ex3d0 2026-10-19 20:35 ♥ 0
Fun little match-3.
The sprite work was really well done.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → defrag.exe
By f1krazy
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 23 | |||||
| Fun | 23 | |||||
| Innovation | 23 | |||||
| Theme | 23 | |||||
| Graphics | 23 | |||||
| Audio | 22 | |||||
| Humor | 18 | |||||
| Mood | 21 | |||||
Fun little match-3.
The sprite work was really well done.
Cool aesthetic! I like the theme, and the interactions were well implemented. I'm not sure if it's a bug or a misunderstanding on my part, but I've played about 10 times and keep getting completely stuck. I've had games where I clear at least one column completely, and games where I clear all columns at least to have a space at the top, and in both of those situations I get stuck. There's no indication that I'm stuck - I have to reset the game completely to try again. Am I interpreting "at least one empty space in the sector by the time you run out of moves" incorrectly?
Very clever puzzle game. Made me think a lot. You have a lot of freedom to strategize and manipulate the board with such a simple mechanic, and it gets tricky once you start running out of files. My last game ended here because I couldn't match the last three "T" files.
Really great looking game and the sound suits the aesthetic well. I'm not sure if there's no "lose" state or I'm just dumb (it's probably that), but I keep getting stuck with no valid moves. It's a pity because the rest of the game feel so polished and the idea is a fun one that fits the theme well. Overall, I liked it!
@justinmullin @immanentdeath @human-writes-code Hi all! There seems to be a bug in the code that detects when there are no valid matches remaining. I thought I'd spotted it during playtesting, but I couldn't be sure that I hadn't just missed a valid match and I couldn't see anything blatantly wrong with the code. It's clear from your comments that this bug does exist, though. I'm still physically and mentally recovering from the jam but I'll look into it as soon as I can.
I've played through 6 sectors and stopped there.
I liked the presentation. The game looks colorful and exploding files is fun.
The game is a little bit repetitive and to be honest after a while I started to get bored. At first I thought that it's only possible to swap neighboring files, but after realizing that I can swap any files on the board, the game started to feel very easy.
Loved the visuals! Great pixel art.
Initially thought you can only swap neighbouring files as well, but swapping any feels pretty fun too and prompts you to use different strategies. Very solid entry!
Like others, I think I had the bug where I can't do any move but it's not detected. But I like the visuals, and the change in the traditional mechanic of match-3 where you can only move something on one case adjacent make some interesting choices (you have a lot of possibilities to move to the same place but some are far better than others). And I like the de-fragmentation theme :). Congratulations of your entry !
@f1krazy Take your time 🖤 It's perfectly playable otherwise, so no rush.
Cute jam entry! Definitely reminds me of the 'old tech' of having to defrag my old hard drive. I enjoyed dragging files around to defrag them. Nothing beats a good old cleanup of a messy hard drive.
Played it on Newgrounds now and still encountered the bug, I'll give it another go after the bug is fixed :)
The idea of breathing life into an old computer through defragging is such a clever way to frame a puzzle game. The mechanic of strategically moving files to group clusters together really makes the process feel like a genuine cleanup operation. Great job on the execution!
@woona I feared that might happen. I wanted the rate at which corrupted files spawn to speed up over time, so that each sector would get correspondingly harder, but I burned out and couldn't get round to it.
@everyone: Thanks for all the positive comments. I've recovered from my burnout and am currently investigating the issue where it's not correctly detecting that you've run out of valid moves. Honestly, I can't make sense of it--the code should already be preventing this from happening, but it isn't and I can't understand why. I'll have to do some serious debugging to get to the bottom of it but I hope to fix it before the jam ends!
@justinmullin @immanentdeath @human-writes-code @sebbernery @brusi The bug has been fixed (hopefully)! What was happening was that the "check for possible matches" code wasn't taking into account whether a third file of that type actually existed that could be used to complete the match.
To use ImmanentDeath's screenshot as an example, it was detecting this as a valid match even though there were no other "film" files available:
The game should work as intended now! Apologies for the inconvenience! I'll start working on some post-jam updates now as well.
Nice, very satisfying when you make the matches or especially a chain of them. The icons are great. Only thing missing is a bit of music I'd say.
@f1krazy Aha, good job finding that. I'm interested to see what else you do with the game
Pretty satisfying gameplay loop and pleasing visuals! Though I'd love an interactive tutorial so I could grasp what's going on just a bit quicker.
I got stuck with this configuration playing on TIC-80 (v1.0.2).
@zedgame That's a good idea. The current instructions probably aren't clear enough. I'll have a think.
@andriybyelikov That's interesting, and very annoying. I can only assume it's treating that third column as a valid match, but it absolutely shouldn't be. It should be detecting that corrupted file and discounting it as a match, and I don't know why it wouldn't be. I'm going to have to investigate further. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
Nice mach-3 game!
Very nice and vibey game. Sounds feels so chill
I really dig the visual styling! Especially the version on TIC-80 website. The one on itch you need to enable CRT effect to get the same effect :) The icons are visually very cool and an eye catcher, they're different enough to tell them apart. I sadly had the same kinda glitch andriybyelikov had. So I couldn't continue into sector 4.
At first I was a bit confused, I did not understand that a file could travel more tiles when similar pieces were connected. Maybe a visual indicator could have been nice, so players can find out more easily
Captura de tela 2026-10-24 202652.png
I've found a bug; after a match some stuff moved (don't remember what exactly) but then: 1. that hole stayed there and 2. the 3 vertical E files didn't match. Adding a fourth E to them caused them to finally match (the hole is still there, though).
After more matches that didn't make stuff fall more than 1 step at a time, causing more holes, the game is now like this:
Captura de tela 2026-10-24 203035.png
... which I think is a softlock? or am I missing something?
In any case, before that I was really enjoying it (to the point I forgot I was going to dinner like half an hour ago 😅); For some reason I never thought about the possibility of swapping non-adjacent pieces in a Match-3 game - I almost reported a softlock on the first stage because of that - and now I'm almost thinking I should have a similar mechanic in my WIP Match-3 game [La Patifferie](https://wendelscardua.itch.io/patifferie) (currently it's more like Tetris, as the pieces are placed one-by-one)
@wendel-scardua That's definitely not right. Was this in V1.1? If so, I think I know what the problem will be. I must have introduced a major bug with that update. I'm going to bed right now but I'll look into this in the morning and try and fix it ASAP.
@f1krazy it was the one in itch, so I assume it was v1.1 yes.
@wendel-scardua It has now been fixed! Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
I love the choice of colour and it's fun to see a game made in a retro emulator fits the theme well.
@darkshadow "The choice of colour" is just the default TIC-80 palette, I don't think I deserve any credit for that part, but I'm glad you liked the game regardless!
@f1krazy oh well it matches the windows colours nicely enough I'm suprised its the default.
Could use some non-document files for easier readability, but otherwise solid
