S by Lars Faust
S is a puzzle on one screen.
---INSTRUCTIONS---
Sorry, ran out of time to do this properly. This may look more complicated than it is:
- every hex tile is attributed to an element: Earth, Water and Life
- when hovering over a tile, the bars at the bottom show ALL elements of the adjacent tiles
- CLICK AND DRAG a tile in a direction to expose a hidden one
- IF IT IS THE SAME ELEMENT, you will receive a point for said element
- IF IT IS OF A DIFFERENT ELEMENT, you will "pay" a point of the element you came from, and receive one point of the element of the new tile
- the game ends when all tiles are revealed
- all points are added together for the final score
- go between as many SAME elements as possible, to "pay" as few points as possible
-----------
Every playthrough generates a new level and combination of tiles.
Think of this like a bit of Minesweeper. The surrounding tiles hint at what lies within the hidden ones.
---INSTRUCTIONS---
Sorry, ran out of time to do this properly. This may look more complicated than it is:
- every hex tile is attributed to an element: Earth, Water and Life
- when hovering over a tile, the bars at the bottom show ALL elements of the adjacent tiles
- CLICK AND DRAG a tile in a direction to expose a hidden one
- IF IT IS THE SAME ELEMENT, you will receive a point for said element
- IF IT IS OF A DIFFERENT ELEMENT, you will "pay" a point of the element you came from, and receive one point of the element of the new tile
- the game ends when all tiles are revealed
- all points are added together for the final score
- go between as many SAME elements as possible, to "pay" as few points as possible
-----------
Every playthrough generates a new level and combination of tiles.
Think of this like a bit of Minesweeper. The surrounding tiles hint at what lies within the hidden ones.
Ratings
| Coolness | 35% | 1856 |
| Overall | 3.28 | 459 |
| Audio | 3.31 | 208 |
| Fun | 2.83 | 799 |
| Graphics | 4.17 | 51 |
| Humor | 2.40 | 621 |
| Innovation | 3.72 | 178 |
| Mood | 3.14 | 371 |
| Theme | 3.77 | 341 |
lacks of sound and music makes it boring
You may want to outline the area that can be dragged onto, as it is I don't know where the world will end. Also, the elements below aren't in order right(or is it?). In that case maybe it would be better to just show the color and the number because I'm just counting them over and over again lol.
Anyway, really love it!
Now for some critique: it feels a little bit random at times, and with no way of penalizing the player if they don't optimize for points (except for the ending score) the appeal was a bit limited for me. I see that there's a certain element of trying to deduce the neighboring tiles ala minesweiper, but in the end I got a bit indifferent and just filled in all the remaining tiles. Feels like with a bit of work it could be an interesting resource gathering mini-game inside a bigger game or something.
The art is neat, as is the music. Overall a good game.
@indigofiz: Yes, the order is random for every tile, so you need the information of multiple tiles to deduce the position of the elements.
Agree with the outline, wanted to implement that, but ran out of time.
@Krisjet: I see that, yeah. I had something more of a points "managing" rather than "gathering" in mind, so that it would not be so score-oriented, but it turned out different.
I needed to play twice (and gladly did) before really understanding the mechanics.
It's very well done! Things that could be improved (if there was any time): The hexagons are sometimes not entirly clear about what element they are. The map looks great this way, but maybe if it was a little clearer, that would be nice. I assumed that all tiles with water on them were water, but then I found one that had a small lake on it that wasn't a water tile, for example. This cost me a few points...
The dragging isn't always perfect. Twice, I dragged a tile downwards and it showed up on the right. Maybe, while dragging, display a small arrow?
Highest score so far: 24
Again, awesome game, especially the graphics!
I had arrows implemented at some point actually, but scrapped them after i could not get them to look blend into the scene well. I definitely see how that could have helped though.
Is the hint bar at the bottom sequential or randomized? Is it showing only what tiles there are, not the order of the them.
Also, playing on a laptop with a terrible mouse pad, an alternative control scheme that didn't require dragging so much would have been great.
It took a while for me to associate the different elements with different colours, could that hint bar at the bottom, say the word themselves, or show icons?
This game has a beautiful core and if you expand on it I would definitely buy it.
Great work.