f1krazy
2023-10-20 20:57
I don't know whether I'm playing this wrong, but even on Easy difficulty I quickly found myself completely overwhelmed and unable to do anything as I was completely penned. It seems like you can only move each symbol one tile at a time, as opposed to being able to carry them, which makes it really hard to actually make any matches, especially with how quickly the items are coming at you.
There definitely needs to be a smoother difficulty curve, with items coming at you more slowly at first until you've gotten used to things. There's a good idea here, and it's very well-presented with the polished artwork, but it's all rather undone by the non-existent difficulty curve, which makes it almost impossible to enjoy.