Rising Pyramid

5 years later, this game launched on Gamefound as a board game.

First of all, this game seriously lacks polish. It was made in the last 8 hours, and some stuff like tutorial or highscores were roughly bodged together, and it lacks sounds and decent graphics. But, the core gameplay is all there. Entrance barrier may be a bit higher, so be prepared please.

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If you don't like reading walls of texts, play in your browser now!

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Take role of an elder pharaoh, preparing for his death by building a pyramid for himself. In other words, tell thousands of your slaves to build it for you.

Build the pyramid from blocks as they arrive from the mines. Try to make areas of same symbols. Will you cash out early, or will you build your epic combo at risk of getting nothing at all in the end?

Controls

* Click above your pyramid to place blocks

* Right click to swap symbols on the selected block

* Click inside your pyramid to cash your blocks

* Press 1-4 to select different blocks to place

* Press P to restart

Gameplay

Start off by joining together blocks of same color. If you click on a group, you cash it.

The amount of money earned is the triangular number of number of symbols in one group.

Number of symbols	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	...
Money gained	1	3	6	10	15	21	28	...

In this example, I am going to earn 6 money after clicking the group of 3 green blocks.

Once you have money, you can (and should) use it to open and upgrade mines. There are 4 mines total, and at start you only have 1 active.

If you manage to place all the blocks from all the mines and finish the pyramid, you win. Your final score is the total money earned throughout the game + money left at the end + remaining time (in seconds). Try and hunt for the top spots!

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*"BoltKey! But what does this game have to do with the theme?"*

Good question fellow jammer! My first idea was trading slaves. Each one had some skillset, and you had to carefully sell and buy slaves in order to earn the most. I started with about 17 hours to go and spent about 8 hours on it.

I completely lost the vision. I didn't know how to finish it. I overscoped.

But the other theme about slaves was pyramid building. I was thinking of some system where you have slaves that work in the mines, slaves that transport the stones and slaves that actually build the pyramid. You would buy and sell slaves of each specialization as needed.

I could not see that coming together in 8 hours.

So I ended up with just the theme of building a pyramid. I made a simple fast puzzle concept, had it completely prepared, and put it together in those last 8 horus.

Thanks for reading! Have fun playing the Ludum Dare games today!

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I really hope to have time to make post-compo with sounds and graphics as I quite like the core gameplay.

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Congrats to @martomate for being the first to finish the game!