Whew, that second level took me forever! I don't know if I have the energy for a third... but I like the idea of using a puzzle mechanic to dig around! It's all worth it... for the cake emojis.

Clever! Simple, but surprising fun. I couldn't figure out how to do anything at first - some feedback when trying to make an impossible move (or just instructions on how to play) would be helpful - but once I did, I liked it. Feels almost meditative. Nice work!

Might be better making the hard difficulty more colours rather than longer distance, as it starts to get repetitive rather than more challenging. Otherwise a satisfying little puzzler

Nice idea and thanks so much for having a web deployment! Would have been really slick to animate the path as it grows. When I won it actually suprised me :P

cool, kept me glued for a while

This is a great little puzzle mechanic, implemented in a fun casual setting. All in all a pretty fun game. I managed to get through the first two levels with no trouble. On the third I got myself into an unwinnable position. I kinda wish the game would recognize that but that might be difficult to implement in a LD.

I'm actually not sure if the 3rd level that generated for me was winnable or not. I wouldn't know how to tell.

In terms of UI, there's just a few quality of life things I might change if you ever want to improve on the game:
- There's no way to select a tile adjacent to the tile you've selected. You can click on another tile first to change your selection, but that's finicky. Maybe have right click deselect the existing tile?
- I would like to see the complete map after I'm done. It's satisfying to watch the A* navigate through my maze and to dig through the map, but it would be more satisfying to be able to zoom out and look around at the chaos I've caused after the level is complete.
- As a moonshot, maybe you'd want to add a hint system, where valid moves on the border glitter a bit if the player doesn't do anything for a while. Since this doesn't work like a match 3 usually does, my brain is having trouble finding the appropriate patterns

Other than that, and the unfortunate lack of music, I can't really fault the game. It's got a consistent and clean set of mechanics with a lot of room for emergent strategies. Great work.

Nice!!! I liked it

This is a really clever idea and an interesting spin on the match 3 genre. I like just how far ahead I had to think in order to map out a path, as just matching any blocks I could often times cut off potential paths. It's a simple concept, but it works really well. Nice work!

I struggled for a couple minutes to figure out what the controls were, because I thought I was supposed to be clicking groups that *already* were in groups of three. But once I figured it out, it was pretty fun. I almost got trapped halfway through the second level, but I felt like I was getting the hang of it by then, and once I got myself un-trapped the rest of the level wasn't too hard. I didn't stick around for the third level, though, since I agree with a few others above that it got a little repetitive. Still, not bad!

Neat little game! I wasn't exactly sure on the controls when I first began but once I figured it out, I had no problem playing though three levels. There was something I found strangely satisfying about this game that made me want to play it for quite a while. I found it pretty easy to incidentally box myself in with no way to progresss other than to go back a bit and create a new path. I think this is because you could make a single tile block off the path with only tiles ajacent to it on the corners making it impossible to remove from the board. Also I would love to see some sort of score counter that maybe rewards you for large block clears and a low number of moves to reach the end goal. I definitely enjoyed this game! Congratulations on making a game in 48 hours!

Nice puzzle. Very unique.

I spent much longer on this game than most other Ludum Dare entries, while being engaged the whole time. I found the whole mechanic to be really fun to work with, and the backtracking to dig out of a dead end was an interesting and naturally occurring twist to the game.

One of the things that really annoy me about these Match 3 games are when the blocks are too similarly coloured. Maybe I'm the only one here, but I have difficulty telling, say, light blue from dark blue or green to teal. Again, I seem to be really sensitive to this, but it's certainly annoyingly common.

@niterich, Unfortunately I only had time for one go at the colours. By the time I could see that it was a problem, I was on to the next theing. I'll probably do a post-compo update with a new set of colours.

It took me way to long to figure out what to do. But at the end I managed to get the hang of it. Also nice cake.

BUT you should have included some kind of instruction manual somewhere...

Sometimes things don't go as planned and end up completely different. It depends on oneself whether to turn things to good or not. And you managed to make a fun game which was not intended. **Good job!**

hard to understand what to do first, but once you do, it turns out it works fine ! Nice one !

Nice game although the following levels are not directly harder, they are just bigger and the same difficulty. You could have added more blocks or some random blocks such as bombs or impenetrable blocks. But other than that it got boring if you continued it was pretty good. Also, some sound effects and (music would have been good).

Really good concept. I enjoyed it for a while. Feels rewarding to watch the A* algorithm find a better path when removing more and more blocks. Don't stop improving it further! Things that I find would be nice to have:
* a tutorial/explanation at the beginning
* zooming out
* more colors with each higher level
* joker blocks, surprise blocks dunno :)

https://www.screencast.com/t/NVLmeo4Z the last map. i loved the immersion into a puzzle larger than a single screen. It was a nice fresh take on a 3 block eliminator game. I had no idea how to do it and i really had to work hard to figure out that you can only do moves that actually get rid of blocks. I didn't see if There was a way to tell you if you can't make it. I enjoyed it nevertheless!

It took me a while to figure out what to do, but once I did, I really enjoyed playing. I would suggest perhaps an instructions or help screen. I played a few games and finally got some cake!