Bonding Bad

co-authored: @pranjalbisht
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.90
Fun★★★★★★★★★★4.00
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.46
Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.70
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.74
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.83
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.17
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.09
Bonding Bad is a Spacechem-inspired puzzle game about binding atoms into molecules to form specified structures!

Basic Controls:
Left click to place things on grid.
Right click to delete things from grid.

Further controls/instructions in-game.


More screenies!


Made by Diptoman Mukherjee (programming / design), Pranjal Bisht (art) and Joel Montpetit (SFX) for #ldjam #ld40

screenshot
Genres: puzzle
Tools: GameMaker

Comments17

Pecolyte
Pecolyte4 Dec 2017, 11:50
Cool design! Need some revert function, pipes fail to link sometimes.
elZach
elZach4 Dec 2017, 12:24
This is a pretty dope puzzler. I liked the easy pace you got the player into the game.

The visuals have a nice clean look and the audio does it's thing.

I've spent some time on the game and got to the part of forming a square - due to sleep depreciation it just wrung out my brain the wrong way - but I'm sure to get back to it at a later time. Great Work!
diptoman
diptomanauthor5 Dec 2017, 03:56
@pecolyte : I haven't encountered pipes failing to link, but in case you meant "revert" as in undoing/deleting things from grid, you can do that by right clicking. :)

@elzach: Thank you! The square one is probably the hardest level in the game - there's basically no proper difficulty curve - didn't have time (hence made all levels are available from the beginning hahah).
stevenjmiller
stevenjmiller5 Dec 2017, 04:39
Really fun game, having a leading molecule rather than waldos was a cool twist on SpaceChem and made for some interesting puzzles. The music was also incredible. I would love to see this expanded with some more difficult levels and mechanics.
deathray
deathray5 Dec 2017, 04:45
Really great game! The first few levels were a great guide, and the slight changes to each level made it very engaging. This could definitely become a marketable game.
Matthew Foley
Matthew Foley6 Dec 2017, 00:46
Great game! Somewhat complicated and could do with more guidance at the start, but its a game jam so I know thats not always possible. Great game still and I hope you continue with it :)
Alchemic
Alchemic6 Dec 2017, 05:17
Nice twist on SpaceChem's mechanics!
Gruhh
Gruhh9 Dec 2017, 15:46
Great puzzle, congratulations on the game and the soundtrack!

Ótimo puzzle, parabéns pelo jogo e pela trilha sonora! :flag_br:
zeu31
zeu3110 Dec 2017, 20:46
Great game! Interesting mechanic and good level design.
Steve Johnson
Steve Johnson12 Dec 2017, 20:59
OK wow some real game design work! I truly enjoyed my time figuring out puzzle solutions. The assets were at just the right quality, though I would have appreciated some music.
diptoman
diptomanauthor13 Dec 2017, 01:54
Thanks guys! Appreciate it!

@steve-johnson There's a lot of (original) music in there! Were you playing the web version? Maybe it just didn't load?
kleinzach14 Dec 2017, 23:38
That was a very nice and well polished game. I would say that it was a little too easy to just brute force it. One of the things that I really liked about spacechem was that it forced you to make something that worked cleanly and worked multiple times. It doesn't seem like there is much of a reason to not just "cheese" every level when instead there should be interesting patterns to look for with every given starting situation. In any case I enjoyed it, especially that you took the time to make menus look good and to have music.
SecretPocketCat
SecretPocketCat19 Dec 2017, 11:43
Definitely getting the Zachtronics vibe only missing the stats/optimization goals.
I especially like the music and the super nice clear/in animation.
diptoman
diptomanauthor25 Dec 2017, 11:08
@kleinzach: Part of that is having symmetric designs (which we didn't have here), and how the levels were made. Essentially when we're on a time constrain, we make levels by reverse engineering from a solution (aka we lay down a path, see what it produces, remove the path). That doesn't make for the smartest levels, and usually things like these can be brute forced. So yeah, makes sense. Thanks for playing!

@saintheiser: It is Spacechem-inspired, yes. :)

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