Ludum Dare #41compo

MATCH3+CONNECT4

by sean-s-leblanc

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.84

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.78

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.67

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.99

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.10

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.64

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.47

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.26

CONTROLS

- arrow keys, z/x/c

HOW TO PLAY

- drop pieces in empty slots
- swap pieces in filled slots
- match 3+ to earn swaps
- connect exactly 4 to win

More detailed instructions:
- Players alternate taking turns.
- The basic move is to select an empty slot: this will drop a piece of your colour (connect4-style).
- You can also do a swap: if you select a filled slot, and then press towards another filled slot, the two pieces will swap places (match3-style).
- Performing a swap requires points: you earn a point whenever a match is made with your colour, and you lose one when you do a swap.

Note: I'd hoped to have an AI opponent so folks could play singleplayer, but unfortunately ran out of time before it was playable, so you'll need a local multiplayer partner to play properly.

Tags: #2d, #connect4, #local multiplayer, #match3, #pico-8, #turn-based

Genres: puzzle, strategy

Tools: PICO-8

Comments32

Abraxas Interactive23 Apr 2018, 01:47

Nice, I saw your gif on Twitter and was excited to play this -- really well done, the game feel, the polish. Super jealous.

tipyx23 Apr 2018, 13:49

Nice polish on this entry :)

Damien Remars23 Apr 2018, 14:01

Cool, combining these 2 similar concepts works great! Speaking of which, did you respect the theme? :stuck_out_tongue: GG, I gave you 5 stars on theme anyway!

Blinkenlights23 Apr 2018, 18:29

IT'S SO POLISHED! You could sell this! Not that you should, I love donationware (because I can't afford anything *sob*). Absolutely brilliant.

blubberquark23 Apr 2018, 20:02

So much game feel!

Matt Fabius24 Apr 2018, 03:45

This was a cute idea. I liked the retro style, not just the art but the boot up and everything. I found the controls to be unintuitive. In the web version, I had to press the M button to start the game or check how to play but I didn't know that to begin with so I was just trying to press Enter which pauses the game I guess (but this also wasn't clear to me). So the flow there was game starts -> "start game" is highlighted" -> I try to press enter to begin -> a new menu pops up which appears to me to be a game start menu -> pressing continue does nothing -> confusion. Once I figured that out though, the game was a lot of fun. Good work!

Sean S. LeBlancauthor24 Apr 2018, 05:02

@matt-fabius ah sorry about that! The menu that pops up when you pressed enter is a pico-8 built-in thing. The key choice probably seemed a bit weird too, but it actually has multiple buttons that do the same thing: it maps z/x, c/v, and n/m all to two "buttons". The first two sets are fairly common for keyboard controls, you just happened to stumble on the weirdest one!

gamepopper24 Apr 2018, 12:59

Really fun competitive game and very well polished. Works surprisingly well!

HailBurns24 Apr 2018, 13:31

Good job! Loved it.

le_american24 Apr 2018, 17:23

love this game! i really love the graphics and the idea!

FabianLC24 Apr 2018, 21:38

Very good multi player game, very simple yet fun. Also nice presentation, color swap, particles and other effects look really nice.

saucygames25 Apr 2018, 01:44

Perfect for local coop multiplayer. Audio and graphics feel perfect.

Rombus25 Apr 2018, 04:35

+1 for pico 8 :D

Really polished game here!

I'll jump in the code to see a couple of things that caught my attention, like the explotion animations and the swell effect in the sound.

Congrats on the entry!

McCordinator25 Apr 2018, 21:25

Hilarious idea, and very smooth gameplay and visuals. You inspire me with pico-8! :)

If you have time, check out my pico-8 entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/golden-beak-golf

torcado26 Apr 2018, 03:49

really awesome concept, i didn't think it was possible to spinoff connect4 in such a well designed fashion. It creates really interesting strategies. and of course pico8 is always great to see. nice job! :smile:

gre26 Apr 2018, 07:59

that's an interesting concept and it comes with interesting new stategy to play this. too bad you didn't had an AI to play against but it would clearly be some work to implement a good one.

Local Minimum26 Apr 2018, 17:59

I tested around against myself a little and it seems really complex and challenging game to be good at. Cool idea. I almost gave up before coming to the game, which might be a pico8 thing but having enter give you a reset kind of option in the menu was really confusing.

Raiyumi29 Apr 2018, 03:42

Unfortunate there's no AI to play against and had noone with me, but this has some amazing polish! :)

chainedlupine29 Apr 2018, 03:58

That's a pretty neat concept! That's cool that Pico-8 can export to WebGL, didn't know that.

Liked it, very polished visuals. Really dig that bootup animation of the board.

Justintime4u2bu29 Apr 2018, 04:50

uh oh i broke it :O good game though I didn't have anyone to play with would be cool to see a CPU player update!

paddywhq29 Apr 2018, 05:18

I love the graphics and the music, the concept is great.
One thing is I tried to use enter to start several times then I found the correct key is z.
(the situation above makes me LOL)

legavroche29 Apr 2018, 05:48

Very well polished: the audio, the animations, the frames, everything. Not much I can add, a mash-up of two tried-and-true concepts with a fascinating twist that was tastefully executed.

roaderful29 Apr 2018, 07:08

Nice game :smile: is always a joy to see what awesome things are don with pico-8

bunnybreaker29 Apr 2018, 11:31

I love Match 3 and Connect $ so was super excited when I saw this. Seems great, but I have no friends, so only played against myself :(

Regardless, the game has nice graphics and sound. Nicely done :)

29 Apr 2018, 13:54

and what are the incompatible genres?

impbox29 Apr 2018, 15:21

Kinda hard to play with one player, but beautifully polished!

csanyk29 Apr 2018, 17:37

Oh this is brilliant. Well done! It is really challenging, since the usual Connect 4 strategy is completely upended by the Match 3 mechanic. The music is fantastic, as are the sound effects.

Julink1 May 2018, 17:52

It's a really cool idea! The graphics and the feedbacks are so successful!

nilstastic3 May 2018, 19:03

A very nice idea implemented very well. Nice graphics and the game felt very well crafted. Good work!

PeachTreeOath9 May 2018, 03:31

Oh boy this is like how it feels like when you play 3d chess for the first time and suddenly all rules go out the window. Sounded like a pretty mild mashup of games at first but then once you play it you realize how crazy it gets since the core mechanics of the 2 are at odds with each other. I kinda would be interested in seeing a high level breakdown of this game, seems like there are some broken tactics but I'm not clever enough to figure them out.