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JamTris's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #68 | 2.368 | 2.368 |
| Mood | #77 | 2.105 | 2.105 |
| Overall | #83 | 1.961 | 1.961 |
| Visuals | #85 | 2.158 | 2.158 |
| Audio | #93 | 1.211 | 1.211 |
Ranked from 38 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
Unity
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Comments
I like the idea, but it took me a looooong long time to read and read again the instructions to understand what I had to do.
Interesting game. Thought I got the hang of it, but maybe not, I got to level 16.. Need to play some more
Really needs sound / music - these things are easy to leave out as seemingly unimportant, but really they make such a difference.
Level 16? That's quite an accomplishment given it's finished after level 10 :-D
I know it's dearly missing an audio component and I will definitely add one when I get around to do it.
Oops! That'd be my score then! Okay, I've properly mastered what's going on now and turned things up to level 11 with 95 points. Hurrah! I was never any good at Klax :D
Some other feedback then: I got a bit of keyboard claw with the controls - maybe something like 'DF JKL' for the rows would work better?
Edit: in the WebGL page when non-full screen the score and level counter drops down a row, that's why I got confused :)
One of the things on my list (besides other input methods) is certainly configurable key assignment :)
3D Tetris - A great idea. Took me some time to understand it, but once there, kept on playing and playing. Would definitely want you to polish it and turn it into a larger project. Adding some music, vfx, sfx, and improving upon the UI will greatly enhance the vibe of the game.
Thank you!
I certainly intend to do some more with it :)
More than Tetris, this reminds me somehow of Klax, because of the rolling elements in perspective, although it was a pretty different puzzle game altogether.
It took me some time to understand how to play, but it’s actually pretty simple. An animation/tutorial showing this would be perfect if you have time to work on it after the jam.
I see a lot of potential in this prototype. Keep it up!
Nice tetris-like game! It took me a little while to understand it (my fault, not exactly my genre) but I can see potential in it. Keep at it!
Nice idea - I can't comment too much more than what others already stated. Audio and a bit more user feedback (a floating text, a sound, or an effect/animation on the boxes) will go a long way for the user experience but you had everything working so good job!
A bug: When I pressed "I" I couldn't return to the main screen. Good work on the game!
Hm, perhaps I should expand the handling of 'i' to become a toggle. As it is now, the instructions are dismissed with "Enter" (as is shown on the instructions page).
I pressed Enter, like it says, but I didn't return to the main screen.
(Truth be told, it should do it when you let go of the key, so it doesn't jump directly into the game...)
Seems like I will have to look into that. Which version exactly did you have this on? If it was the web version, could you give an offline version a try?
I tried the web one. Will download and try the other now.
The download version gives this error (I extracted the game with winrar):
This is weird. The Web version certainly works fine for me for the instructions view and getting back to the menu...
Ah, I see the issue with the offline version. Can you just rename the data folder to what the error message says?
Yes, that works! And the instructions also works Ok in the download version.
I re-packaged and updated the Windows version, too.
It took me a while to understand what to do and I didn't quit understand the time to coloring the tracks too.
But it's a good idea, only needto think about User Experience, I don't have good feedbacks for you because that's not the kind of game I used to play.
But nice work anyway!
The concept is pretty cool. Sounds and effects will definitely make a big difference. If you switch from pressing numbers to mouse click and maybe speed up the colour switcher to make it a tricky it could also work i think. And also for mobile this can work perfect aswell. Great work.
I had a lot of trouble understanding what to do at first, but once I got the hang of it, it was interesting. I wish there was audio. Sometimes I wasn't sure if I was playing correctly because there was no positive reinforcement (Like the sounds Tetris makes when you clear a line). That would go a long way towards making this game more polished.
But overall, great execution!
Adding some audio feedback is certainly top on the list of things to add...
I like your idea, it's clever. But it's so hard that I feel out of control.
Maby have the current color closer to the fields, so player doesn't have to split focus.
Good job and keep it up :)
At first I only had the indicator on the colour wheel, that was really hard.
Then I tried to just switch the background's colour but that was flashing way too much.
So I settled with that backdrop "poster".
The trick is to anticipate which colour is the active one on the next field and then see if it comes up in time... which is (one of) the reason(s) why they don't just pop up in the front of the stones but are set into the sphere that rotates on each move.
I really like what you are going for with this. Think it needs quite a bit of work yet but im sure thats just the time constraints of being in a jam but it works and was submitted so thats a huge step in the right direction. With some tweaking to the mechanics and interface as well as adding some sounds and feedback to the player I think this will be a great game. Nice work.
You bet there was really no time for some polishing. On Thursday evening I aimed for getting the bits done that were still missing to make it a completely playable game. For example I had no menu and help/instructions screen at all, and no level display and definition for an end point...
With the updated version I added some visual feedback but at the moment it's rather subtle.
I just had an idea on how I might reset it reliably instead of just having it to flash up for a split second and reset automatically that might work better as what I did initially (in my first attempt I had blocks appear as already having been zapped when they went back into play, so I settled with the automated reset...).
Adding mouse input (as had been suggested in the Discord chat) would be something for a post-Jam release 2.0, though...
Atleast you got lots of ideas how to modify and add things after the jam is done. I scrapped so many things I was still trying to do the day before deadline too.
I like the idea of this puzzle game and think I can see what you were trying to achieve but have to say for myslef it is more frustrating than enjoyable at the moment.
The timing seems a little off (or it may be just me) as I was pretty sure that when my colour wheel showed a colour I needed to press that lane but it all felt out of sync.
That being said I think with a little more time you could have a cracking puzzle game!
Great work for getting something over the line!
The large box in the back of the screen is more indicative of what colour is currently active. By keeping track of it using the wheel and observing the lanes at the same time is rather difficult to keep focus...
I did try both, I found a lot of the time the blocks were rolling when the colour was up so wasn’t sure which face I was matching. This may be more to do with me than the game.
Have you tried the updated version already?
With the additional visual feedback it emphasizes the front facing side of the blocks while they are vulnerable.
If you think it difficult to find out how to play because it lacks feedback on players' actions then it's the game that needs to be improved. But then, having games that need polishing in their game-play because they lacked play-testing is certainly part of game jams...
Love the idea, was getting into a flow despite the problems other people mentioned.
I agree with improvements suggested in the other comments. Sound, feedback etc would be a huge help. I think the randomness of the timing was the most frustrating. You made it so that mistakes aren't too punishing to make up for that, but if you did everything to some rhythm, you could make the penalties harsher and the pace more intense.
My last-minute attempts to add at least an optical hint on which part of the blocks to look out for unfortunately didn't get me anywhere, so I had no update on that Friday evening...
To some degree the independence between when the blocks move and the wheel turning is on purpose in order to avoid possible lock-steps making the game either unplayable (as in, whatever you do the colours never match) or far too easy and boring (like they're always in sync and the only timing you would have to check out for is when the blocks are sitting on a tile).
Also, I began developing by setting up the playing field and getting the block movement done. In the first iterations one could only start a block manually with a key... Reworking the block movement would have been quite a lot of work.
In my first concept it would have been much more tactical but I couldn't think of a good way on how the different parts would interact with each other, so I settled with it being more Tetris-like and getting a playable game done.
I think I might re-visit all those ideas at a later time. Perhaps there will be a GemTris Tactics or something at some time...
i liked the concept of this game, and there's a lot of complexities you'd have had to deal with to get this running.
I found the controls tricky. Perhaps a simple mouse click on a button would have been more interactive (and mobiles it would be tapping the screen).
Some audio assistance as well would be good.
I found the colour wheel and the colour block at the back not matching up, which confused me somewhat.
Well done though!
At first I had the element activation only during the phase where the colour's shown in the wheel (so in between it would go to a fifth "neutral" state) but this didn't work at all. Debugging showed me it would flip the colour and revert back to neutral immediately after. To solve this I kicked the "turn to neutral" bit out, so the colour stays active until the next one is registered...
The game has a really good concept but i feel it needs better instructions..
But its still a good game nevertheless
Is there supposed to be audio in the game?
So far it's silent but at least some sound effects are definitely on my todo-list.
I kept the instructions short for two reasons:
1. They needed to fit the help page, which was a first quick rendition so I have at least that one instead of nothing. Some type of title page and a more detailed intro is another item on my todo-list.
2. While I could have added some more details about game-play already in the readme (although that's something you only get when you download the source), I wanted to see how intuitive the mechanics are to get into. So some of the feedback about game-play are what I had been asking for...
Together with a bugfix update I will add some detailed instructions on the itch.io page in a few days, either directly in the game descripion, or as a text-file for download.
Cool! i will test the game again in a few days
The online playable version is updated now, too.
I bounced off this really hard... The controls were not intuitive and I couldn't make sense of which colors needed to go where. And then when I thought I matched something, the block just raced to the bottom of the track? Isn't that bad? There wasn't any feedback on if something was good or not and checking the cube colors vs the current color often took too long and I missed the window. Or the cube started moving and couldn't be... scored? I don't know what I was doing. Sorry :(
Congrats on finishing a jam and submitting though! That's a big achievement in itself!
That "racing to the end" is actually good, it means you've hit one at the right point in time. I know it lacks somewhat in good feedback, and I have some ideas on how to fix that in mind, but they didn't make it into the Jam release. (As did the suggestion by my testers to provide at least a rudimentary way to define different keys which would be by providing a configuration file to be read. In a first iteration it should just read that file if one was prepared manually and eventually with some sort of setup screen. One of the many things to address when I get to it...)
And yes, blocks are only vulnerable while they sit still on a tile, not while they're moving...
Nice concept. I like how it felt when you started getting the hang of the color patterns. I felt like the colors duration was random. Is there a set time for each color?
Instead of Help, I would suggest calling it How to Play or Instructions. I went to the sites page and it said there was in game help, but then I didn't see anything before the first round. So then I figured it must mean to hit H on the main menu.
The colour changing is linear, in that box in the lower part of the screen is something I called the "elements wheel" (I thought of the colours representing earth, fire, water, and air and eventually there might be better graphics to reflect on this), and the wheel is constantly turning and every time a different element gets to the (invisible) trigger object, a colour change occurs.
Right now the only things that get more difficult on higher levels are the amount of energy you lose for hitting a stone with the wrong colour or a stone reaching the target row, and the amount of hits you have to score for the next level...
As for the "H for Help", I was running somewhat tight with the space so I had to stay terse...
I could change it like this, but shortening "Escape" to "Esc" alone didn't cut it for "Instructions" not to drop into a third row, and "Esc" being so far away from what it does appears to me to be a really bad thing...
What I can do is put the info at 80% font size...
I thought the elements wheel was a great idea. I just thought it was a bit short at times and others it felt like I had a longer time to decide. Great job on the game!
You can hit the front-most block in a lane while they're pausing on the tiles. When your current colour matches the colour on the front of the block you score. Scoring gains energy (as does finishing a level). If the colour doesn't match, you lose energy. When your energy is down to zero, it's game over. If you finish level 10 you've won.
Also, zapping a lane costs a bit of energy. And when a block reaches the target line, it drains some of your energy.
(How much energy you gain or lose is subject to further balancing...)
I'm really sorry, but I didn't know what to do. Am I dumb? :D