Well, at last I have the basic functionality done.

Yup, it’s a match-3 :D

Short, watermarked video beyond the link

There still might exist some bugs in the match calculations, but I’m having trouble to catch them and they’re rare enough, so I’ll try to sort them out later.

I think that if I submitted it right now it would be 100% fitting with the theme both aesthetically and in terms of gameplay, which is what I was more interested in. Still, I would like to expand a bit more on it, so these are my next steps, after a late lunch:
– Additional visual cues, to make the available options clear.
– Sound.
– Gameplay enhancements (making it time-based, allowing to sacrifice some time to discard a plate of blocks, levels, …).
– Game screens.
– Some more stuff.

I’m still considering my original idea for the theme, which is to take a simple, possibly well known game concept, bloat it with superfluous elements (unnecessary visuals or sounds, metagame/non-social features that no one cares about and detract from the game experience,…) and as the player progresses through the game, strip it from everything non-essential until she gets to the most basic core of the game  (I would use “purest”, but that would make me look pedantic :D).