itch.io

Yeah, I hear what you're saying about the lack of special combo-rules for making more advanced/larger groups in some way. Maybe something could be done with popping multiple groups of the same color in sequence, or maybe give multipliers based on the number of blocks a group clears?

Took a little while, but in the new 0.9 update there are now mysterious powerups on the later levels you can use to activate special powers!

Thanks! They're random on later levels but you'll always get one (but placed at random) on the level where they're first introduced. This might change though, as they're a late addition. If you have any ideas about it, please let me know.

Thanks for the feedback! The pieces are random like you say, so you can get lucky/unlucky as there's no way to skip placing a piece. However, that's also in a sense where the skill comes in, since you need to decide how to use the stuff you get. What to place where, what to connect up to existing groups or place on it's own. And if you get blocked by blocks, how to get rid of those to save your groups.

Thanks! I'll make a note of that idea for future versions

Fun idea to manipulate random outcomes like this, but a little too much counting for me. It also took me a long time to understand I could move down to find the switches below. I understood there should be stop switches from the manual, but couldn't find them and gave up first time I tried the game. Maybe because it feels like a single screen game, so I didn't understand I should also be looking elsewhere?

Thanks! At this point I think the fact that you played a couple of times and got better (and hopefully had fun) was the most important thing. The "end game", level 7+ is kind of lackluster at this point and something I'm working on for the next update. It's not super advanced, but I wanted the player to feel clever by first figuring out the basic mechanic using just visual hints, and then if they like it try to figure out more advanced strategies on how to get more points and get further in subsequent plays.

Yeah, that was what I suspected.

Well, I guess there's only an easy way to find out: I've made a test 32 bit linux build that you can download here: vlobs_0.7.0_linux_32.zip and see if you're able to run it. If it works I'll know I can do that in the future, if not, then at least we tried.

I'll look into it. I think Godot can technically export to 32 bit linux, but I'm not sure if 32 bit systems will be able to support the modern vulcan drivers I believe Godot 4 games require? Maybe you know more about this if you're on 32 bit linux?

Fun mechanic once I figured it out and got into it, but the first time I tried and just pressed the arrow keys I couldn't quite figure out what was happening. I especially liked that there were a couple of time I was close to game over but then got a series of multiple matches that clawed me back. However, once I did get a game over I didn't like that it cleared the board to show the game over graphic,  so I couldn't see how far I had gotten.

Cool game mechanic, and I really like the sound design overall and feedback/integration for the Z mechanic. Even with the simple graphics it makes the game feel really nice. 

One thing I had some trouble with was simply getting past the start menu screen. The game loaded and showed the menu, but it wasn't apparent to me how to proceed. I tried clicking and pressing enter etc with no effect, so I gave up the first time and tried it in another browser thinking it was broken. Only there I accidentally found out up/down changed the selection and understood I probably had to press some other key to start, eventually finding the right one. So maybe you could give the player a hint about that?

I really like the look and feel of the game, well done on that. Though I had a little trouble at first understanding I had to click the shape to select it before I could rotate it, and just thought the game didn't work or I didn't understand the controls. Maybe start with the first shapes selected and offer multiple controls to rotate? Then introduce the selection mechanic when you get to the later levels with multiple shapes and you need it?

Simple and clever! I really liked that once you "solved" it you're challenged to solve it in different ways and realize you can find more solutions instead of just moving on to another preset harder level.

One graphical feedback: Maybe show the ropes/poles under the platforms as ladders instead to make it more clear you can climb them?

Thanks! The difficulty curve will likely change  as I tweak the levels and I also plan to introduce at least one more mechanic in later levels. But I want the curve to be steep enough to have typical games end quite quickly. I'd rather have the player get a game over and try again than have them get bored before finishing a longer game due to it being too easy.