Mage Matrix by Mads

[raw]
made by Mads for Ludum Dare 55 (JAM)

MAGE MATRIX

Mage Matrix is a tile-based puzzle game where every move counts. The wizards have travelled out into the world and needs you help, and the help of each others summoning abilities, to get safely home. Let everyone know in the comments if you managed to beat all 24 levels.

GAMEPLAY

You are controlling wizards, helping them to get home to their castles. You can move the wizards around, and use the wizards to summon the other wizards.

CONTROLS

  • Point and click with mouse only.
  • Hold down left mouse button on a Wizard and move him across available waypoints. Release mouse to move.
  • To complete a level, each Wizard must be moved to the Castle with the corresponding color.
  • A Wizard can only move to or across waypoints that have an adjacent tile with a color corresponding to his own.
  • You can use right mouse button to cancel a route you are already planning.
  • Left clicking on a Wizard will allow him to summon another Wizard. Click on the Wizard you want to summon, and then on the available summon points.

RULES

  • Wizards can only move along tiles with their corresponding color.
  • Wizards can only be summoned to spots next to a tile of their correponding color.

CRYSTALS

The game rewards you with crystals based on how well you completed a level. To get 3 crystals you must be perfect (or at least complete it in the fewest number of moves devs thought possible). Can you do it?

POST LAUNCH CHANGES

  • Fixed a crash when moving two wizards at the same time
  • Fixed a crash when finishing last level
  • Changed colors of crystals when level is complete
  • Fixed a menu edge case (which no player found)

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Ratings

Overall 160th 4⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Fun 171th 3.931⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 155th 3.897⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Theme 158th 4.224⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 257th 4.179⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Audio 171th 3.897⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Humor 351th 3.446⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Mood 334th 3.845⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Given 8🗳️ 15🗨️

Feedback

Rawb
15. Apr 2024 · 23:27 UTC
Awesome game. Really great level design, each of the puzzles were interesting to solve and the different techniques for solving puzzles were introduced in a very natural way, which made it each to understand how everything works
Gaverion
15. Apr 2024 · 23:37 UTC
A nice simple puzzler that made good use of the theme! The sticker style art was pretty cute.
LDJam user 382819
16. Apr 2024 · 06:29 UTC
This wizard is so adorable!🥳
GaryNinja
16. Apr 2024 · 07:12 UTC
Nice little line puzzler, good job!
PekinaNebula48
16. Apr 2024 · 07:23 UTC
It'so cool with a great level design. I love the art style. Lovely
ZekySky
16. Apr 2024 · 15:35 UTC
It's a very good game, and it's very polished and satisfying to play, but I just have one question. Is the game finite?
m0dsat
16. Apr 2024 · 16:40 UTC
@zekysky Thanks for the feedback. The game has 24 levels to clear :smile:
Squidly
17. Apr 2024 · 06:52 UTC
Yeeeeee

Very fun and quick puzzle game, not too complex and good concept
Macibacsi56
17. Apr 2024 · 09:51 UTC
Cute art, fun and intresting puzzle. Good game. :)
LDJam user 384819
17. Apr 2024 · 10:08 UTC
I love the sound effects for the wizards, very neat puzzle designs!
Mololo
17. Apr 2024 · 10:22 UTC
I like the artstyle and the puzzles, Great job guys.
Expiredcode
17. Apr 2024 · 10:30 UTC
Awesome game, I could play this for hours!! Nice graphics, nice mechanics, nice and challenging puzzles! Good job!
avareii
17. Apr 2024 · 11:25 UTC
Game threw an error :) I assume this is because it ran out of levels? I _think_ I got three crystals on each level, but it's hard to tell when you get the white wizard as full and empty crystals look the same.

I really enjoyed the minimalist approach to UI, as well as the smooth and consistent art, the sound effects (wizard noises hhhnnmm) and the calming background music.

There were definitely 2-3 levels that were real stumpers. Well done!

![mage matrix error.png](///raw/cf6/72/z/640df.png)
Bstabuu
17. Apr 2024 · 18:34 UTC
Great visuals and wizard voices. The game is very polished. The music made me feel a little sad ;_;
James Dunlap
18. Apr 2024 · 02:45 UTC
Very well designed game that was an enjoyable laid back puzzler. The graphics were minimalist but great which adds to the charm of the game and creates an environment that is pleasant to interact with. The UI design was well done with simple controls. The puzzles were good with a variety of approaches required to solve them. I greatly enjoyed the music as well, and it was an interesting use of the theme.
MoebiusMeow
18. Apr 2024 · 08:04 UTC
Yaaaay all three crystals! :confetti_ball: (except the last level which caused a crash when finished)

![55742.png](///raw/7bf/92/z/64495.png)

The puzzles are really well-designed to optimize the moves. And the content is absolutely rich for a JAM game.

The graphics, audio and control are all well-polished. This is my favorite entry so far. Nice work!
Ein
18. Apr 2024 · 10:27 UTC
Loved the soothing sound design, very calm experience.
BruceZoom
18. Apr 2024 · 10:30 UTC
Really nice puzzle game and lots of interesting levels! It seems after clearing a level, the grade of level is displayed randomly using one of four colors of these wizards. But the gray one is really unclear, and I cannot tell whether I get a full grade or not when its grey.
GoldyXEN
18. Apr 2024 · 12:27 UTC
Surprisingly a lot of levels for a jam game.

The wizard voices are funny and i liked how it ends with the game crashing.
unless games
19. Apr 2024 · 12:51 UTC
Cool idea with the bidirectional summon ability!

I think fewer but more polished levels would help the game. Often they can feel random and there is a lot of places where you will obviously won't need to go, these just add noise. It might be worthwhile to follow the "less is more" dogma here.

In terms of graphics I found the art to be a bit incohesive. Maybe the hand-drawn style of the mages could be reflected on the grid, or the reduced minimal style of the grid could be used for the mages. For example you could try applying some line art shading and less straight edges to the grid-cells or simpler icons for the castles and mages.

Layout-wise I felt a bit of confusion just by the way the tiles look and the things are placed. Maybe you could drop the double white border and just have one grid line on the background to make it less busy. The mages could have their base on the intersection where they are standing. That said I wonder if the game could work better if you were walking on cells instead of the spaces between them.

I think it'd be nicer if you'd restrain the user to a specific number of moves on each level. It might add more challenge and puzzle, as right now it is easy to bruteforce each puzzle and players often choose the boring bruteforce (even if it hurts their experience) if you let them. Even just showing the target moves for crystals and your progress while playing would help a bit with motivation here.

It would be cool to see previous moves as traces on the levels.

Instead of the "select-summoner->select-summoned->select-position" you could just let the user drag any mage over to another (given it has properly colored spaces around him), I think this would be a big improvement to the UX.

Overall I think this game has potential but the levels need more reduction and you might need to introduce some other mechanic to make it easier to design more interesting levels. Examples include, a mage that can change tile colors, mage that cannot be summoned by others or mages that can only summon some but not all other mages, a mage that can't move at all, one that destroys tiles where they go and so on.

Anyways, good job on the game!
JUSTCAMH
19. Apr 2024 · 15:06 UTC
Nice and simple little puzzle game. Despite that though, I really wish the levels had less redundancy to them, the smaller and more ordered levels were the ones I enjoyed most. I like how you introduced more colours as an easy but effective way to add more to the late game puzzles :heart:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2123757357
negator2vc
19. Apr 2024 · 19:07 UTC
Fun little puzzle game with plenty of levels.
Love the art (love this style of art).
The summoning mechanics took a while to understand it (the description on the page didn't help since I first I though a wizard summon new wizards into the game) but it was quite fun to use trying to complete each level.
Nice entry!
schwede
19. Apr 2024 · 21:28 UTC
Thanks for coming by and letting us experience your game during the stream!

A game with the potential to become a deep puzzle adventure. A great submission, congratulations!