Post by HAUO in Mine-A-Match comments

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Its a "match-3" game, not that much that I can comment on that design. If anything, extremely impressive to have it finished within 3 hours! Feels ambitious :O

The goal is rather strait-forward with the point barriers and like the bonus move intensive you have with the crystals. The point-balance seems fine if, even if I find it difficult to see how anyone can reach the higher scores. However, I do feel the explosives are way to punishing. 1000 points feels like its a lot and it often felt the screen slowly got covered in the stuff, making the entire higher point gain all down to luck. Luck is unavoidable in mach games, but combined that you can get punished rather harshly just felt quite bad.

I also would have liked to see a bit more variation to the art of the rocks. all the rocks have a very similar color pallet, making you almost have to squint at times to know what needs to be matched. If the rocks have small gems stuck in them, why not use more variation on there colors?

Gunnar Clovis4 years ago(+1)

It wasn't made within 3 hours haha

It was originally supposed to be for Trijam, but my artist disappeared and the core gameplay needed more time to program and bug-fix. The art for the three rocks and the pickaxe was done by Haiyoooo for the jam, the rest of the art was public domain assets just thrown together quickly, not a polished aesthetic.

The three star point goals are my high scores (rounded down to the nearest multiple of 500) after playing each level 2 to 3 times in testing (which consists of a starting two grids with the aesthetics and row order randomized).

It's meant to be rather difficult, with high strategic depth. The dynamite can be managed by grouping it up early and destroying it when your score it still low to non-existent, and/or by high-level board management, shifting the dynamite around so that it can't form. By moving not the element you want to match, but an adjacent element you want to relocate orthogonally, you have a lot of control of the grid. But it's definitely rather difficult / strategic, which I like. I've never really been a fan of typical Bejeweled-style match-3 games where you simply slide an element to an adjacent space to match, but here with the orthogonal movement you can do quite a lot more.

HAUO4 years ago(+1)

I have to admit when I'm wrong. The bomb strategy you described was something I did not even consider, and I also completely miss-played the game! I think that's a first I have made such an error. Completely missed the orthogonal movement freedom, I was just so used to the limitations of match-3-games that I did not even think you could move more then one step at a time (Strange, as I did play it for quite a while.)

So with that said, I can differently see now the strategic death that it creates, and the bombs make perfect sense now. Was way more fun, great work!

itch.io

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