Ex Automata by ping78
Behold the Game of bad gameplay design and poor onboarding experience.
Place stuff, get score, survive.
Why or how? You ask?
It's simple the instructions are very simple and they are in a floppy disk, somewhere, ...and in Latin of course.
However, the general gist is that some things kinda rapidly expand in volume with extreme outward release of energy, generation of high temperatures and a release of high-pressure gases if they are next to some other things.
things including but not limited to: volume expansion, release of energy, generation of high temperatures and/or release of high-pressure gases; may or may not be modeled in the software package.
Ratings
| Overall | 334th | 2.848⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 343th | 2.543⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 168th | 3.478⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 294th | 3.109⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 55th | 4.109⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 263th | 2.63⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 261th | 1.974⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 313th | 2.571⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 15🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
Please provide some instructions in the description here on on the itch io page. :sweat_smile:
I'm literally that dog from the meme "I have no idea what I'm doing" when playing this game.
I mean, I can put some stuff on the board. Sometimes they explode (?)
But I have no idea whether it's good or bad.
Or what is my goal in this game (just to get more score and there is no win/lose state?)
This lack of direction makes it frustrating to play it for a longer period of time.
Extending the description is something you can do without modifying the game, so please use this opportunity.

However, I thought I learned how certain colors interacted and then it was shown that they didn't work they way I though :P Also, since score is different for whatever you place, maybe just having a (+X) at the end of the score could help a bit to keep track of what your previous move did scorewise (if it's at all something that you can figure out, and not just random of course).
Cool game nontheless!
Also, I'm literally that lion from the meme "Do not cite the deep magic to me. I was there when is was written"
@airwaffle That's the idea.
The different colors are just to keep the game from looking grey (clearly not the best idea for this type of game), also some people can't see them. Shapes you wanna look at.
(+X) is something I also was thinking during development but didn't get around to it.
**Update:** Added the (+`lastScore`) next to the score.
I found this strangely engrossing; its kinda exactly my kind of thing. I figured out what a few of the pieces did (i think?? the castle, triangle, swirly one,) but generally just kinda vibed it out and watched the very satisfying and pretty animations. Absolutely love this.

I, unfortunately, was not able to figure out the function of each piece, but discovered a few behaviors that remained consistent throughout the game. I know you call yourself out for it in the description, but I do wish there was a bit more onboarding, or maybe if the interactions between objects was a bit simpler. Perhaps fewer objects to start and then as the game progresses more objects are added?
As a quality of life thing, I would have liked to be able to click on the board and automatically place the next piece there instead of having to drag.
I liked the glowing piece that blows everything up, it was very satisfying
Fits perfectly to the theme.
I wanted to confirm some of my guesses, so I downloaded the source code to check, and it was interesting to see what I got right vs the things I missed that were staring me in the face. I'm not quite sure how one would go about building your game from the source code, however. I think it's a Unity game? If so a lot of the project files seem to be missing from your dropbox link.