Indirect control (gravity-controlled) Tetris. Also, it's entirely in ASCII-art.
You have two attractors that exert gravitational force on the moving tetramino. Using them, you guide it to assemble 3x3 squares or 7x1 lines in the central group. These work like the lines in a classic Tetris, *ie* they disappear and score. The game ends when the tetramino emitter collides into the block.
To play, just unpack the archive wherever you please and run `indirectris.exe` (Windows) or `./indirectris` (Linux)
Fixed. According to virustotal, the current windows distribution is clean. It was probably a false positive with pyinstaller anyway, those were knowntohappen.
Really interesting idea! I think this prototype shows this might be a touch too hard. I found it a lot easier once I grabbed both attractors together, so that I didn't have to work out how to avoid the other one. It might work better for a colour-matching game, where there's only 2-3 colours that you need to connect 4 in any shape.
@radical-dog Another good thing to do with the second attractor is to drop it in the center of the construction. This way you have shapes falling roughly in the right direction and finely tune their trajectories with the other one.
match3-*anything* is, alas, not incompatible. People have already mixed them with just about every genre there is.
Cool concept. It was tough, but I managed to complete 1 3x3 area. Then the game crashed a minute later (on Windows).
I liked the ASCII graphics and the color choices. The mouse interface was a little weird, and I think keyboard controls might have worked better. If you drop both gravity sources so that they overlap, they kinda become stuck together. But in a way, that just made it slightly easier to control.
Despite the difficulty, I found myself wishing that the game was faster-paced. I wanted to see 3 or 4 tetris pieces orbiting around simultaneously!
Two small glitches that bug me - the collision physics aren't great, because sometimes blocks just hang between two other diagonal blocks without touching any of them (which is understandable for physics that complex, but it's still disappointing when I land what seems a perfect straight line shot, and it's ends up being stuck in the air), and also I sometimes lose for no obvious reason, way before I should. Other than that, I love the idea of once again successfully re-imagined Tetris, and I believe there's a potential for this kind of a game. Good job!
A really interesting game, for sure... but MAN is it difficult! It's a constant struggle against the game's physics, which normally don't work the way you want it to. Also, it's a TAD strange we don't get the option to rotate the tetrominoes... Could make it a smidge easier. Overall, though, the idea is pretty interesting, especially how you spawn tetrominoes and detect when it gets too high! Not bad at all.
@blushine I was thinking about making several pieces appear simultaneously under some circumstances, but eventually decided the difficulty was high enough as it is. I'll look into the Win crashes when I get to the post-compo cleanup. Grabbing both gravity sources is by design. Unless they precisely cover each other (again, that case is left for cleanup; I feel it's kinda cheating to release fixes between compo deadline and voting end), you can later drop them and grab only one.
@zinkler Diagonal collisions are a thing. Or does the figure stop while not touching any of its neighbours including diagonals? If so, that would be a bug. Also, do you mean you lose while tetramino emitter is still pretty far from the construction? The only loss condition is that it collides into the block that has already "fallen".
@justinooncx I dunno, wouldn't rotation make it too easy?
It would make it easier, for sure. Whether or not that's how you want the game's direction to be is something else entirely! Either way, the pieces are hard enough to control as they are, so...
Interesting concept. It's very difficult to control, and I only scored 70 points after like 10 minutes. I'm not clear on what the genres are that are being combined here, Tetris + ??? but it's an interesting game nonetheless.
Loving the visuals on this one. Took me a little bit to figure out what I was doing. Really interesting concept that I think could be expanded on with more different "tools" like the attractor. Nice work.
I had to read the instructions two times before being sure to understand what was happening, but after that this was very interesting and fun.
I've just read your comment where you say putting one attracter in the center can makes things easier, and this is just what I had come to.
I like the ASCII graphics, maybe the sound when you assemble a block is too loud, but it is such a joy (because I found the game a bit hard) that it does not really matter.
Hello from Novosibirsk, fella-linuxoid! =) I didn't manage to get your linux build work (I have `alsa-plugins` installed to a different place, (here's the output), but it runs perfectly from the source code.
The game is hard to win, but very fun to just play. It feels pretty similar to _Powder Toy_. I really like the visual appearance, ASCII art is never too old. =) The game lacks polish, but it doesn't make a game less interesting (and I know how difficult it is to make a game distributable with Python, it's a real headache). Nice work!
@Yngvarr Howdy, neighbour. Don't know if it says so somewhere on LD, but I'm actually from Irkutsk.
Honestly, I hacked `simpleaudio` into my engine literally one day before LD and had no chance to properly test it. Thanks for the report. And technically, it's *impossible* to win. Like the original Tetris, there is no win condition.
Unfortunately, I found the game interesting but rather unfun. The game was very slow paced, and being able to get the pieces stuck on corners just felt bad. While the grid-based nature is necessary in some ways, it also made it hard for me to intuitively grasp the way physics/indirect control worked. Having some way to show sub-grid positioning would be very useful.
The sound effects I found more annoying than helpful. I'm not sure why exactly, sorry.
The scoring system also seemed strange. While the basics were obvious, there were all sorts of strange edge cases that I didn't seem to pick up. I'm still not sure what exactly causing an orbit until the piece disappears is worth, though I did notice that sending a piece past the edge of the screen is -2.
I like the concept of the game, but something's not quite there in the execution. I think it's mainly the physics: they were difficult to get used to and didn't seem to work in the way I thought they would. Perhaps having a preview of the block's trajectory would help in this area. The graphics and sound effects aren't my cup of tea, but they're coherent to each other and match the game well.
Very intersecting concept! I think with this exactly core mechanics, controlling stuff with gravity force, something bigger could be made.
As for this game, I wish I could see a force (direction and magnitude) applied to a specific tetramino towards each of the gravity sources. It seems like it could make the controls easier ad friendly.
Comments27
match3-*anything* is, alas, not incompatible. People have already mixed them with just about every genre there is.
Btw try out my game too if you want: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/memebumps
I liked the ASCII graphics and the color choices. The mouse interface was a little weird, and I think keyboard controls might have worked better. If you drop both gravity sources so that they overlap, they kinda become stuck together. But in a way, that just made it slightly easier to control.
Despite the difficulty, I found myself wishing that the game was faster-paced. I wanted to see 3 or 4 tetris pieces orbiting around simultaneously!
@zinkler Diagonal collisions are a thing. Or does the figure stop while not touching any of its neighbours including diagonals? If so, that would be a bug. Also, do you mean you lose while tetramino emitter is still pretty far from the construction? The only loss condition is that it collides into the block that has already "fallen".
@justinooncx I dunno, wouldn't rotation make it too easy?
I've just read your comment where you say putting one attracter in the center can makes things easier, and this is just what I had come to.
I like the ASCII graphics, maybe the sound when you assemble a block is too loud, but it is such a joy (because I found the game a bit hard) that it does not really matter.
Great work, and above all great idea!
The game is hard to win, but very fun to just play. It feels pretty similar to _Powder Toy_. I really like the visual appearance, ASCII art is never too old. =) The game lacks polish, but it doesn't make a game less interesting (and I know how difficult it is to make a game distributable with Python, it's a real headache). Nice work!
Honestly, I hacked `simpleaudio` into my engine literally one day before LD and had no chance to properly test it. Thanks for the report. And technically, it's *impossible* to win. Like the original Tetris, there is no win condition.
The sound effects I found more annoying than helpful. I'm not sure why exactly, sorry.
The scoring system also seemed strange. While the basics were obvious, there were all sorts of strange edge cases that I didn't seem to pick up. I'm still not sure what exactly causing an orbit until the piece disappears is worth, though I did notice that sending a piece past the edge of the screen is -2.
As for this game, I wish I could see a force (direction and magnitude) applied to a specific tetramino towards each of the gravity sources. It seems like it could make the controls easier ad friendly.