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Start with a deck of just few simple cards and proceed to use it to beat stages by placing the cards on the field so that the pips connect. After each beaten stage you can not only pick a new additional card to add to your deck but also one of the presented special code injections that affect how the game will play out.
You can then continue going on until you can't beat the par score of the stage anymore. How high can you climb on the online leaderboards?
Made for GitHub Game Off 2021 during November 2021 using the following tools:
- Unity 2021.1
- Inkscape
- krita
- Garage Band
- Audacity
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orphanizer + replacement is broken
Broken as in too good or like it literally breaks the game or doesn't work?
both
haha, I just played the daily, it didnt have orphaniser but it did have replacement, it was rather buggy and actually made me have a lot of fun because i kept laughing at the weirdness. I did take a screen shot though. I think what is happening is when a card is destroyed then "replaced" sometimes the replaced card thinks its in a different location. This results in incorrect linkages and cards getting sucked under each other with magnets. This happened on multiple stages before this screenshot and without the use of magnets.
I have a love hate relationship with this game. In general, it's great. I do feel however that there are times where the difficulty of passing a level suddenly becomes incredibly harder than previous levels or even impossible. It's due to the spawning tiles occurring on a level where the requirement is joining pips on already placed tiles. I really want to like the Daily Runs (my friend and I have been playing them a lot) but we both feel the run stops (almost every time) due to it being impossible (eg not enough tiles) not due to lack of skill.
Maybe there is something I'm missing? I'm aware I'm not good at this game but I'd rather end a run because I suck not because a level was unachievable.
I also think it would be great if your personal best was displayed on the main screen.
Yeah it's a tricky one. The levels obviously need to get harder so that the run will end at some point but of course it feels bad if you face something that is impossible. I really should take this game to the operation table at some point and give it some love in the form of a new patch. I guess it's been long enough now that getting back to it might even spark some new nice features it could use.
Thanks for your reply. Totally agree they need to get harder. If there was a way in the daily runs for it to test if completion was possible after it generated the level I think that would be a big improvement. But that might be a super difficult thing to do, I dunno , I'm not a coder! If its something you think you would enjoy doing then your players would appreciate the effort, but don't tear your hair out over solving it...especially given its such lovely hair :)
It could be doable. But for dailies, it would probably need to be checking whether it could be completed with a set of any offered tiles as I wouldn't want a different task to be generated for two different players.
I agree
Nice game, are there any things you would add if you were to finish the game? What kind of mechanics would you plan on adding? I know you're not working on it anymore, just wanna know how you would update it significantly if you could.
Thanks! I don't know really. If I had any grand ideas, I probably would add them. This is one of my games with the most plays so it's not out of the question that I will update it some day.
Yeah, I can see why it's the most played! Although, I just played Arithmometer and I like it even more than this XD. What are the main sort of mechanics you would add if you could? I'm interested to see where this could have gone if you did update it/do in the future!
I have no ideas really at the moment. Probably more skills and different kinds of tiles/pips. Basically any things adding variety to gameplay.
draw pile and pause button always get stuck in the middle of the screen
Hey, have you made any changes to the game since? If so, does the source have these included changes? It would be cool to see how you implemented any of the suggestions in the source code if you have. Thanks.
Nope, haven't made any updates to the game since the original release.
Wow, that was quick. Thanks for letting me know :)
whats the meaning of "link to 3 pips"
I wish they can update it :(
Amazing idea making an amazing game :)
love it, always play it during my breaks! I would love to see it as a mobile game, would be such a great idea!
Cool thanks! Yea been thinking about maybe bringing it to mobile (or at least making the browser version mobile friendly) but haven't really made any efforts towards it yet.
cool man, really excited to see what you'll do next anyway, great gameplay!
VERY cerebral. Best I got was 14k. Pleasant design all around, including ui, graphics, and motion. I had a lot of false starts, I wonder if that's a learning curve or if the randomized starting point is very impactful. I would say that, aside from balance, this is a top-tier game.
"Link to three pips" What does that mean? What are pips?
The backwards bug doesn't tell you...
Other than that - really charming game! and I love how it utilizes code and shows the actual code
Pips are the correct term for the little black dots that represent value on dice and dominos. This screenshot from the dev shows a move about to be made. It would connect two pips, as shown by the two black hint bars.
OOOOH
See- my first language isn't english, so I actually didn't know that! and all that came up when I searched on google were squiggly lines and numbers - but I geeeet it now!
We just call them "Pricks" where I'm from lol
Thank you for explaining heh! :D I appreciate it!
No problem! :3
I had a run ended by a link to four level with raining blanks.
There should be some "Jokers" or so that allow you to skip a level. This would help a lot with levels where you have no chance to win, eg. levels where you are to connect two tiles but with dropping cards, blocking the way.
lol the being able to pull cards out of your deck is hilarious.
who did the singing? it's great
I have no idea really. They were cut from some a cappella sample. Can't remember the exact source though.
There seem to be some issues with the Replacer injection.
Sometimes, the replacement card seems to not be counted by pushers and pullers and can be covered by other cards.
Also, the Replacer in combination with the Orphanizer can repeatedly destroy and create cards until a Tilt occurs. If this is done again, the replacement card might be placed on the same location.
Also, the par progression seems a bit excessive at times.
Great game, thanks for making it.
Yeah there is something weird going on with Replacer. Must time some timing issue as it doesn't always do that. Yeah there are quite a few combos that would go infinite and that is exactly why the tilt mechanic exists. This one doesn't net you that much score though.
The pars increasing mega exponentially is very much intended. It's a score game after all and it needs to end at some point. I tried to balance it so that it would be very very difficult after 20 and impossible when getting near 30. But it has been proven to me that even 60 is achievable.
Thanks for playing! ❤️
I suppose my complaint is that progression seems to be tied too heavily to randomness in the cards and injections that you are offered.
What dose it mean about tilt when I have a infinite loop?
it just stops infinite combos preventing infinite scores while also getting stuck in a loop.
Quitting the game on injection selection screen just takes you to the next stage, and you become "down an injection"
it just really sucks when you get a broken build and die to link to
Yeah, those link tasks can be unfair. I will at least nerf them to at least only have a target you can actually achieve with your cards.
i got link to 2 and got to the 1380 one
I think that the "link to" are kind of nice at making you think about your build and card placement. The hardest one I had was "link to 7", which was possible to finish with only one card (if everything was placed around it), and I enjoyed building it and thinking about my placement
Rotations are way too broken, they end up making a infinite loop that is really fun
It’s actually way easier to go infinite with pushers and pullers but of course it depends on what injections you get. But yeah, added in thre tilt mechanic pretty soon on development as these infinite combos started surfacing.
Just played the online version, and during one level, I received the special task, "link to five." I wasn't sure what that meant, and I thought I had gotten the special task by having five tiles that were linked, but I was told that I didn't achieve the goal. Did the code not recognize that I had five linked tiles, or did I misunderstand?
Yeah the link tasks seem to be the generally most confusing task to players to underatand. And of course even more so if you don’t read what Scalab says about it. Basically it’s just that you need some card you place to connect to five pips in the surrounding neighbour cards. Ie. seeing five lines go away from the card before you release it.
I will definitely do something to it on the next version. It’s too confusing and can be outright unfair and/or impossible even with higher numbers.
Detonator, Bommerman, Replacement breaks the entire game but because of tilt it can't get nearly the number of points it should be getting and loses pretty quickly.
I may have found a few fun glitches... and recorded them :))
Read through the comments, and it seems other people may have? I believe it's to do with orphaniser and replacment
And then was lucky enough to find a few more cards that broke it... more
Fun ones at least. 😅 But yeah, there are some ”known” issues with explosions and replacemets.
truly fantastic, unbelievable that you're giving this away for free, only real complaint i have is no way to natively turn off the music, as the music loop does get a little repetitive. love the inclusion of what looks like the actual code, incredible creativity
When a bomb is stopped by a "Tilt" infinite combo stopper, it has a tendency of breaking the tiles that were supposed to blow up but didn't. It might be at the result of the "replace" code injection triggering visually but not mechanically, making effectively fake "ghost" tiles.
i discovered that if you place a card down with a bomb and it activates and both cards get destroyed, if you have orphanizer it's just game over
literally impossible if you use bomberman starchild chaos and danger levels on connect tiles
why does a tilt happen and what does it do
It’s just there to stop going infinite with the combos.
it happens so early though
also it makes the cards go wonky like i wont be able to connect some cards with others and the scoring line will just stop even though it can continue
I think that is a bug which at least few people have encountered and completely unrelated to the tilt mechanic. It might have happenes to you just at that same time. There is a code injection which increases the tilt limit too which is tuned a bit low to make the injection seem like a more attractive pick.
isn't that injection stack size, i have always been wondering what stack size does
Yup, that’s it.
yaay, i'm 643th place!
wish i could play in on my phon. it is so good and fun game
A mobile version with some improvements and additions is something I’m really considering as it’s been getting pretty nice reception.
A super game. Needs some clarifications for the injections, and some clarification of the modifiers in each stage if any. Screenshots or gifs will help non-English speakers understand each part.
Wow, this is really fun. The music is awesome. The pick a code mechanic is really unique.
wish it was fully mobile friendly
Awesome work, super fun to play! And the music is great as well! I did manage to run into a bug however.
When you play a 'connect the tiles' level with the 'orphanizer' code injection, and place a bomb tile next to one of the special tiles, upon explosion of the bomb tile, the special tile will activate and orpahnizer will remove it as it is 'alone'. This makes completion of the level impossible.
Fantastic, would have been a 100% instabuy. Got to #20.
Couple of notes:
* The game can force you to lose by requiring to "link seven" when you have no seven-pip cards in your deck.
* When a bomb tile gets destroyed and replaced via the "replace" upgrade, the pips on this card won't link properly anymore.
add a cheat code of some sort
Hey, I did a small playthrough of your game. The sound effects are so satisfying and "Pick Code" feature was pretty creative (eventhough I need more brain power to understand that;)
SOOOOOO GOOD!!! how long it take you to make, its just amazing!?
Thanks! ❤️ I made it quite casually during a month. On average maybe put something like an hour or two per day to it.
man you must be pretty good thats such a short time for a game like this, i hope to see it get updates and more polish and content.
this game is so fun. managed to get #1 spot and only slightly regret making my username fartass. once it gets going it is so fun to plan out your cards and see your plan come into fruition. the strat is getting the push all and pull all upgrades and then pairing pull/push cards up to make infinite loops. combine that with upgrades that add stars to the board (or that add bombs to the board if you have the defuser) and with the stack upgrades and you can eventually end up with 30+ stars looping over a hundred times. the strat is pretty consistent too if you use the middle 3x3 grid for the pip cards and use the edges for matching up push and pull cards. at that point it's all about seeing how intricate you can make your loops (matching up multiple push/pull/rotate cards) and pip chains. the main con is that it takes a lot of time for the game to go through a turn especially when you have 3 +1 stack cards like I did and an intricate loop system. this game was fun to have on in the background while I did something away from the computer though. main bug is that cards could occupy the same grid space and do overall weird stuff if I had a weird push/pull card combo going all at once. also the link seven goal is absolutely brutal I had it with the guy that pushes your cards down and that's what ended my 3779074 run.
Haha, only slightly. 😅
There is actually a hidden speed up feature if you hold down space while the scoring is going on. I was supposed to add a tutorial message about it the first time your scoring takes long enough but pretty sure I forgot it.
Yeah the levels are indeed absolutely trying to make you fail past 20. At that point you've already mastered everything the game offers really and will start feeling repetitive.
how do the link x number stages work i'm so confused
You have to link the pre-populated tiles to each other. Make them connect.
no i mean the stages that just say link three tiles with a clear board and no par
3 'pips' have to connect to another 3 'pips' when placing a tile.
oh okay thank you so much :)