Connect up like-minded/coloured blobbies in this physics take on the matching genre. There's a good reason basically 100% of all match puzzlers and tetris-likes are on grids. Well, here's me trying something else.
This game is super cute! The concept and execution are super-well done. Did you make the music? It's so incredibly relaxing, I'd love to add it to my playlist! :heart:
@aurailus thank you! Many things went wrong and I didn't actually manage to reach the mechanics I wanted in the end, but I did manage to cut my losses and "round off" the game, so that I'm pretty proud of :P Unfortunately no I didn't make the music! I ran out of time and found some freebie music, and as I was submitting I completely forgot about the compo requirements of "everything made by me", so instead of axing the music I instead submitted for jam. Making music quickly will be something I try to learn for my next jam lol :p
@eyeofbholden thank you! It was quite a easy thing to turn a handful of variables into a series of levels and a bit of a stroke of luck coming across that! Could do with a lot more balancing, but that's a jam for you!
Love your take on the falling physics object-type puzzle! I like how each difficulty level gives you something different, makes the game interesting. The little blobs here are cute as well!
I made a stupid decision of traveling right after LD, so I can only play games on my phone today. The game looks great and the music and the art is very satisfying, but I can't drag the bubbles on touchscreen, unfortunately. I'll have to come back to it once I have access to a laptop to appreciate and rate it properly. But from the visuals and sound alone: well done!
12 490 points! Level 8! What a fun game! I honestly had a blast connecting 4 and even 5. The difficulty is well balanced, and the game is very polished. I would have loved to see a power-up, for example, a bomb that I could place to blow up everything around it, and that bomb could appear if I chain together a series of combos. However, it's really hard to implement new mechanics in such a short time. Even so, incredible game! I think it's a solid entry, and I had so much fun!
@kateryna thanks for the info! I was wondering if it would work on touch, now I wanna do it up on Android and see if it works without too much modification :) Safe travels!
@milq Yeah I'd LOVE to add more to the game, the original plan was to throw more crazy stuff in the game - connect 4 makes a block, blocks attach to each other to make tetrominos, and blocks are cleared like tetris - making lines lol, but I never got that far! Thanks for playing!
Whaoo, nice entry, it feel super polished. At first the game play on its own and then the speed picks up nicely! Art and sound goes very well together. I love the spin on a classic, I cool see how to make a gooey version where you deform the blob to make them touch rather than moving "solid" bubble. Very very cool I feel too slow today to really try for a highscore, but I'll bookmark it to come back to it later on.
Chill music, cute graphics, addictive :) Given the difficulty past level nine, I really appreciated you let us play after game over, it's weirdly soothing to group the blobbies together ! I really like how you can drag them over the others, everything is juicy in that game :)
The non-grid based match 4 certainly plays interesting. It became a sort of mad click and pull situation, and got pretty frantic by the end. I think I got to about 15k score before I eventually lost. I kept wishing I could pull groups of blobs together, but perhaps that would run counter to the core mechanics.
Anyway; nice, polished game with a lot of charm!
Also, I see you can chuck the blobs out the sides of the play area, which I don't know if it was intentional.
@jaco-van-hemert thanks for playing! You're absolutely right - the mechanic kinda comes down to frantically sorting the colours in the end, which if I'm honest I didn't really want. I had a more contemplative design in mind, but due to various reasons I just couldn't implement/figure out in time. I did have the idea of dragging groups of blobs together, it might be interesting, but I didn't have time to implement that. Also I think it probably doesn't change the frenzy of the core mechanic. One idea was to make it kind of "turn-based" - I've been working on the idea of turn-based matchmaking games, but haven't really cracked it yet, it's a fine balance between too much time think out a move being not that fun, vs being frantically throwing things everywhere in real-time.
Yes you can chuck the blobs out of the play area, I wanted to prevent that but didn't have time to. But if you toss them out you automatically lose - in the instructions: "You spill you lose!" - it's the lose condition.
Really nice ! addind physics to match3 like game is quite a good idea. Execution is on point, the game feels good to play and seeing their faces lit up is so so cute
Very cute! I like that I can pull them into submission, but that's not an efficient way to play. Kinda wanna be able to sit and play this on my phone :)
Not only are the physics well thought out, its very well executed/implemented ! You never fight against the engine, you just drag and drop, and the blobbies shimmy around to a new spot. Simple concept for a superb Polished result. I need me some blobbies ! :large_blue_circle::red_circle::white_circle::black_circle:
I am a sucker for a connecting game, and have spent so many hours in similar ones - like grindstone, this was great and cute man. The end result is super polished and I love the take on it being physics based and throwing them around the place.
Definitely would love a mobile app of this in the future, the audio was absolutely nailed as well!
Excellent implementation of mechanics :) Honestly, at first I thought it would be a boring game, but I played it for quite a long time and it was interesting. I would like to note the great work with the physics of objects and the pleasant music. It is noticeable that the game was made by an extremely experienced person. This game looks like something I could have fun killing time with instead of homework when I was in school. Great job.
it was super chill at first and I almost thought it was too easy, but it quickly started to build up. Really fun entry! Found out that I could throw them out from the side too if one of them really annoyed me >:)
this game is really kill time!! I cant stop to play for a long time,this is a perfect mobile game,wish for more content or a completed version in google play ,nice game art and music
@francoisvn yeah as I decided on the iteration of core mechanics I realised that this is a fit for a mobile device more than for a mouse, which is what I'm working on making (should be easy. Should. Who knows lol). Moreover, I wanted to make a more contemplative version of the loop so it's not so much of a mad dash arranging everything - the freeform moving of blobs that this engine allows makes it quite different from other matching games, so it doesn't really translate directly from other matching games.
@namnam yes! I really like chain reactions and I wanted a game that was more focused on that. As it is it's often too frantic to sit back and watch things unfold - I have ideas for a different version of the game that will hopefully incentivise players to work towards combos more :)
@kyllua could you elaborate on what you mean by unbalanced? You can in fact keep dragging one blob around and shift things around, but in this iteration of the core loop, that doesn't really benefit you much from what I can see? I want to make another version of the game that actually leans a lot more on the dragging one blob around.
@okshirl You certainly could throw them out the side, I wanted to prevent that but wrangling the physics engine was too much for me lol, but also you lose if you spill any blobs, so you shouldn't throw them out!
Almost any game on mobile today is a 'match-3' or 'connect-4' kind of game and they get repetitive fast. So I did not really go into this entry without prejudice. But I have to say that you really actually achieved something that is different in ways that make it interesting all over again! :smiley: Reminds me a bit of the dynamic between 'Tetris' and 'Not Tetris'. Very well rounded entry!
@bumble believe you me I know most modern match games turn out to be more of the same, I'm a huge match fan and like my favourite are still releases from 1995 and 2017 - been chasing that high of yesteryore forever now lol.
There's still definitely have a ways to go before this design would ever be ready for something that I would pay for, but it's a nice start for a jam :)
@lzic yeah if I take this further I'll do a check so that it doesn't start off with matches, but that shit is non-trivial and out of scope for a jam game :P It's cute to watch it do its own thing indeed lol
Really fun game. Music is great and the difficulty curve felt nice. Reminds me a lot of puyo puyo with the strategies where you can set up combos but this also has some strategies with trying to preserve things close enough to each other to make large chains without triggering them early.
One thing if you work on it more in post jam would be adding more weight to losing. Currently it just does the same popup as the effects on level up but you can differentiate it more from that and add some polish effects as well (lots of different options depending on what you want like screenshake, vignette, etc.)
This game is great fun, probably the most fun I've had so far this jam! I love the gameplay, it's incredibly satisfying and I had a great time playing it again and again. The music also fits the vibe perfectly, same with the sound effects. All in all, this is an amazing game and I love it, will be watching out for a full release after the jam!
@ategon yeah no I just ran out of time for more stuff and put in all the sort of progression stuff right at the end, and didn't put much thought into an ending. If I were to work on this further I'd definitely make that more differentiated. Among many other things!
@yogurtthehorse YES you're ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! The dragging was pretty much hacked together for jamming purposes and I tried to get inertia going but didn't succeed within limited time. I'd love that too! Except of course you shouldn't be throwing them anywhere or you'd instantly lose lol
Wow, wow, woow! Okay, few things... if I have to say what you bsaically basically nailed 300%, this is the relaxed feeling of it all! I felt like I am in a coffee place with my laptop and doing fun stuff that I am looking forward to. Nailed it!
What else? Extremely polished experience! Yes, even though you had more plans for this, it is polished.
Else? It gets a bit more difficult too soon or maybe I get bored quickly, not sure. Here is out of the blue idea that comes to mind when reading the comments here: a potential mechanic is a "pop" button - e.g. all combinations that were up at 5 and more - only then pop - *upon player choice*. Have no idea if this makes sense in reality, just sharing. It just felt like I wanted first to "sort things out" (Lol) and only then pop, e.g. the entire screen. I couldn't do that. Another idea - ever played Pet Rescue (mobile)? There are colored balloons there - when you click them they pop all the same-colored blocks. ; ) Bonuses from time to time?
And one complaint: LoL (I am picky bastard) - what about some less poppy animation? Like liquid, like melting, like squashing (that'd be technically more complicated I guess), pop is not relaxing enough considering the ultra-relaxed context XD
Anyway, warmest congrats for this (successful) effort! It's really good! You made a finished ultra-relaxing game.
@rodgems YES!!! I did think about colourblindness, and I would definitely address that if I take this further, but yeah, I did think about that but never got around to fixing it!! Thank you for persevering!!!
Very cute graphics and audio, which together create a really cozy vibe. The idea of using physics in a color-matching game is quite interesting—I haven't seen anything like that before. I was a bit confused at first by the delay before matches start to react and disappear, but I assume it's to give the player more time to connect additional blobbies.
@mremmele yeah that delay makes chains more than the minimum number possible, since all the blobs slide around according to physics, if they popped as soon as they connect enough, you'd only ever get 4 at a time.
It gives me mobile game vibes, in a good way. I like the concept but sadly the gameplay gets pretty boring for me pretty quickly. I guess I'm not the right person for this game. I wouldn't be surprised it'd do pretty well if it was released as a mobile game
@mechazawa thank you for saying so! Honestly, I didn't manage to hit the vibes I wanted with this game, which was more thinky and less panicky drag the same colours together. I was actually looking to be able to plan for combos and such, but didn't really have enough time to get to the design I wanted, so I'm working on post-jam changes!
A very sharp execution of a nice little concept! Reminds me a bit of the soft-body tetris games but with force-directed points! Admittedly I was a bit unsure how long it took for the lil guys to dissapear once connected, as sometimes it felt faster or slower than usual. That being said, it was wonderfully done, the music and clean bubbly graphical style were all wonderful. Very very lovely stuff!
Nice entry ! Making the cells pop feels very satisfying, and everything runs super smooth. As a colorblind person, I'll say some of the colors are very close to eachother, especially once you start adding colors.
Fantastic gamefeel - and this is honestly a technical marvel! The gameplay is fun and chaotic, although developing some more complexity would be cool - maybe special effects for each colour that vary by how many you've matched?
I managed to get to 15,500 before losing, really fun game here! Definitely should go on the app store and google play store! Just take after block blast and make a mode like this where its infinite and another where you try to get so many of each color or so many points, I hope you decide to make it a mobile app!
This was a nice polished entry! I managed to get around 15k before loosing, but I can see this expanding to a more full app store application at some point! I found one (bug?) where you could drag blorbs out of the box they fall into, which resulted in one early loss. However, the simple concept, chill lo-fi vibes, and pleasing visuals lend themselves to a fun and relaxing time. Good job!
The game is funny. You can relax with it. The graphics are simple but cute. As a minus, it seems to me that it doesn't fit the theme of tiny creatures, but it is a very captivating gameplay. Good job overall.
Fun and polished, felt like a real app! The bouncy physics is a fun twist on this kind of game. You did a great job scaling the incremental difficulty too .
i love how everything is getting out of control and the music is still the same chill tune! well done, very polished, this has a great addiction potential!
finally got to play it properly. Really satisfying relaxing gameplay, which speeds up quite fast. I got as far as level 8. Sometimes I had 4 or 5 blobbies connected and they wouldn't disappear for a while until I noticed them, moved them a bit and then they would. And yes, I did toss blobbies out of the frame accidentally and that tought me not to :) Overall I think it's a great game for mobile, and it looks really polished. Oh and I liked the difficulty progression, well thought through.
The gameplay felt really really good and polished. The animations feel really nice. It's quite zen and relaxing as it seems you have some timing buffer to give me time to look for any connections im missing before it pops. I was so focused having fun connecting the blobs I didn't realize I was losing and got game over. I wonder if there is some mode you could do where there is not as much pressure due to the lose condition? I found the speed at which I was connecting to be enjoyable... so how to keep that slower speed but still engaging and have some different win/lose state. This was really great and polished though, great work!
Really cute game, very polished! I really liked the mechanics (a fresh and new take on the classic connect 4 style) and the controls, which felt really smooth. The only downside is having to wait a little bit for connected creatures to pop, but I guess that's part of the game and of the challenge.
Very, very good game! Ridicoulusly good polish, and one of the most satisfying stack'em games I've ever played! You should release this on mobile or something! Real good.
Oh, I need this on my phone IMMEDIATELY. I could play this for hours, would love to see a full version. You say there's a good reason other games in the genre are on grids, but I don't believe you :P
Incredible polish for a jam game! Well done and as others have said, this has huge potential if you decide to create a full release! Well done with this one :)
I lost because I tried to see what happens if you move a blob out :( Well done, it's a cool game, very addictive! Feels like a mix of suika game and a match-3 puzzle game :D
I love the delayed pop, it adds a nice challenge! Was that an accidental feature? If not, brilliant, and if it was, great decision to keep it! Overall, a fantastic game!
@senso thank you lol, no it was definitely not an accidental feature - if there were no delay then you could only make the bare minimum connections to pop, so I let it delay so it allowed longer chains!
@andreia yes it's definitely a big priority for me to end up with a design that allowed more contemplative play rather than a mad dash, I just didn't manage to crack it during the jam! I can't believe I'm saying this but I think I'll have to take inspiration from Candy Crush :P
@amarokczukay lol actually yes, most other games would ramp up their music when the heat is on, I have to decide which direction to lean this design, slower or more panicky. Time will tell! :p
The game is funny and cute. Nice graphics, it's easy to understand what needs to be done. But personally, in my opinion, the game looks boring. There are a lot of similar mobile games, and they do not differ in mechanics from yours. But the game really turned out to be of high quality and it's cool. Good luck with your next projects
@keithswanger Omg! I believe you're the first person I've seen that's reached that far! Congrats! Hahaha! At least now I know it's possible... By someone other than myself lol
Amazingly tight and polished, and a real chill mood brought by the audio design. A well-made experience that still serves as a solid base to build upon or innovate. Great job!
Simple, clear and objective. This is how a Gamejam game should be. The mouse-based mechanics are a breath of fresh air for this style of game. Congratulations!
I gave this game a try earlier today but forgot to leave a rating! It was fun to quickly try to sort the Blobbies before the time ran out! Like others said, I also think this would make an excellent mobile game!
I love the game! The fact of just moving the balls around is so satisfying and very original, you feel much more freedom than in others puzzle games like that
Dude, if you release it tomorrow, I'm buying it outright. It's a game that already has the potential to be published! It's got everything: the fun, eye-catching graphics, the little elevator music that gets stuck in your head, the addictive level design... even the little messages on the side of the screen are 10/10! And the best part: you can add different skins to the boards + a multiplayer mode where we wage tetris-style war against each other, and you've got a game that will invade all mobile devices.
Hey, im the host for Score Chasers this year and wanted to ask if youre fine with me using gameplay from the game in this LDs score chasers tournament intermission video. (Would play in the breaks of the tournament on my stream). Last LD for reference
Really fun game! I don't know if it's intentional but if you drag a blob out through the right or left side of the well you get a game over. I was very confused about that to start, I think the intended game over is an overflow?
Either way the game is very cute and fun, I really like trying to go for big chains and combos.
@loveschach well if you could just drag blobbies outside of the playing area and just toss them out without consequence, you can just do that and extend the game forever... Since I couldn't stop the dragging the blobbies outside easily, how it works now is... Intended 😅
@ausstein thanks for playing! Hm yeah heck wow that is indeed the highest score so far! 💪 So yeah I didn't really manage to balance the levels very well, level 9 was really a "okay fuck it I don't have anymore content" curveball that I don't expect anyone to be able to beat 😅 even myself lol
When I take the game forward I'm gonna to be changing the mechanics up a bit to allow for a slower, more considerate pace, and that'll hopefully open up more variety of challenges to progress the game with!
Just got around to trying this and it's pleasantly addictive. Excellent music/sound design and the dragging feels good with satisfying feedback. I immediately lost seeing if I could throw a blobby into the abyss.
Nice tetris-twist in this color puzzle game. The physics felt really crunchy and I like how blobs connected when they were close. Took me a while to realize that there's a delay before they pop, but eventually got it. Usually lost after accidentally dragging a blob out of the play area.
Super clean and very easy to understand the mechanics! I loved the sound and audio of the pops. I'm not sure if it was a bug but I could drag blobs out of the play area and that would make it easier. Felt like I was cheating but I had fun
@brusi I'm sure you've realised if you tried to drop a blob out of the play area and release, you'll lose the game due to spillage :p I would have liked to limit the drag to within the area but that was additional physics shenanigans that I didn't manage to fit in!
G
Game-mon17 Oct 2024, 16:36
Super cute, absolutely adore it, the game feel is excellent! The expression on the blobs, the perfect sound design, the pop effect... Had a blast, congrats on this!
Really cute game, it managed to stay chill even if it becomes progressively impossible. I loved the detail of the blob spilling out after you lost! Great entry well done :)
Moving around the little blobbies feels so smooth and the pop sound is very satisfying. The ramp up is really interesting too, I wish there was a way to auto-pop the chains just so you could have just a bit more control, but I realize that's part of the balancing act as the difficulty ramps up. Excellent entry!
Really nice game, playing it was quite fun. Two things bothered me however (really little thing, don't worry). First, as I'm colorblind, I'm pretty sure some colore were too similar for me to distinguish them. Secondly, the physics was a nice innovative touch, to create "controlled chaos", but I think it would have been better if it was in a more defined environment, to help the player to find the limitation.
@jeffez thank you for playing when it definitely looks like it's not colorblind friendly! 🙈 I had planned to make the different colours shape identifiable too, but that ended up being out of scope for the time I had 🙈
What did you mean by a more defined environment? Not really sure how I could define it more than the classic puzzle game drop rectangle? I am working on a post jam update that'll be more considered and less chaotic, so it'll be less about reaction and more about planning, at least I hope so!
@nopogo I know that it's quite the usual thing that players don't read, but I couldn't make the text any bigger than they are now :sweat_smile: keeping the game going was just a little touch for people who like to mess about without any limits. The score stops updating after the game over message appears!
Love this! The ways difficulty increased felt super natural and the gameplay felt really smooth. What a cool take on the matching genre, haven't seen something like this before. Great work!!
Really cute and straightforward concept, really nicely executed! I like how the game has some different options to up the difficulty besides "go faster". Good work!
Comments162
And the graphics look really good. Great job!
I like how match-3 concept was reworked into connection idea. Great work!
I love the spin on a classic, I cool see how to make a gooey version where you deform the blob to make them touch rather than moving "solid" bubble. Very very cool
I feel too slow today to really try for a highscore, but I'll bookmark it to come back to it later on.
I really like how you can drag them over the others, everything is juicy in that game :)
Anyway; nice, polished game with a lot of charm!
Also, I see you can chuck the blobs out the sides of the play area, which I don't know if it was intentional.
Yes you can chuck the blobs out of the play area, I wanted to prevent that but didn't have time to. But if you toss them out you automatically lose - in the instructions: "You spill you lose!" - it's the lose condition.
Simple concept for a superb Polished result.
I need me some blobbies ! :large_blue_circle::red_circle::white_circle::black_circle:
Definitely would love a mobile app of this in the future, the audio was absolutely nailed as well!
There's still definitely have a ways to go before this design would ever be ready for something that I would pay for, but it's a nice start for a jam :)
I love it and can honestly see myself playing this more just for fun
One thing if you work on it more in post jam would be adding more weight to losing. Currently it just does the same popup as the effects on level up but you can differentiate it more from that and add some polish effects as well (lots of different options depending on what you want like screenshake, vignette, etc.)
But I wish bubbles had inertia so I could throw them away
What else? Extremely polished experience! Yes, even though you had more plans for this, it is polished.
Else? It gets a bit more difficult too soon or maybe I get bored quickly, not sure. Here is out of the blue idea that comes to mind when reading the comments here: a potential mechanic is a "pop" button - e.g. all combinations that were up at 5 and more - only then pop - *upon player choice*. Have no idea if this makes sense in reality, just sharing. It just felt like I wanted first to "sort things out" (Lol) and only then pop, e.g. the entire screen. I couldn't do that. Another idea - ever played Pet Rescue (mobile)? There are colored balloons there - when you click them they pop all the same-colored blocks. ; ) Bonuses from time to time?
And one complaint: LoL (I am picky bastard) - what about some less poppy animation? Like liquid, like melting, like squashing (that'd be technically more complicated I guess), pop is not relaxing enough considering the ultra-relaxed context XD
Anyway, warmest congrats for this (successful) effort! It's really good! You made a finished ultra-relaxing game.
Not the most colourblind friendly, but since moves aren't limited, I could trial and error the ones I had trouble with!
Graphics and UX are very smooth. 👍 Would blob again.
Well done, it's a cool game, very addictive! Feels like a mix of suika game and a match-3 puzzle game :D
Overall, a fantastic game!
Fun game!
grafhics is also cool
It's a game that already has the potential to be published! It's got everything: the fun, eye-catching graphics, the little elevator music that gets stuck in your head, the addictive level design... even the little messages on the side of the screen are 10/10!
And the best part: you can add different skins to the boards + a multiplayer mode where we wage tetris-style war against each other, and you've got a game that will invade all mobile devices.
Seriously : release it. Now ! :smile:
Either way the game is very cute and fun, I really like trying to go for big chains and combos.
that is one good game, I hope there will be more levels soon. Also I need this on my phone!!! that's 5 stars for sure! Congrats!
I really like the game design and especially the audio, both sound effects and music
Creative interpretation of the theme
The only small critizism i have is the insane difficulty increase from level 8 to 9
I played three rounds all ended in level 9
Level 8 feels like I can play it forever and then 9 is already impossible
When I take the game forward I'm gonna to be changing the mechanics up a bit to allow for a slower, more considerate pace, and that'll hopefully open up more variety of challenges to progress the game with!
Usually lost after accidentally dragging a blob out of the play area.
Was very stressful, but the music was very cozy.
Nice job!
Great entry well done :)
Either way, really nice work. Good Job !
What did you mean by a more defined environment? Not really sure how I could define it more than the classic puzzle game drop rectangle? I am working on a post jam update that'll be more considered and less chaotic, so it'll be less about reaction and more about planning, at least I hope so!