Neat game! I love the graphics, good job on those. The sound effects are simple, but they work well.

I assume the levels are randomly generated? Some levels tend to be much harder than others, and from what I can tell the difficulty doesn't progress. I didn't seem to come across any broken levels, though.

But the best part about the game is how well it fits the theme. It's a rogue-like dungeon crawler where you're tasked with grabbing a key and leaving, but your movement is straight out of a puzzle game.

I like the graphics and the sound is solid. The levels feel randomly generated and it feels really easy at the moment but this idea definitely has legs.

I hit a runtime error on level five btw:

Runtime error line 144 tab 0
{i=v, ti=t, col=get_item(grid[v]).col})
Attempt to index a nil value
In cell_score line 144 (tab 0)
in check_cell line 128 (tab 0)
in upd line 291 (tab 0)
in _update line 301 (tab 0)
at line 0 (tab 0)

Fun and simple game. Love the graphics. Could be a bit more diffucult though.

ahhh, this is so cute! all the sprites are great! :D the difficulty is a bit on the easy side but i guess that's okay sometimes!

Loved the graphics and the sound effects. Were the rows supposed to wrap from right row 1 to left row 2 (for example)? Neat game, fun

Cool game! Love the graphics and sound effects. I think this game would work great on mobile!

I like the game - but after Level 3 it seems to crash (Runtime Error) - after all there was no key in level 3 ?

Good game :)

This is quality game, good job with pico-8!
I feel like gameplay might have been a little more challenging

Match 3 seems to be a common genre to be adding to things :D

Works quite well I think.

Fun game. Without reading the instructions on the LD page, it took me a minute to figure out what I was doing and, more importantly, why I died. Once I read the instructions, things made more sense. The game has a very nice overall retro theme in both the graphics and simple sounds. Great Job!

Hey, what a charming game and it works quite well! Reminds me a lot of Fidel Dungeon Rescue.

Graphics are very fitting and so are the sound effects. I like the retro aesthetic the game has.

Some improvements; the game crashes very often. Also, it feels quite weird that walking into empty tile consumes 1 HP, the same amount than when walking to enemies. That is a minor nitpick but something that could be explained better for the player.

Great idea, a bit too difficult as the map is randomly generated

Reminds me of Ernesto the RPG. How does health gain work? I didn't understand that. Do you just lose one max hp per level?

Cool game! By best score was 1350. Also, I encountered a bug on one of my runs:

Great game, only missed a background music.

Nice! I could really see this being expanded into a full game. It'd be great if the pieces also fell so you could create combos and the layouts didn't have existing matches. I did seem to get a level with no key one time, though, but whatever. It's a game jam! Really nice work.

Cool graphics and sound effect.

I like the concept. I have some things you could improve. It didn't feel like there was enough difference between the levels. Some music would have been nice. Some power ups would have been fun.

I like the controls though and even if it felt a bit simple it works really well.

It worked pretty good for me! Would be awesome if there were more things to potentially collect

Cool concept, great graphics. I liked it :)

I also encountered the issue listed about but was able to restart and play through without issue; my best play through is level 9 with a score of 3600. So the concept is nice once I figured it out. A little bit of instructions on how gaining life works with the matching part would have been helpful as it took me a few tries to get the hang of it. Still not sure how much life I get per match or if there are different rules for different situations. Despite this, the game is fun and I could see it being expanded into bigger game.

This is a really awesome game! Great job. The graphics and audio a great. The gameplay is really fun.

Really fun game. The mix of game types works really well.

Freaking amazing! Excelent work, wanna check ours too??

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/hype-time

Liked it ! :)

I really enjoyed the puzzle gameplay! I think luck played too big of a factor when playing though. It wasn't really possible to strategically get the key and the door on some of the later levels. I think this would work great with some tuning of the board building though! A lot of fun!

There's a reason you're getting a crap ton of reviews - this game was fantastic. It felt like a solid polished game, even having only taken 48 hours. Well freaking done man. Loved the audio, the gameplay mechanics were fantastic.

Nothing I can say that hasn't already been said, this game is great! Polished and works well with the theme! Really like it!

Excellent work, perfect art style, matching sound, neat game concept and feels good to play. Wish there was some music to go with it. Great job all around.

This was excellent. Since many people have already weighed in and praised it plenty, I'll just go into the feedback.

Feedback:
+ Very juicy and nice overall feel, especially the few audio effects, which make the step-wise movement feel like actual steps.
+ The art is great. Reads easily, minimal, and cute. It's even more impressive when considering the fixed 16-color constraint of PICO-8.
+ For balancing, the amount healed could stand to be a little higher and more varied in terms of how much they heal, given the health cost per step.
+ Amount healed could also be conveyed more clearly (i.e. via a "+amount" effect or something). I mistakenly assumed things about their effects for a while.
+ I never saw any of the sword icons shown in the screenshot. I'm guessing it was pared down to only 3 types to make it easier to find matches in each step.
+ Using the X button just to advance could be streamlined. If it were a "Press any button" (or LRUD) case instead, the game could be played with 1 hand.
+ Using the LRUD symbols in PICO-8 in the instructions was a nice touch and made things intuitive.
+ The background art really frames the context & setting well. The tiling is rather convincing, too.
+ While there could maybe be music during level transitions, personally I like how minimalist it is.

And I also ran into the bug someone else has post about already.

I played it over 5 times and got as far as Level 7 twice. It is a very juicy, very vibrant arcade-y game. I like it a lot and will be looking to add it to my Favorites in PICO-8's if I can find it via the "splore" command. Thanks for making this.

Very cute! It kind of reminds me of another game of dungeon matchup from the pico8 store. I really like how you utilized the console. Keep it up!

pretty nice game. the mix works well

I, encountered a "runtime error line 245 attempt to perform arithmetic on local plcell (A nil value)" bug in my playthrough, but I still enjoyed it. The pixel art and the feel of the game is great. I'd play more if this once the bugs are squashed. Nicely done.

Cute game and neat mechanic. I think it could use a bit more variety however, each level felt like the same thing as the last. Not really much else to say about it beyond that - it's fun but very simplistic.

Best score 1400! You managed to make the two genres work well together, getting from A to B is a strategic balance between the shortest route and the one with the most matches

​This game is really smart! Putting some instruction about life and connecting pieces to gain it back would be helpful, though! A cool expansion could be to make matching different pieces do unique things, or giving a bonus for matching more than 3 at once!

Good job!

Very cool. Such a simple game, but so clever and unique. Great work! Maybe add some special abilities or upgrades?

Great game here! always love to play some Pico 8 entries.

I like the genres you've picked up, the integration works really well.

Congrats on the entry!

VERY clever game, and great execution! The limited number of moves really helps you focus your moves.

I did recieve the same Runtime Error as @stevenjmiller on Level 3 on my first run though, but managed to pass it on subsequent runs.

Also, some catchy music would be amazing - it's a staple of any classic puzzle game (which this definitely could become - I'd love to see an expanded version!!)

Some levels were definitely easier than others, matching 3 seemed to be totally optional when the key and door were close together. I missed cascading and other effects from making matches.

I really like the "Reset cart" effect on the Enter menu¸ but I guess that's just part of the Pico-8 emulator. That's where I spent a few minutes as I tried to figure out how to actually start the game, as the "Press [icon]" didn't really help. When I realised it's a game system emulator I tried the annoying z x c keys and Bob's your uncle.

I'm not at all a fan of Bejeweled games, but this one has an interesting twist! It was easy to figure out the mechanic of grabbing the key and getting life points when connecting things, however, I found I could just bee-line through most levels and it would be fine, so I didn't have to do very much thinking.

After a while I also received this error.

Love the art. Simple, yet satisfying.

Love it! It reminded me a bit of Card Thief.

I often found myself too distracted by good match-3 moves to pay attention to my health. I wasn't 100% clear on how level progression changed the maps, but it might have been nice to be able to continue from where I was with some reminder / light punishment for this distraction, like a life system.

I also at some point ended up on a screen with no key and I needed the key, but I wasn't sure if the level had started out that way or if the key hadn't registered or what. Sorry! I wish I'd caught it so I could file a better bug report.

I enjoyed the game, although I agree with others that the difficulty and ability to score points totally depended on the random draw. I feel like if there were some design to the levels, or if the tiles did something specific, it might be more complex and cool. I also got the line 245 runtime error, twice in three tries.

although it was a bit too random it was very well executed and i had a lot of fun - great game

Great concept! It seems not all levels are solveable though. Could you make the levels so that at least there always a path that leads to level completion?

Good job! Cool game!

I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.

I hope you continue with the project.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape

Lovely game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 41 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIle2FLl2RM