Sociales Santillana
This game is from the old Ludum Dare platform. You can try viewing the original page on Web Archive
(may not load correctly).
(may not load correctly).
This puzzle game takes inspiration from Bejeweled and minimalist artists (specifically, Frank Stella) at the same time.
You select blocks and flip them vertically or rotate a whole "plate" in order to match groups of 3 or more blocks of the same colour. Check the "How to play" attached screenshot for further advice.
CONTROLS
==========
* Left mouse button => Click to select/deselect a block, then click on an adjacent block to attempt a flip or a rotation.
* H key => Stuck? Let the game select a block for you! It costs 3s of your time, though.
* S key => Shuffle the board completely. Unless you've run out of movements, it'll cost 5s.
* I key => Toggle timeless mode on/off. If you're having fun on a specific level and don't want to move to the next one you can activate the Timeless mode and forget about countdowns. This is somewhat game breaking, as you can alter the board freely and then go back to timed mode, so use it at your own responsibility (yeah, this is cheap).
* Backspace => If you've won/lost the game you can restart from the beginning.
//-------------------------------
KNOWN ISSUES:
================
- There is a bug with the match checker failing at detect some matches. Bad news is I couldn't track it, the good is that it doesn't happen frequently.
- Sometimes it seems that you can not rotate in the expected direction. If that happens, try to rotate in the opposite one. If it's still blocked and it's obvious that the rotation should be allowed please let me know.
- Toggling timeless mode on and off in the middle of a level breaks the balance.
- Poor balancing. I ran out of time for that.
//-------------------------------
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
===================
- AS3 + Starling + Adobe's commons library. The IDE of choice was FlashDevelop. Flash 11+ is required.
- bfxr + Audacity for sound effects.
- The fonts are the same ones I used for my previous entry. Credit goes to Miffies again.
//-------------------------------
WHY THIS?
============
Originally, as I mentioned in a post written during development, my intention was to take a well-known gameplay concept (the usual suspects: Tetris, Pacman, Pong... come to mind), bloat it with irrelevant features and then strip it from the gameplay one at a time until the player was left out with the essential core mechanics.
However, I decided that rather than just doing that I could use some concept that worked out by itself too and so, after googling for image references, I came up with a match-3 concept with a slight twist using a clear artistic style. Then, if I had the time, I would add the layer on top (Spoiler: there is never time -_-UU)
The reason for the title, which probably makes little to no sense to anyone outside from Spain, is, apart from the fact that I couldn't come up with anything better, is that the picture from which I took the final idea was used in the covers of a well known publisher for the primary school textbooks from the time when I went to school (sigh...). I actually used quite a few of them myself :D
EDIT (29/04):
* Modified the web link so that the HTML document displays some instructions.
* Added screenshot with a "tutorial".
(01/04): Updated html page to center the game.
[EDIT 06/11/2016] Updated web link after Dropbox removed support for html rendering. Also, added post-compo version
You select blocks and flip them vertically or rotate a whole "plate" in order to match groups of 3 or more blocks of the same colour. Check the "How to play" attached screenshot for further advice.
CONTROLS
==========
* Left mouse button => Click to select/deselect a block, then click on an adjacent block to attempt a flip or a rotation.
* H key => Stuck? Let the game select a block for you! It costs 3s of your time, though.
* S key => Shuffle the board completely. Unless you've run out of movements, it'll cost 5s.
* I key => Toggle timeless mode on/off. If you're having fun on a specific level and don't want to move to the next one you can activate the Timeless mode and forget about countdowns. This is somewhat game breaking, as you can alter the board freely and then go back to timed mode, so use it at your own responsibility (yeah, this is cheap).
* Backspace => If you've won/lost the game you can restart from the beginning.
//-------------------------------
KNOWN ISSUES:
================
- There is a bug with the match checker failing at detect some matches. Bad news is I couldn't track it, the good is that it doesn't happen frequently.
- Sometimes it seems that you can not rotate in the expected direction. If that happens, try to rotate in the opposite one. If it's still blocked and it's obvious that the rotation should be allowed please let me know.
- Toggling timeless mode on and off in the middle of a level breaks the balance.
- Poor balancing. I ran out of time for that.
//-------------------------------
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
===================
- AS3 + Starling + Adobe's commons library. The IDE of choice was FlashDevelop. Flash 11+ is required.
- bfxr + Audacity for sound effects.
- The fonts are the same ones I used for my previous entry. Credit goes to Miffies again.
//-------------------------------
WHY THIS?
============
Originally, as I mentioned in a post written during development, my intention was to take a well-known gameplay concept (the usual suspects: Tetris, Pacman, Pong... come to mind), bloat it with irrelevant features and then strip it from the gameplay one at a time until the player was left out with the essential core mechanics.
However, I decided that rather than just doing that I could use some concept that worked out by itself too and so, after googling for image references, I came up with a match-3 concept with a slight twist using a clear artistic style. Then, if I had the time, I would add the layer on top (Spoiler: there is never time -_-UU)
The reason for the title, which probably makes little to no sense to anyone outside from Spain, is, apart from the fact that I couldn't come up with anything better, is that the picture from which I took the final idea was used in the covers of a well known publisher for the primary school textbooks from the time when I went to school (sigh...). I actually used quite a few of them myself :D
EDIT (29/04):
* Modified the web link so that the HTML document displays some instructions.
* Added screenshot with a "tutorial".
(01/04): Updated html page to center the game.
[EDIT 06/11/2016] Updated web link after Dropbox removed support for html rendering. Also, added post-compo version