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[harsay]

Web version is available here: https://125.cool

Android version is available here: Google Play


125 is a match 3 game but in real-time.

I'm trying to teach game mechanics through the gameplay instead of having a tutorial.

Previous versions imposed move limit. It was removed for being too confusing.

Right now, the game speeds up as your score grows.

The plan now is to add a feature that will show progression through visuals. This means that the game should change its' colour scheme when difficulty increases. Tetris on NES does something similar.

From the technical side of things, the game will be migrated from PIXI.js to cocos2d-x very soon so it can target platforms outside of the web.

a gif

[harsay]

Now the difficulty is based on the score, block numbers are purely random and more of them are being added when there is not enough them on screen. The game should be now much more engaging.

[Ordnas]

Cool, I wil give it a shot! 

[harsay]

Added some juice which means that every action leads to animation and sound effects! I've adjusted to the colours too.

125 now feels much better IMO.

The video is available here: https://twitter.com/pietmichal/status/1191524388757213186

[harsay]

Cool, I wil give it a shot! 

Thanks! What are your thoughts? 

[harsay]

The game is now developed using HaxeFlixel. To my surprise, it took a lot of time to figure out little details.

I'll be testing multicolumn matching very soon.

Here's a gif:

[harsay]

Getting very close to initial mobile release...

The game now needs some difficulty adjustments.

[harsay]

Added little particles to make the game more alive.

Also, 125 now has different difficulties: easy, medium, hard, insane and impossible.

I might even add an ending at this point.

[harsay]

This weekend was mostly refactoring due to hitting walls around implementing different features.

It was a good kind of refactoring. It removed most of the pains and identified common patterns. Uncle Bob would be proud  

I have successfully set up google play developer account and test channels. It takes too much time for the update to be approved.

Speaking of dev accounts, I will be soon getting a Mac and iOS-based device so I can also put it on App Store.

The only visible change I've managed to get done was difficulty indicator.



I have also tweeted a video that includes an earlier version: https://twitter.com/pietmichal/status/1231331989480972290

It still doesn't feel right. I will definitely experiment with it more.

The next goal is to experiment with changing the colour scheme depending on difficulty and adding a transition animation so the player understands what happened. I have mentioned it a few posts earlier, I think it is the right moment to do it.

Plans after that include score calculation adjustments, tutorial, leaderboards, setting up a page (presskit etc.) and sound experiments.

edit

I have come up with this logo

[harsay]

I have decided to simplify how difficulty works in 125 and took Tetris as an inspiration.

Now the difficulty is represented as a level that increases when you reach certain matched blocks threshold.

The higher the difficulty the more blocks appear per second.

The score calculation has been changed and now it gives players significantly more points when they risk trying to match more blocks in a row.

[harsay]

Players were usually staring cluelessly at the screen when blocks started falling. To remedy that, a hint system has been added. It even adjusts if the player doesn't follow instructions

[harsay]

Beta version is now available on Android!

You can get it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tween.matchgame

Please let me know what you think. You are free to bring any kind of criticism.

The iOS test version release should be here in 1-2 weeks.

[Wendelstein]

I like the simplicity of the game (Install and play ).But I think that only getting faster as the game progesses becomes a little bit boring. Maybe you should instead add special blocks or some variations.
Some ideas (maybe not good ones but still...)
 -Different Blocks:
   -A block with a fixxed number.
   -A block which value decreases.
   -A block which changes its value by itself.
   -Blocks with special numbers like pi or e(Euler's number).^^
 -Maybe more colums over time.
 -Change of 'matching' pattern
   -Currently at least 3 blocks need the same number
   -1. other pattern: 3 different numbers
   -2. other pattern: Sequences e.g. 1-2-3 ; 3-4-5 ; 4-3-2
   -3. other pattern: All different numbers e.g. 1-5-2 ; 5-3-1
 -Temporal rules like:
   -No ones
   -Only ones
   -Only 4 same blocks instead of 3

[harsay]

I like the simplicity of the game (Install and play ).But I think that only getting faster as the game progesses becomes a little bit boring. Maybe you should instead add special blocks or some variations.
Some ideas (maybe not good ones but still...)
 -Different Blocks:
   -A block with a fixxed number.
   -A block which value decreases.
   -A block which changes its value by itself.
   -Blocks with special numbers like pi or e(Euler's number).^^
 -Maybe more colums over time.
 -Change of 'matching' pattern
   -Currently at least 3 blocks need the same number
   -1. other pattern: 3 different numbers
   -2. other pattern: Sequences e.g. 1-2-3 ; 3-4-5 ; 4-3-2
   -3. other pattern: All different numbers e.g. 1-5-2 ; 5-3-1
 -Temporal rules like:
   -No ones
   -Only ones
   -Only 4 same blocks instead of 3

Thank you very much for the feedback! Your ideas might help to spice the game up  

Maybe the game would benefit from adding separate levels as other mobile games do

Or maybe difficulty level could dictate active rules... hmmmm....

Let's see what others think. Maybe I'll put the progress bar back to 10%  

[harsay]

https://125.cool

Beta is now available for your browsers

The general feedback I'm getting can be summarised into: "cool game, gets too fast, why would I continue playing it, add leaderboards"

[harsay]

I've been checking Unity out yesterday. I wanted to port the game to unity so I can have a more reliable platform (compared to Haxe) and add more features to it.

On the other hand, the game is almost finished within its original scope.

I've decided to add leaderboards and release as it is for Android and iOS later as soon as I get my new MBP.

I'll treat this game as a learning experience when it comes to releasing a mobile game.

Next game will be another iteration of this idea. We'll see what time brings, I might replace 125 with new iteration or treat it as a completely separate app.

edit:

After a few hours of fighting Haxe and its extensions, I'm giving up. It appears that integrations are unmaintained (3-year-old stale pull requests fixing broken build ). Some problems require hacks. Fixing one problem leads to another.

It is a mess.

It is very hard to keep working with these tools when another tool (Unity) has much better support.

I'd rather spend a few evenings making Unity version work. Taking a few steps back to make even more towards an improved idea.

Beta will be kept as it is and will be replaced with Unity version.

edit 2:

Moving progress bar back to 10%

[harsay]

I'm marking this game as done. I feel like I need a mental break from it.

I might explore a different take on this concept in the future.

The game is finished, yay