Match In A Bottle by Tiberiusuciu
Welcome to my Ludum Dare 42 entry!
The Game was made under 24 hours due to me having school finals the same day that LD was taking place. Please keep that in mind as you play along and things might seem a little rough!
The theme is 'Running out of space' so I present you my game!
You are trapped in a bottle, you must avoid the falling cubes from the top of the bottle.
Use the arrow keys or WASD to navigate. You can use 'up_arrow', 'W' or 'space' for jumping!
In order to survive, you must get rid of the blocks in the bottle or you will suffocate otherwise!
By selecting full lines of the same color blocks, you can free-up some space and earn some points!
In order to select lines, left click using your mouse from each end of a line. Please note that each box of the line must have the same color!
There are also powerups in some of the cubes!
Break the cubes in order to activate their special abilities!
P.S. Bring a friend along, it get's more fun if you split the work load, one takes care of moving, the other takes care of matching lines!
Press 'M' to mute music!
Tools I used:
- Engine: Game Maker Studio 2
- Graphics: Pyxel Edit
- Sound (Music): FL Studio 12
- Sound (Sounds): BFXR
Here is a timelapse of the making of my game! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBD87VGD3Wk
* ========================================= UPDATE ========================================= *
Due to comments, I have decided to make an update for this game for those who are interested in giving a try! here are the changes:
- Fixed scaling, you may now resize the window so that it looks nice on any screen
- Added the ability to double jump
- Added colored arrows to indicate incoming blocks
* PLEASE NOTE: * both the initial version and the current version are accessible from the link below
| Source Code | https://github.com/tiberiusuciu/ludum-dare-42 |
| Windows | https://tiberiusuciu.itch.io/match-in-a-bottle |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/match-in-a-bottle |
Ratings
| Overall | 81th | 3.87⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 52th | 3.935⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 64th | 3.848⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 100th | 4.087⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 124th | 3.848⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 36th | 3.795⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 103th | 3.278⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 64th | 3.667⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 19🗳️ | 16🗨️ |
I don't know that, am i able to destroy more than 2 cubes at once?
Everything in this game is fine.
All in all, I think it's not a bad game, especially considering you had half the time due to finals... My finals are this week x.x Good job!
The jumping I was aware of it, but at the same time, being able to jump one block is part of the challenge, it makes you always worry about trying to stay on top of things. I can see how it can be annoying, but I thought that with the amount of lives at your disposal, that it can be overlooked. As for the re-spawning, I noticed this problem quite a few times with friends playing my game after I submitted it, since I have been playing this game non stop for 24 hours, I got used to quickly align myself where I want while re-spawning. This is a game-design which I did not worry because I was too deep in the core of the game to realize that certain things might be difficult for others.
Thanks, and best of luck on your finals!
Seems it is really hard to get more than 2 connected same color blocks, and it is not very strategic to choose which blocks to cancel (since it is too much random).
The concept is very original (platformer + tetris) and control is unique. Would like to see more polished details, some ideas in my mind:
- less color so we get a good chance to cancel blocks.
- maybe click one block and it will destroy all block in that connected component, so we don't need to click many times. (We need to move and jump the character, so don't have much attention on mouse)
This is the disadvantage working with a full random system, it's easy to make, but can often not work as good as you hoped it to be.
Initially, there was only 3 different colors, blue, yellow and red. I only decided to add green, because to my testing, I felt like there was sufficient room in the bottle to be able to let blocks pile up together and eventually be able to cause a huge chain reaction.
As for your second idea, that's what I was hesitating to do, but I decided not to do it, because it would only make the experience much more stale in my opinion. I like the fact that you have to click on each end of a line in order to complete a line because it makes it challenging to focus doing that while also dodging cubes at the same time!
I feel like maybe the jump height could be changed to 2 blocks and the game would still be as challenging. it felt kind of unfair at times, getting trapped by a single block. raising the jump height would allow for much more strategy in your positioning
The changing backgrounds is a reaallly nice touch, it adds a lot to the feel of the game. however, some backgrounds make some blocks really hard to see (red on red, yellow on yellow, etc.). adding a dark background to the play area would help, or something similar
Really nice job! :grin:
For sake of criticism, was very small on my 4K monitor and hard to see.
Would've been nice to be able to scale the gfx. Was a bit small on my 3000x2000 screen.
-Increase jump height so you can jump 2 blocks.
-Make an arrow to show you where the next block will fall. This will decrease randomness.
Apart from that, great job making the game! :grinning: My score was 520.
You already played our game: The legend of the looter and the incredible backpack that never runs out of space, so we can't do anything but thank you. 」(￣▽￣」)
Once I got the hang of the game, I went nuts trying to go as far as I could. For some reason even though the instructions screen showed two adjacent blocks as an example of a valid "line", it didn't even occur to me to try clicking them until they were three. I had fun figuring out the powerups.
Good fun fast-paced game. I like it! :D