itch.io

Very well made. More than just a proof-of-concept, it's actually a playable, potentially fun game, and I could imagine people getting really into it. 

The name is pretty interesting, since it has nothing to do with Tetris but appears to be a game that requires the same skills as high-level Tetris play (rapid repeated direction clicking in response to brief glances at screen geometry).

It felt like the journey was more rewarding than the victory by the end. I think that makes it a good game?

I really want an "escape the box" secondary ending.

Dang. It starts out feeling totally random, and by the end you've figured out how to ride the probabilities. Really fun.

Beating the dragon is VERY satisfying. I was finding secret mechanics even in the final ten turns.

Very cool! I was thinking of a way to make a calculator using the placement of symbols that could act as buttons.

I think that might be possible using the default symbol locations, but I suppose the extra rules for buttons would make it run out of space.

Amazing, thanks for typing all that out! That makes perfect sense.

BTW, there appears to be a glitch in the browser version. If you set the rule to "runs on timer" and add the necessary ingredients, it seems to run twice. So setting the first default rule to "timer" and adding a triangle and circle results in two squares instead of one.

I’m going to be honest, I have no idea how to read what you’ve posted in these comments. Is this something that would make sense if I wasn’t in the itch emulator?

Related question: do any of the symbols have inherent meaning or functions? It looks like two of them are the same symbol as as the “run operation” and “undo” buttons, but when I use them they seem to operate exactly like any other symbol.

Edit: I read the longer guide on Pocket Rewriting, and it looks like there are some additional functions I need to play with and understand. Still, some additional clarification on the notation system used here would be appreciated.

I'm shocked! I cleared 90% of the brick and spent all of my money mining metal just to get to the blue square. I can't believe you were that close to getting 2 green squares!

I imagine the dev planned for all the resources to max out there, so you can never find the 2 green square combo.

Bravo! A new type of 2d game mechanic that works well and has emergent gameplay properties. Super cool!

Graphics aren't bad either!

Super cool. An obvious next step would be to make an import and export function so we can share things we've created (by which I mean smarter people can share and I can try them out).

Very cool proof-of-concept.

The puzzles were a bit simple, but the presentation was great.

There is a game-breaking. bug right after the second rock-moving scene (after the earthquake). You move upwards to change to the next scene, but you land on top of a wall between land and water. If you continue to move up (which is likely, since you were pressing up to enter the scene) you walk north of the wall and are trapped outside the playable area.

A quick little game that is made great by its art, music, and overall design refinement. The neat puzzle mechanic doesn't overstay its welcome.

Nice work!

It's weird that no one has posted the third ending. I also can't find it. things that don't work:

I wonder if getting 50 on the cat game after one animal dies but before the other dies would do it...

Pretty cool! An excellent Jam-Game.

It is a little bit of an anti-game though. The sides are so evenly matched that the war sustains itself with little player input usually.

The cards don't make much of a difference since the units die so quickly and the cards cost so much.

There is also a glitch/balance issue after level 15, where the AI appear unwilling to win. Even spending all of your cards on one side will not make it win, and eventually you have two level 20 sides with thousands of dollars they won't spend quickly enough. Eventually the game crashes.

Well, the ending hints at a secret ending that may not have been implemented - though dev hasn't responded to the question about secret endings, so maybe there is something?

If there is a secret, you don't get it by having a zero-damage run (just tried that), or by shooting the walls (tried) or, it seems, by having the enemies run into the walls.

What a weird, wonderful game! It's a fun, well-animated time-burner. Almost like a clicker game, but with collecting and selling cute items instead of mindlessly clicking a button.

Really cool and well done. I'm finding it brutally hard right now. Maybe a little more explanation in the description?

As I play I'm slowly figuring out that there is a lot of information built into the display, but it took me a while and I'm still not sure I totally get what's going on.

Edit: Oh, there's a help page!

Edit 2: It seems like I lose attack and defense each time I move a card (regardless of demon clock). This doesn't seem to be mentioned in the help page (which is very nicely done).

Great game!

I always feel a little bummed out by games like this, because just as it gets you hooked it comes to an end. The third act especially was less difficult than the earlier two, even while introducing the coolest abilities.

Still, release-quality game design, really impressive! Hope this level of polish turns into something longer I can buy.

Congrats on getting back into it! It's an original idea, hope it develops into something really cool.

It's so funny to me that, for once, my janky setup (Firefox on an m2 Mac with 8gb Ram) isn't getting any of the glitches people are posting.

FYI the limit to the knife summon seems not to be functioning. If I understand the card-text right, he should be losing health as he heals, and heal only up to 3 health (or whatever his health is at the time knives are activated). For me, all copies of the knife summon are healing an unlimited amount, and not suffering any health loss from healing.

Great update! I'd say the demo is looking polished and a great advert for the game. I really like the mixing of the deck order - the seagull is a good boss, but knowing it's the final one every time makes it easy to beat with certain decks (reflection wrecks it pretty fast, but has more trouble with other creatures and bosses).

If I could make a suggestion: adding some hint of a larger story/mystery to the intro and ending of the demo seems to be a common way to hook players to buy the full game. The only thing missing from the current demo is a sense of "wait, where's the rest? What happens next?"

Ah, got it.  I guess that was my personal functional hyper focus.  I heard "trader" and thought "avoid combat."

Woah! Awesome! I was not optimistic you would figure it out given how little info I could give.

I get that, but that means that I need to acquire resources for either 0 or 1 gold in order to make any money.

I haven't seen any way to get new resources for less than 2 gold. Am I supposed to farm enemies?

Looks great...either the balance is off or I am just not getting it. When a town wants to buy a good, it gives me 2 currency in trade,  but no good ever costs less than 2 to buy. This would seem to mean that your net worth is constantly decreasing as you consume and sell resources.

I'm clearly missing the part where you acquire cheap resources.

One was just left of the cola bottle in the pit.  "Left" might be a poor description, but I was fighting one of the creatures (either a 2-hit creature or a 4-hit creature) in between two blocks of stone, and rolling back rolled me through the wall to the right, slightly down, and (with enough jiggling) into the "hidden" cola bottle.

The other Time was in one of the abandoned indoor buildings, I think maybe the elevator building or the building with the oil? In the upper-left of the building I clipped through the ceiling, got stuck, and had to reload

The third time was in one of the cave sections where you exit a train car and can explore before going into the next traincar.  I rolled backwards (maybe dodging an enemy) and through the wall, into the next cave section outside of a train car.

Sorry if that's too vague; if I catch the next build I'll pay more attention on my next playthrough.

Has anyone found a way to get into the vault or irradiated zone? Those both seem like full version exclusives.

Also, I'd love to know what the consequence is for hurting the radts. I couldn't bring myself to do it. (I imagine it has to do with the late-game encounter in the northern caves).

Really Great! Can't wait to buy the full version.

Bugs: there are some issues with clipping(?) through the walls while spinning forward or backwards especially in the cave areas (both the train tunnel and especially the hole). I was able to jiggle my way out in 2/3 cases, but one time I had to reset, and I did end up (inadvertently) skipping a lot of the hole because of it. Maybe something worth checking on. There are also some areas in the isometric areas where your robot can walk places it shouldn't be able to. Inside the ship, for example, there is a tunnel of walkable space on the far right going up that can put you into a tunnel that is hard to walk out of. The other examples I found were just being able to walk too far up into walls, creating a weird visual, but didn't affect gameplay.

Really fun!  I love seeing all stages of the dev process on itch, but it's nice to play a game/demo where the mechanics are already this well developed. I couldn't believe there were multiple bosses and so many different buffs and enemy abilities. 

I did throw mugs on the ground.  Eventually, one mimic mimicked one mug, but that was over the course of at least 20 minutes watching them walk around the mugs.  I might have just had bad luck, but I kindof suspect an issue is drastically reducing the mimic rate.

I loved the atmosphere, and the music and graphics.  It's a beautiful project.  If you keep developing it, I would love to spend more time in this cool mimic space once there is more to do.

Hmm, my mimics never mimicked anything. I'm on safari, and the game looks great, but they never mimicked any mugs or each other.  Weird.

I also never found any "Talos," but I'm guessing I just didn't meet some precondition for that, or didn't click enough?

The mills are the only piece that stacks.  That means you can build 3-4 fields next to a single mill, and keep placing new mills on top of the first one. This makes your fields way more productive, and gets you way more taverns.

Also, your piers seem to be choking your island. There are a couple ways to prevent that.  I posted one here, and another poster found a different way.

If you're willing to give it a second chance, there actually is a way to control the chance from the player side.  One of my comments above lays out the strategy, but it's more fun to figure it out yourself.

Wow, I've never had an island look so good, and I never thought of pier ponds!

My islands end up being a very basic wood-house block, stone-house block, one mill, and a huge line of islands going in one direction covered in piers.  Ugly as hell.

You need to use more taverns (multiplied with market if necessary) to grind through your deck if you want a guaranteed win. It also helps to manage your deck aggressively early on, which is kindof hard.  I just managed a complete game where my deck never exceeded 50, so getting the castle pieces was easy in the end.

There is a steep learning curve, and it can feel like RNG at first. I do also think you can get bum luck early on and lose within 20 turns with no chance.

BUT, part of the fun is realizing you actually have way more influence over your deck than it feels like at first. Here are some strategies that can get around the issues you mentioned [Spoilers]:

1. You can use a small number of island pieces to built a jetty (a line of blocks going in one direction). Then you can put all of your piers off to the side of your real island, so they don't clutter your coastline.

2. The location and placement of your wooden houses and lumber yards can significantly increase or decrease the number of cards they produce. If you want to reduce the number of lumberyards (and fields unfortunately), place your houses in a checkerboard pattern (they produce no new cards).  If you want to maximize production, put them in a square pattern.

For lumberyards, you can maximize production by placing your trees in a checkerboard and placing lumberyards *not on top of each other* so that two yards can use the same tree. 

If you want to minimize lumberyard production, you can just place them next to one tree at a time.

Finally, late game, using taverns and markets effectively gives you fine-tuned control over your deck.

3. This might be an exploit: if you place 10 houses together (getting a mill), then place one house next to the group, you can then use "remove" on two of the group houses. If placed properly, you can combine your new house with the remaining group. This both maximizes lumber/field production (because the final house played is in the center of four houses) and gets you a new mill with only two new houses placed! Same goes for stone houses.

Great game, really nicely made!

I've seen in the comments you talking about the issue of this being a solved game. Like you said, that's not terrible (as it isn't true for all modes), but I would humbly suggest that 3X3 + turn start isn't a great default setting, since it can be beaten by player 1 with classic tic-tac-toe play. That kind takes the special out of this game.

It might make more sense for the default to give player 2 some advantage, like letting player 2 pick all pieces or all except triangle.

If you do, feel free to leave a comment on whether it still works!  Playdate OS has been updated a few times since I've touched this.

I guess that's true; I never thought about using Deck Swap  to effectively increase your default hand size on the next turn. I was still thinking of it in the old usage, ie to replay a rare card twice in one turn.