Thank you! I'm glad people are still finding and enjoying the game!
Taylor Ritenour
Creator of
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Cool discussion, I liked the comparisons you made to Pokemon Puzzle League, that was definitely one of the inspirations for this game, and I revisited it as part of developing this!
It is awfully challenging to describe this game with words, as I'm sure you noticed while trying to break it down in a podcast format lol.
For more information on the direction this game is headed, I've written a good amount about it in the development logs thus far.
Awesome! Hope you enjoy! The music is by Eric Matyas: https://soundimage.org/
Haha that's a great question! I think I will write a devlog on that in detail at some point, but I can give a quick sparknotes beyond my description above (which basically summarizes that, it took a lot of iteration, brainstorming and pivoting to come up with what you see now).
At the very beginning, I was inspired by this video from Game Maker's Toolkit:
I saw Snakebird and was like "I love it, I wanna make that". After like 7 months of development, I was disappointed that the game could simply be completed and there's no remaining replay value. Around that time, I saw this video: Which talks about the concept of making a "home" within a game. The idea is that there should be something to do in the game that isn't the strict progression of the main quest. I thought about how endless puzzle games like Tetris and Puyo Puyo have this. So, I tried to blend them together with my game somehow. I failed to make Tetris interesting, but Puyo Puyo's mechanics were deeply compelling, so I rolled with it!tldr;
It's hard, and I tried a lot of things and took lots of different forms of inspiration until I found something that works.
Thank you so much for taking the time to play it and let me know how it was!
Yeah, the beginning levels have been refined quite a bit to make sure that players can get the hang of what's happening since it's all rather foreign. I'm glad you were able to get a good way into the game!
Very glad you think the sound and visuals are sufficiently well constructed lol, that's probably the hardest part for me to get right, I was experimenting a bunch with shaders for this game.
Yeah, the arcade mode is definitely for players after they have more or less gotten the hang of the game. I see the arcade mode as the "real game" in a sense and that the campaign is like a giant tutorial for it. It takes a bit of time to get used to, but its really satisfying when you get to the point that you can consistently improvise your chains.
"Puyo Puyo" meets "Snakebird" in the mind-bending puzzle game "Hebi Hebi"!
Been working on this project for a while, and now it has transformed into a mind-bending puzzler, with a healthy campaign to get the player acquainted with the mechanics, and an endless arcade mode that really puts your improvisational chaining skills to the test! Let me know what you think!
https://taylorritenour.itch.io/hebi-hebi
I know what you mean, it's interesting to try and tease apart the individual mechanics when they are all presented to you at the same time and fundamentally random. It forces you to chase and debunk red herrings. Always striving to sort out the signal from the noise.
Game's don't usually do that (maybe for good reason! lol) but I thought it was a really interesting challenge game design wise to find a balance between making the game just opaque enough that the player really has to stay on their toes and question their assumptions, yet at the same time, clear enough about what's happening that they can ultimately figure it out. This was the primary thing I found myself balancing in my play tests.
You have no idea how reassuring it is to know that these things conveyed themselves properly at least for one person. I was really off-roading with this game when it comes to game design.
That's awesome! I was starting to think that nobody was gonna get through it! I'm impressed that it only took a half hour!
You enter the code on the main menu, with the "start" being enter or space. I think I'll make a little change to clarify that.
It gives you a bunch of insight into how everything works under the hood. It's largely to satisfy your curiosity.
I know the game already thanked you but wow! That makes me so happy to hear!