This doesn’t really have anything to do with the competition, but I thought I’d let you guys know. Thanks to Hamumu’s suggestions I made a quick update to my entry M3 – Molesting the Match-3 Market.

The most drastic change is in the way the checking for matches works in the game. Now the game lets everything fall down first and then checks for matches (as suggested by Hamumu). I also changed the colors of the blocks so that the contrasts between them is higher now.

You can download the new version from here: M3_release2.zip (2.3 Mb) (Release 2).

Inspiration for this game was this blog post, which somewhat explains the name.

The idea in the game is that you’re a casual games’ level designer and it’s your job to create levels for the game, in which the players can get the maximum score without really doing anything. Because the truth is that’s what most commercially successful casual games are like. Big rewards with minimum input from the player.

Download

M3_ludumfinal.zip (2.3 Mb) (Windows binaries)
M3_source.zip (0.5 Mb) (Source code)

Instructions

Drag the pieces around and click start. The colors will be destroyed as they touch each other. Try to go for the big multiple chains.

[space] – swaps between the editor and game.
[m] – toggles sounds.

Read more from game’s “homepage”…

4 hours to go: So I ended up implementing the animation system. It turned out to be a really good thing. It helped me out a lot… I even managed to constrain myself from over engineering it.

Overall things are looking pretty good. I have still some small things to do (tutorial screen), but I could probably “ship” the game as it is. Some more polish would be nice and sounds would be really cool (I’m looking at you SFXr) . I’ll probably have to sacrifice a hour to add them. It’s really hard for me to say how well the gameplay works. It’s interesting, but I’m not sure if it’s compelling enough. And now that I think about it, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else came up with a very similar game mechanic…

Here’s a shot from the current build:

Now it’s the beginning of the second day. Morning so to speak. I still have something like 15 hours to go, which should be plenty, if I don’t end up wasting it by doing something idiotic. Like starting to build this elaborate animation system, which seems really tempting… I sense the presence of a Programming Succubus.

Yesterday I got off to a really slow start. I over slept and lost something like 10 hours. But I got a lot done. The gameplay is pretty much there already (little tweaks here and there) and today should be all about the “polish”.

Here’s a screenshot of the game in action…

Yeah, it’s a color matching game… I feel so ashamed.