Whew. This game was way more exhausting than it had any right to be, and I’m still a little frustrated with how unpolished it is – but I think it’s time to call this one done. “One Year” brought to mind cycles, circles, and segments thereof – and thus you get a circley segmented puzzle game. Cheers!
This game’s title was provided by Pierre Corbinais.
As abstract as this game is, it was indeed inspired by the title – “Neutronium Verge” brought to mind two things for me: density and thresholds. So I thought about a puzzle game about fitting things together densely, and something suddenly happening once a particular threshold of density was met. This is the result.
This game’s title was provided by Matt Kurtz.
Bleh. This is, I think, the most dissatisfied I’ve been with a game. I’ve been struggling with a severe case of designer’s block for most of the week (and, I must admit, let myself get distracted by Minecraft), and only really had some idea of what I’d be doing with the game this morning. While there are some interesting facets of the game from a technical standpoint, it really just isn’t much fun as it stands, and I don’t have any ideas how to fundamentally improve it from here. (Needless to say, I didn’t bother applying any audio or graphical fanciness to it – an idiom about things that can’t be polished comes to mind.) Feel free to give it a shot anyway.
To all my loyal fans: Thanks for sticking around, even when I screw up sometimes.
This game’s title was provided by Nathan Wilson.
My major project is coming along nicely, and will be done soon (I promise!) To tide you over, here’s a short, simple, and frankly not very exciting puzzle game. No audio; I recommend listening to http://www.rainymood.com/.
Relax and play Raintrace.
[Additional note: This game was heavily inspired by Auditorium, which I intended to mention but couldn’t remember the name of. Thanks to Joe Larson in the comments for reminding me.]
Ribbonoid is kinda like a cross between Arkanoid, Electroplankton, Kirby:Canvas Curse, Balloon Fight, and Qix. Kinda. Just try it out and see for yourself.
This week’s game is my EGP April challenge submission – the theme was “Repeat”, and after some brainstorming I decided on a game idea of “puzzle-platformer in a layered time loop”. Inspirations include Braid, Cursor*10, and (to a very minor extent) Eversion. The last level is particularly fiendish – I had difficulty beating it, myself! Those of you who appreciate a hardcore challenge in this sort of game should be pleased with it, I think.
Incidentally, the protagonist’s name is Hatbox, and you’re likely to see him return in a future game.
Kind of a strange story to this one. I wanted to make a puzzle game that was specifically not Bejeweled or Tetris – it seems that there hasn’t been a lot of innovation in puzzle game mechanics lately, and I wanted to do my part to contribute to exploring the field a bit. I came up with a core mechanic and did some experimentation with variations on the theme – clearing the board Collapse-style, or building patterns from scratch – and it just fundamentally wasn’t fun.
By Sunday I was ready to chalk it up as a failed experiment and switch over to my backup-plan game; I was making some final changes Monday night in order to make it a playable game rather than a toy (adding a timer and scoring), intending to post it to the site as a “B-side”. What somehow happened was I switched the game’s code over to “build patterns” mode while leaving the random board generation of “collapse” mode… and it actually worked as a game. I mean, it’s certainly no runaway hit like Bejeweled, but it’s solid and playable.
Tips for playing: Look for symmetrical-ish areas on the board, and use the color pieces you get to build them outward, then put a white piece in the central area. You gain one second of time for each tile that gets cleared beyond the first. Scoring is based on the square of your combo, so bigger patterns are much more valuable than smaller ones.
Go play Color Meltdown, and feel free to post your high scores in the comments!
