Ludum Dare #42compo

Geometry Merge

by m8rix

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.55

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.49

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.54

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.64

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.10

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.64

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.06

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.70

This little puzzle game is all about merging blocks (and not running out of space and steps...)!
Control one block at a time and try to match it with a similar block, without using up all of your moves.
If you merge a block 3 times, it disappears and gives you extra steps plus lots of juicy points.
Reach for the highest score possible!
Developer high score: 27 000.

Note: The game in its current state may be a bit too easy when you get the hang of it. However, an updated and tweaked version will be released right when the Ludum Dare is over. And a new gamemode will be added, too!

Controls:

Move - Arrow Keys

Place block - Spacebar

Genres: puzzle

Comments33

Teo Miklethun12 Aug 2018, 23:52

Very steep difficulty curve, but very fun and amazing sound design!

LaytanL_12 Aug 2018, 23:55

Hey, cool game! I like how you have to choose if merging is actually worth the steps it will take, very nice idea and implementation of the theme.

Valden12 Aug 2018, 23:59

This is a really interesting puzzle mechanic ! I find however that the board is too big. That creates a really slow beginning where you don't realy care about the placement of your blocs.

Ghen12 Aug 2018, 23:59

very cool and unique puzzle game, i never seen something like this, definitely innovative imho, the difficulty is not a joke

jackou12 Aug 2018, 23:59

liked the sounddesign - maybe a music track would have been nice too!

piece ofcheese13 Aug 2018, 00:00

Cool idea. I found it to be a bit too easy to manage the squares once I understood the game. Maybe you could make it get harder the further you get? Or also maybe you could have different shapes for the play area. Anyway, I liked it!

DoubleBiceps13 Aug 2018, 00:57

Nice little game, simple but cool ! Maybe a little music in background ?

gagouman13 Aug 2018, 02:17

Fun twist at the theme, love the simple concept and well designed graphics. The only thing that would have add to the game would have been a background music track. Great work!

Kaisean Games13 Aug 2018, 07:13

I got 73000 and then I quit because it was too repetitive and no increase in difficulty. The way I played, I think I could reach any score...

But all in all, very nice idea and execution. I am not a fan of chiptunes, but for a compo game, sounds reasonable :)

Adding more colors with time would make the game ending inevitable at some point, so that's the direction I'd go.

Well done!

M8rixauthor13 Aug 2018, 09:10

Thanks for your comments!

@jackou
@doublebiceps
@gagouman
Was running low on time, but I'd definetly make some kind of bgmusic if there was more!

@piece-ofcheese
@kaisean-games
Stupid me decided to raise the amount of extra steps from 5 to 7 right before publishing. Yup, it's definetly too easy when you get the hang of it. Maybe I'll tweak the numbers again.

bnmkt13 Aug 2018, 11:06

Ok so the game seems difficult at first but when you understand THE technique it is rather simple. (I agree, giving 7 instead of 5 is a pretty bad idea)

What could be good would be for example to increase the number of blocks to merge according to the score in order to make the game harder ^^

Still a very good game!

Dries Vuylsteke13 Aug 2018, 11:32

Super fun approach to the theme. I didn't really think while playing and that is what kept it interesting. It's like one of those 2048 games, it doesn't take much to figure it out but that doesn't mean it becomes less fun. Great job on this, could probably be a nice mobile game if you port the movement.

pomb13 Aug 2018, 13:21

Really cool! I think it's a little unforgiving, and you can probably award movement points for just matching a block or award more movement points the less moves you take to match to the next block. Pretty neat idea.

Mathiouza13 Aug 2018, 13:28

Nice concept ! I was already interested when seeing the thumbnail ^^ And I am not disapointed ^^ Nice puzzle game with great machanics ^^

Keep coding :)

LastLeaf13 Aug 2018, 17:52

Addictive puzzle game! Now I am researching if there is a strategy to play this game forever. The mechanics are so interesting. Great job!

caeonosphere13 Aug 2018, 20:51

Like others, I was also able to reach an arbitrarily high score and step count. Understandable -- I didn't spend much time tweaking the balance of my game either! I was really surprised by how fun the core mechanic was, and how long I kept playing. If you added more variety, maybe blocks that do different things, this could be built out into a full game. Perfect simplicity.

meltobis13 Aug 2018, 21:07

At the beginning I was like, what do I have to do? but when I got it I found it really funny and a cool mechaninc for a puzzle game.

Helen13 Aug 2018, 23:47

It's hard to get any further, when you've had a bad start. It seems a bit random and unbalanced. But I like the idea of the puzzle system. You are really running out of space - that's nice :)

Hare Software14 Aug 2018, 09:31

Took me a turn to get used to, but had quite some fun when I figured it out. Perhaps give like a few steps each time you combine a block? Maybe I am just not too good yet, either way, great job!

tetra14 Aug 2018, 12:25

I really enjoyed this one! I ended up playing for quite some time. I found a good-ish strategy was to mash space at the start and then work with what you've been given.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/296991095## game at 5:00

Truc_e14 Aug 2018, 18:00

Fun, unique, polished. I have nothing negative to say

AwiX15 Aug 2018, 07:38

A good game idea, the music should be improved. The graphics are good.
Try our game too, maybe you'll like it)

Zinski15 Aug 2018, 17:24

Little very interesting puzzle game! I think that levels to solve would perhaps be a better way to learn game mechanics and allow interesting progression over the game! I loved the minimalist style though! Great job!

M8rixauthor16 Aug 2018, 19:01

I appreciate all of your comments and feedback! I'm very glad that most of you seem to have enjoyed the game :)

And thanks @tetra for the little promotion :P

Nam Nguyen16 Aug 2018, 19:47

Pretty solid on the theme, I like the mechanic. A very fun game, I can play this all day really

CaptainDreamcast17 Aug 2018, 09:08

I always play the game before reading the comments, so after I was super proud of my 30000 score, my heart got shattered to bits when I saw those "infinite points" comments.

Although that does make me wonder what the optimal strategy is, my strategy was always to only merge two blocks if they had a distance of two moves or less. Had a few nailbiters there, I managed to come back from zero steps left to the triple digits, so you really made an interesting way to come back from sticky situations. I was constantly on edge, a super fun game!

ursagames17 Aug 2018, 10:59

I had a lot of fun with this one! Adding in some more juice and difficulty ramp up and you would have a really addictive game. Thanks for sharing this with my stream!

arctic_allosaurus19 Aug 2018, 15:34

I liked the puzzle mechanic and nice take on the theme. After a while the sounds started to sound a bit repetitive, but that's something to consider in further development. Good work! :)

Rahim_Pxr27 Aug 2018, 22:18

Nice game, Love how everything is balanced!
Good luck, Don't forget to take a look at ours if you don't mind and see what it's like when we just focused on graphics in this game jam!
Game Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/spacelab-42a

Wassim29 Aug 2018, 14:49

Very addicting gameplay loved the concept that fits well with the theme!
Got me some time to get used to it but it's amazing scoring 53550 won't be regretted! :smile:
Wish you the best of luck!
( We're sorry about the situation that happened earlier! )

M8rixauthor29 Aug 2018, 15:31

Thank you very much @wassim! No need to be sorry at all! Let's just play and rate games for the last couple of days before deadline and be hyped for the final results :smile:

Johnny Turbo1 Sep 2018, 18:57

I definitely enjoyed your game! It was pretty challenging at first but I soon found out how to optimize the game and I was quickly able to rack up a score of 69000 before I finally called it quits. It got to a point where I had over 100 moves available and it wasn't really going down from that. I think if you made the game a bit more difficult your score increases, it would be a whole lot more fun. Your art style is simple but very effective. Overall I enjoyed my time with your game. Congratulations on making a complete game in 48 hours!!

M8rixauthor1 Sep 2018, 23:09

Thanks @johnny-turbo for playing! I know... I was dumb not testing it enough before publishing. However, a more balanced version will be released right when the jam is over. And it will include a second gamemode ;)

Other games by @m8rix

★3.45

★3.86