Tiny Reactor by coffeecup.winner
Explore Tiny Reactor's innovative system of generating energy by colliding balls on a hexagonal grid. Some studies say it's going to be the next big thing [citation needed]! There is a minor problem, however. The QA department took an entire month off before the launch, so we need someone to test each piece of our technology to make sure that it helps to achieve the required energy output and doesn't crash the system... and our stock. Click the link below to access the reactor remotely and help us create a better future for everyone!

Controls: - Click buttons on the GUI to select tools in the editor, click (or click and drag) on the grid to place them - Eraser is a separate tool, the "empty button" on the GUI - There are keyboard shortcuts for almost every button, and tooltips (hover to see them) for every one - To edit the grid, the simulation must be stopped, not just paused
Notes: - If the game shows black screen on start, try reloading the browser tab, we couldn't get Godot to play well with the HTML5 export. - We have playtested the game and verified that all lock targets are achievable with the corresponding technology level. If you think it's not possible, try another approach :) - Some of the rules of the game (e.g. how some of the tools work) are meant to be discovered by testing, but in general these things give you more points: - colliding balls at more obtuse angles (head-on is always best) - colliding balls of the same tier - colliding balls of higher tiers - Remember the tools you will see, their names serve as save points, so you can always go back to the game and explore more.
This game was made (almost) from scratch in Godot by 2 people. We used godot-gdhexgrid by Mel Collins to avoid reinventing the wheel.
Ratings
| Overall | 315th | 3.675⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 258th | 3.65⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 208th | 3.675⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 975th | 2.663⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 695th | 3.28⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 705th | 3.162⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 60🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
The only thing I'd add, is maybe just a bit more instruction in game on what to do, but once I figured it out, which didnt take long haha, everything was fine :D
@tohubohu Thank you :) The fourth one is where (we think) the difficulty ramps up quite a bit.
I figured out how all the items worked, but I wasn't sure how to effectively use some of them (in particular, but not to spoil, I never used the "F" item). I mostly just used brute force.
Would love to see a more polished release of this!
@nisovin yeah, I wish we had time to implement proper editing (copy/paste, undo/redo, etc.) This was definitely on the list of things we were sad to let go due to time constraints. Thanks!
@neonlare thank you :) Some of the stuttering might be due to how we implemented animations - it was supposed to be step by step (and it is), so you can see easier what happens when, but then in the fastest mode it doesn't look very pleasant. We've added a smooth animation option to help with that (upper right corner), but now I think we should have just made step-by-step the default for speeds 1 and 2 and smooth for speed 3.
@alchemic interesting! I felt like I need to add this item to the game to make the setups look less static, and then, when it was implemented I accidentally stumbled upon a good initial setup for late levels/goals using this item so it got into the game. I've seen @kajko solve the same levels in a different way and I'm delighted to learn that you didn't use it at all! We really like free-form puzzle games and wanted to make this one feel the same way :)
I also really liked the narrative in the description.
If you work on this a bit, maybe add a little variety, a bit of a tutorial for the basics (place items in the grid) and the narrative, you could sell this!
Great work!
It would be great to have a "erase all" item, but it's still fine. Congrats!
Edit: On stage 3 (sources, mirrors and amplifier) my record is 199.
Congrats for the subscription, had a lot of fun! :)
@faiorb I actually did think about an "erase all" button, but then thought that manual erasing is not _too_ bad, so we left it as is. Actually, until very late in the development process you could only place/erase tools by clicking each individual cell instead of "drawing" with LMB held - now _that_ was terrible :D
@u-tsang-clan wow, great job! I only did 110 in sources+mirrors, now I feel like I need to try and beat 112 ha ha :D