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Tomb of the Puzzler's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Sound Design | #5 | 3.944 | 4.714 |
| Era "Feel" | #8 | 4.064 | 4.857 |
| Graphical Presentation | #10 | 3.705 | 4.429 |
| Overall | #11 | 3.418 | 4.086 |
| Fun | #17 | 2.630 | 3.143 |
| Controls | #22 | 2.749 | 3.286 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What style of retro game were you going for? (Year/Era/Console/etc)
NES
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Comments
the visuals and music/sound effects are great, and i really liked the concept behind the battle system, but it felt kind of jarring being in the middle of swapping tiles and having to pause for the battle animation, and it was kind of hard to swap focus between the tiles and moving through the menu. i think it's a great idea, and i think maybe just letting the player move tiles while animations are going or letting them toggle between the menu and the tiles themself would really help w pacing of the battles
Thanks for your feedback. If I pursue this project in the future, do you think it'd help if enemy attacks were delayed until you were finished moving a tile? I don't know if it'd be feasible to let you keep matching even as an enemy attacks, but then you wouldn't get stuck in the middle of matching a tile, at least. The UI for this game could use some improvement, so I'll take your suggestions for the battle menu into consideration if I decide to extend it into a full game.
yeah i think that might help, that and maybe having like a stronger visual indicator that you're waiting for an enemy's attack to finish before you can keep moving tiles would probably be good together
I really dig the old school FF look of this one. Looks and feels like an authentic NES game, so kudos for that. I had a hard time figuring out how to fight at times but I still got through some fights with relative ease. Good work.
Tomb of the Puzzler is a fantastic combination of tile-swap puzzle games and turn-based RPGs. Accompanied by comedic writing, a clever battle system, and a HUGE dungeon to explore-- if you're a fan of either genre, don't skip this one.
I adore that the visuals take after the Final Fantasy NES games; they're simple, but they're colorful and charming!
Now, moving tiles feels a smidge slow during the combat screens, I started feeling a little overwhelmed having to grab-move-grab-move the same tile as more fell from the top... but I didn't really encounter any problems with the mechanics. I think there's really something special here with the battle system!
I hope we see a full-fledged adventure sometime in the near future!
Tomb of the Puzzler is quite cool and creative. Outside of battle it looks and feels exactly like an NES-era final fantasy, but with environmental puzzles. In battle it's a clever blend of turn-based combat and an active match-3 block puzzle game.
I'm really impressed with the amount of content in this for the timeframe of a game jam, I didn't get through everything yet.
I occasionally saw glitches with the match-3 puzzle system, usually when an enemy interrupted to attack while a block I was moving was half-way between positions. But they were never game-ending bugs. I also think it would be cool if there was bonus damage or something potentially for when you overfill the active-time bar with a big match.
The dialog writing was funny too. Great entry overall, think it could definitely be developed into something great if you decide to keep working on it.
Thanks for trying out my game! I'll make sure to play Osmudo next...
I tried my best to fix any major glitches, but this is my first time coding a puzzle game, so I wasn't quite able to get the falling blocks to work properly. I was initially planning to let the player charge up more matches for a stronger attack, but eventually decided against it to streamline the gameplay loop and prevent any balancing issues — though, if I ever revisit this idea in a future game, I'll see if I can make it work without being too powerful.
Oh yeah, like I said none of the glitches were game-breaking, just something I noticed. Game jams are a great opportunity to try making something you haven't experimented with before and I think you did an amazing job overall.