Hot Wax 🕯️

by trasevol-dog

Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.12

Fun★★★★★★★★★★4.06

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.33

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.38

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.33

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.06

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.54

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.79

Description:

>*You are the Wax Whisperer.*
>*Your powers may well be unmatched,*
>*But some of your enemies are still out there...*
>*Not for much longer though, not with what your are about to unleash.* :candle:

Burn continuous lines of candles to score points! The longer the fire survives the more points it brings you, and the closer it brings you to unfathomable power from this mysterious temple you've found your way to!

Controls:

* left & right to move pieces horizontally
* down to make the pieces fall faster
* up to make pieces fall instantly as far as it can
* Z & X to rotate pieces
* You can also play with a gamepad with the dpad and A/B for rotating!
* You can select a difficulty on the titlescreen! *(start with normal!)*

Notes:

This is a solo entry, only I ran out of time for the compo so I kept running with it for the jam category!

Unfortunately had to give up on adding audio because I lost too much time fighting Pico-8's coding restrictions *(only a certain total number of instructions are allowed, and it seems that number was a little too low for everything I wanted to do :smile:)*

I'm bummed about no audio, but I'm pretty happy with the game otherwise! I swear I didn't intend to make a tetris-like, I originally had differently-shaped pieces and you could only flip them horizontally instead of rotating them. But I figured it'd actually be more fun with classic tetraminoes, as they are easier to wrap one's head around, and rotation, as it gives more agency over the game which results in more fun.

Anyway I had fun making it!

Let me know your thoughts if you play it! When I started on the candle-burning puzzle idea I really didn't know if it would end up being fun, and I'm still not quite sure :smile: so I'd love it if you could tell me whether you think it is or not!

Thanks, cheers!

Tools: PICO-8

Comments26

stmate0316 Apr 2024, 02:45

it's tetris, it has candles, it's a nice variant of tetris, I love tetris, it's a great game! a few crashes here and there rn but I'm cursed anyways

Ismael Rodriguez16 Apr 2024, 05:24

I love the idea! I wish I was better at it (*please give me more fire, I need it lol*)... Best I could get is lv7 (from lv1).

HolySparks16 Apr 2024, 17:14

Honestly the fire mechanic has me stunned. It is incredible and learning how to use it is fun in itself.

Herka16 Apr 2024, 17:15

Nice take on tetris, well done that you achieved this on your own

Sam Minh16 Apr 2024, 17:16

A nice variation on tetris. I love tetris and this gives a nice twist to it. It is very satisfying to see the candles slowlybe consumed.

HollowBearGames16 Apr 2024, 17:26

Absolutely love this idea, it's a really nice twist on the theme. The graphics are really charming and the fact you done it using the pico8 restrictions is just the icing on the cake. Really found the gameplay enjoyable and pretty addicting once I realised what I was trying to do. It's certainly a shame regarding the audio but totally understandable. Great work!

Speedphoenix16 Apr 2024, 17:40

This is a really nice variant on stacker games

I especially appreciated how the rotation was properly put away from the up arrow

Loved it, will play more of it later on my pico

RollCreators16 Apr 2024, 18:00

Nice modified tetris)
I like this principle where you give good game and add some interesting mechanic

Erivas_Soulares16 Apr 2024, 18:22

Amazing Tetrislike!

It took me some time to fully understand the burning mechanic, but once it dows, it blew my mind!!

CO5MONAUT16 Apr 2024, 18:39

That's a great idea! You definitely managed to implement the tetris mechanics in a more interesting way than I did ahahh
special respect for PICO-8. Art - my respect.

Le Slo16 Apr 2024, 18:41

Very cool idea and execution, as always. It's hard to keep track mentally of multiple fires without them turning out, but I've already seen some improvement in my strategy, so it's probably more a point of the depth of the system than a bad thing. It's a same the lack of audio, is what could have helped me to play this for too long!

PieRo_PBeS_studio16 Apr 2024, 21:59

I would like to know how to make such beautiful games on pico 8, all the little animations, the visual effects, the little flames, the lights, the precision of the movements and collisions. The UI is beautiful and gives the information you need. The general feedback for the player is great and above all innovative and super interesting gameplay as usual... too strong

LDJam user 34264017 Apr 2024, 01:48

Really cool take on tetris, once I figured out what was going on it was really satisfying. Lots of fun, great entry!!

Sheepolution17 Apr 2024, 04:27

I liked it! It was fun to make very long candles to then have them burn all the way down. The game revolves around score, but I wish it was more focussed on survival. Meaning that I would have preferred a long burn not to give you more points, but to give you a bonus instead that help you keep your field low (like those bombs). But regardless of that, another solid entry with nice graphics.

torcado17 Apr 2024, 15:57

this is great! lovely take on tetris, the string system adds a whole level of strategy i never wouldve thought about otherwise. really nice art and animation, would've loved some audio along with it! (you may want to opt-out of that category!)
nice job :)

Nick Blackwood17 Apr 2024, 18:44

Ohhhh this is very elegant in terms of design! Had a lot fun figuring out the mechanics. I think we need more games like this.

Rawb17 Apr 2024, 22:14

Really cool idea for a game. It isa clever twist on tetris. It was fun trying to set up long lines of candle to burn

JudJudson17 Apr 2024, 23:47

I love tetris so much and this is a genuinely super interesting version of it!

LDJam user 14738618 Apr 2024, 01:48

Good work!

josemwarrior18 Apr 2024, 12:32

What a level of detail for a 48-hour game. Having a difficulty selector in a jam game is commendable, but using up all of the pico-8 tokens is absolutely insane.

Local Minimum19 Apr 2024, 17:52

Cool tetris variant!

I got a bit confused because Z/X selection is not my habit and it never said anything in the instructions on how to start playing. :laughing: So I was about to give up there.

Then when I finally after pressing all buttons on the keyboard managed I played without realizing the Z/X for rotation so that was kind of a hard mode.

Finally I understood the controls and got playing.

I didn't realize though that the 1x1 was a bomb and that you had to snuff it to explode it until afterwards. But I think I accidentally made that happen once.

It's an interesting mechanic to only clear by fire and thus having to avoid placing in certain areas. I didn't get very far but I enjoyed playing.

It feels like some highscore system would have helped me stay at it and audio / music. I'm not sure if there should have been any since the rating option is still available but the game was completely silent for me.

Not understanding menu: https://youtu.be/lVI7CRL9paw

Playing without rotation: https://youtu.be/KvZQdwJFqwY
Playing with rotations: https://youtu.be/Hrk1R2lsrec

alec19 Apr 2024, 23:57

Love the little effect with the flame, and explosive tip lol. This game has revealed just how bad I am at Tetris. With some music & SFX I think this could be a standout hit!

Speedphoenix20 Apr 2024, 10:31

What's the highscore? I have trouble hitting 30k

dimesto5220 Apr 2024, 12:32

I'm really bad at this game but I clearly see that this revisitation of tetris has infinite potential and I would really like to see it in a future full game

TRASEVOL_DOGauthor22 Apr 2024, 20:40

Thank you so much for the gameplay videos @local-minimum, these are really invaluable!

And thank you all for the feedback and the kind words! I'm working on a postjam version (with sound! :smile:) which sould come out in the next few days if you're interested!