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The 3 Of Life's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #6 | 3.944 | 3.944 |
| Presentation | #6 | 4.278 | 4.278 |
| Overall | #8 | 3.903 | 3.903 |
| Concept | #12 | 4.056 | 4.056 |
| Use of the Limitation | #36 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Team members
Mostly myself, but full credit for external resources used are on the game page.
Software used
Unity, Adobe CC
Use of the limitation
The objects the player places on the grid are used to progress toward the win condition of merging toward the Tree Of Life. However, the objects are also used to form barriers to restrict enemy movement as well as to destroy enemies outright. Strategic thinking and strong threat assessment abilities are needed to figure out the best use of the objects as the game progresses and the board evolves.
Cookies eaten
Too many to count, debugging makes me stress eat :(
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Comments
dang thats good
I APOLOGIZE FOR LENGTH I RAMBLE ALOT.
"if I had more time I would write fewer words"
This was such a delight, Seriously amazing entry.
I didn't jam this time so I cant rate but I can tell you my thoughts.
Note take any negative with a "Considering you made this in a jam It makes 100% sense to not have had the energy, time, or desire to do these. Just thoughts for the future"
Presentation
The graphics are very simple, but this actually plays to the games strengths, it keeps the game is visually clear and you can easily understand the board state at any time.
Things are color coordinated but not in a out of context way. Enemies are pollution and they are a dark muddy color, not just red. Their is lots of Greens and pinks for the nature but each element has a different spread of color too, green grass, pink flowers, bush with a mix of green and pink, brown and green trees, etc. It makes the game visually interesting.
All of this visual clarity also made learning the game alot faster since I didn't read the tutorial.
The visual clarity and theming art strong and great, but I would lower the score a bit off of visual polish. Lots of little things that could have been improved. The font for score and on the enemy timer feels a bit out of place and unappealing.
Pollution enemies when flying onto the map feels a tame, not bad, but a trail, and maybe some squash on the land would help, additionally during this animation the blobs will layer under your plants. A small effect that probably would have added alot imo is to have the merged elements fly into the final element rather then just disappearing.
A polish element that might have helped clarity would be to have the pollution timer be alot more intrusive, have the letter scale and maybe pulsate and flash when the timer is on 1 could help.
TLDR: Presentation is Clear, Pleasant, and does its job super well. But it does lack polish in some areas.
Enjoyment
Would be an easy 5/5. The gameplay is simple, but there is alot of depth.
First off the inclusion of an end goal for a jam game is fantastic move imo. It gives players something to strive for, I spent a good hour+ in the game aiming for that end goal. I left satisfied and wanting to play more and I imagine the people who won left satisfied as hell. The general Jam thought is to just make games score based, which imo usually results in people leaving when bored a bad last impression.
So the gameplay itself is great, you need to balance alot of little things, always make sure you have space to finish your merges, to do this you need to place carefully and clear out enemies. Then enemy killing added a great use to finishing merges that you otherwise wouldn't.
Speaking of enemy killing, a criticism I had at first was the lack of reward for finishing merges with 3+ items. I kinda ended up loving this actually, for 2 reasons: You need to make placements in a way that you avoid 4s generally it takes up more space, this felt more strategic and added a layer to my considerations. Secondly, bigger merges = more enemies your likely to hit.
Game was addicting as hell, very fun to try and beat. Just had a blast.
I again apologize for the Essay, its alot, but am rushing cause I played and rated this on my work shift hehe, kinda rolled my eyes a bit when I saw a merge game ngl, play enough of those for work, but this one really was a blast.
Seriously amazing work.
Wow, thanks for the extremely detailed comment! I definitely agree with your criticism on the visual aspect, I actually planned to add a lot more polish (including literally everything you mentioned) in addition to a much better UI, some background elements etc. but I had some personal things come up in the last few days of the jam so I didn’t have the time. :(
I’m glad you enjoyed the game! I originally also planned to have some kind of bonus effect for merging 4 or 5 objects as well as more items that would do things like destroying enemies directly and being able to merge with any object, but they were lower on the priority list and didn’t make it in due to the time constraint.
Again, thanks for taking the time to write this! Also, I’m curious what your job is that you’re required to play merge games for work :P
I am a Technical game designer for a mobile game company.
Again really fun game
Very nice little game. My only suggestion would be to have a tutorial level in a future version, for anybody who doesn't know what a "3 puzzler" is, of whatever it was called hahaha. But I eventually got the hang of it and enjoyed myself! Thanks for submitting. :D
Thank you! That’s definitely a great suggestion, I just assumed that everyone has played these sorts of games before which in hindsight is an assumption I definitely shouldn’t have made.
Glad you enjoyed the game!
the game is deceptively difficult! multiple times i thought i had something but then realized i had in fact made winning impossible. but after four hours, i finally managed to win, with a final score of 4140
Thanks for playing! Yeah, I found that it’s surprisingly easy to get yourself into a dead lost position if you’re not thinking many many moves ahead and the mistake that caused it is usually very subtle and easily missed. I think the game might’ve been too hard overall and I would definitely tone down the difficulty if I were to release it as a full game, at least for the first couple stages.
Also, you might’ve been the first person other than me to beat the game :P
Nice game! This game inspires me to go play more of these types of games! I have no complaints! GG! If you have time could you rate my game?
Thank you! And sure, happy to check it out :)
Super fun!
Thank you!
Cute game, I think it would work a little bit better on mobile :) but still enjoyable
Thanks! I did want to get a mobile build up but I decided to spend the final moments tweaking the balance to be just right. If I get a lot of positive feedback I might expand this into a full game with multiple maps and more mechanics and publish it as a standalone mobile game.
Do it!
Cute graphics and easy to understand what to do! Made me a little nostalgic for the 2010 mobile games lol
Thanks! This was definitely inspired by that era of mobile games haha, I work in the mobile game industry and I really yearn to return to those simpler times…
This game was easy to understand, but has strong elements of strategy or forward thinking, absolutely a winning combination! The art looks amazing, the sounds all sound really good and feel like they fit, and it just generally feels nice to play, awesome job!
Thank you for the kind words, that was exactly how I designed the game to be :)
My score was 1830! Really easy to grasp, yet not too easy that it becomes boring. Feels like it's an easy to play hard to master type of game. Also art and music really fits the vibe. I'd play a mobile version of this game!
Thank you! 1830 is pretty high, did you manage to win?
no I didn't :') almost though. It's pretty hard!
This game was super relaxing and very well polished! At first I was expecting a idle merging game but this actually has quite a bit of depth and requires some strategy to win.
Thanks! The alpha version of the game was actually much easier and took place on a 7x7 grid, but I really wanted to push the difficulty to a point where you will lose quickly if you’re not thinking about what you’re doing. I’m super glad you found it relaxing instead of frustrating though since I was worried I might’ve made it a touch too difficult haha
An hour of my life I'll never get back (and I didn't even manage to win :( )
Seriously tho, I love it! really fun and addictive. If it was on mobile I wouldn't even guess it's a jam game.
Thanks! That makes sense since it was heavily inspired by mobile games like Candy Crush and the like :P
really relaxing and fun game i loved it , good job
Thank you!