I can see why you're confused - it looks like something has changed with the Playdate SDK since the first Shift was released and the score is not updating correctly. It knows what your score is, its just not being reflected in the UI. Shift II does not appear to have this issue.
I'll get this fixed and report back here when its been updated on Itch and Catalog.
That said, in Shift each tile is worth 1 point, multiplied by your current streak.
In Shift II, each tile is worth 1 through 6 points, multiplied by your current streak. The point values for each tile type can be seen when you pause the game via the menu button.
I think I've found the culprit here. I've made some adjustments and have played a game up to level 34 on both a revA and a revB units, and was not able to reproduce this any longer.
If you're willing, I'd like to send you a build to side load to see if it fixes it for you. Drop me an email at scenicroutegames@gmail.com if you have some time to to try it out.
Sorry to hear that you're running into issues with it! Did you encounter these issues with the Itch version? When you say you copied files over, which ones were they exactly? Could you describe the glitches you're seeing? It would help me track down what the issue could be.
I'll admit I've not built this game on the latest Playdate SDK, so it's possible that might be the culprit. I'll do that today and see if I can reproduce any weirdness on the device.
Hey! I'm going to delete your comment because that's a great big spoiler, but to answer your question - nothing changes if you don't happen to have it.
I'm happy to hear that! I do bundles here every so often (the last one was in November), but all of my games are also on Catalog and they'll all be discounted for the anniversary sale.
Are you on the latest version of the game (1.5.0)? I was pretty sure I'd fixed what you're describing in that version after another player brought it up the same issue.
The version is displayed in the bottom right corner of the credits menu.
Some folks in the Hello Playdate Podcast discord were having issues side loading your game via the Playdate website, so I took a look and noticed that your game's bundleId is "com.organization.package". That value should be unique, like "com.clactic.escape".
The likelyhood of another game already being on someone's device (and those folks have a LOT of games) with that same bundle id is apparently pretty high, and it causes a name collision that prevents the Playdate from seeing it as a new game (since your build number is 1) if a game with that bundleId already exists on the device. A worse case scenario would be that if your build number was higher than the game that was already installed, your game would overwrite it.
I verified that this was the problem with someone who was unable to sideload by changing the bundleId myself and having them try it, and that solved their problem.
The comic shop owner has already taught you the magic spell, and you don't need to use the duck feather there, you need to use the duck feather somewhere else where levitation could be useful.
(I should probably improve the dialog there to make it more clear.)
Sorry for the late response! I'm pretty sure Catalog supports vouchers, so if there's something you want of mine that you've already paid for here just let me know and I'll send you a code for it.
The only games that will have features that aren't supported outside of Catalog are Generations and Shift, which are going to use Panic's leaderboard API like some of the season games. This API is not usable for non-Catalog distributions (which is really sad), but everything else will be the same.
I don't know if you're an iOS or M1 Mac user, but I've just released a version of Generations for those platforms. Do let me know what you think of it if you check it out!
Hey! Thanks so much, and yes - I have plans for at least two more! If you wouldn't mind giving the game a rating when you have a chance it would help me out a ton!
