[Original Game] Hexgem


pepone

pepone

Pouet! Pouet! Do want!
Joined
Oct 14, 2005
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504
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m.peponas.free.fr
Hello all!

Got some free times lately, so I tried to make a game for the compo.

It's a Zookeeper/Tilematch clone, but with hexagons. Not very original, but it was one of my favorite game on the gp2x back then :)

screen1.png


The todo list is still long (ui, sound, hiscore etc.) but I'm curious to have your comment on gameplay. Is it too hard? too easy? bug report etc...

The gameplay is stylus only. Press Q to quit.

hexgem.pnd
 

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  • hexgem.pnd
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Looks good.


Please do at least an optional visible cursor to play it with the nubs or a mouse. It might be a little selfish, but my touchscreen is broken ;)
 
A few thoughts... Keep in mind that I've never actually played the games this is based on.

The game mechanic seems fairly straight forward, but I have no idea what my overall goal is.   Clearly I have a numerical target for something but I haven't been able to correlate what I'm supposed to count.  Also what does Lucky mean?

The shaking at the end is really distracting.

What happens if there are no valid moves?

Is there any way to get more time or is the game always a fixed length?  I was expecting to get more time when I went up a level,  but the shaking continued and the game still ended shortly afterwards.

It would be nice to have the option to wait until I'm ready before clearing the score and starting the next game.  I'd like to have time to appreciate what how much I scored and what level I reached, as I find myself mostly just watching the playing field while playing.

That being said, as a WIP it looks pretty good so far.  :)

- Neelix
 
Thanks for your feedback, it's really appreciated

Most of your point are very valid, and some are already planned features.

The goal of the game is to eliminate a specific number of every gem to go to the next level. For example, at level 1, you need to eliminate 3 gem of each color. The target is incremented every level. The ultimate goal is to make the highest score ;)

The lucky gem give you double points.

To gain time, you need to make combo. The more you make combo and sustain the chain, the more you get points and time. I tried to make the gameplay non blocking, so you don't have to wait the end of a combo to continue to play somewhere else on the board.

For now, when you pass to the next level, you gain back some times, but it depend of how many times was left at the end of the last round.

The timer system is the part who need the most tunning, I'm still not sure of the solution.

You're right that the shaking is maybe too disturbing. The goal was to give a visual clue that the end is near, plus give some stress to the player (Well, actually, it's a complete ripoff of zookeeper :D ). I'll think of an other solution.

If there is no move possible, you get a new random board. Well... you will, when I'll code it :) for now you'll get stuck. It don't happen often though.

Of course, at the end of a game, there will a much longer pause, with a screen to put your name if you break a hiscore etc.

Thanks again for you comment.
 
Thanks for the explanation, the flow of the game makes much more sense now. :)

As for the shaking, perhaps if you just tone it down a bit?  everything seems to jump about wildly,  and I think it might be less distracting if everything was a little more constrained. 

If conditions are met to start a new level mid-combo  does it change level immediately or does it wait for the end of the combo?   It's kind of hard to tell,  but my impression is that its the former, and that the latter would be better... :)

It strikes me that combos get harder to achieve the longer you stay on a level.  A good long combo requires moves to be available near the bottom of the field,  but once you exhaust the available moves near the bottom, it takes a fair bit of luck to get back down there.

- Neelix

EDIT:

I think I'd like to see an increase in the combo time bonus.

On second thought you could probably use the time bonus amount to offer different difficulty levels.  Just a thought.. :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thank for your suggestion.

Toning down the shaking might be a good solution. I'll dig into it.

Different difficulty level is certainly be the best to do indeed.

For the combo, you can see that at the bottom right the multiplying factor (under the lucky gem), it don't decrease immediately when a combo is ended, so if you make a move fast, it's still give you more point and time, and still count as a combo. You need to be fast to sustain a high multiplying factor.

When you change level, it wait for the end of the combo. What give you the impression that it's not the case? maybe their is a bug here.
 
Looks very cool but it does seem very similar to zookeeper/tilematch/animatch type games perhaps you could consider putting in some kind of original feature unique to Hexgem that would set it apart from the other games and make it more than just a clone. Here's some ideas, feel free to ignore all of them, maybe you could add:

2 player support over wifi

have tiles that solidify over time if not grouped reducing the playable area

have an exploding tile type that clears all the tiles adjacent when grouped to ordinary tiles

Puzzle Mode
 
*plays some more*   *observes continuation of combo after level requirement reached*    No bug that I can tell,  just the impression, come to think of it I've never actually watched the side panel previously when one of these level clearing combos was in action before. I probably wouldn't have mentioned it if I had.   :)

Monkfish said:
Looks very cool but it does seem very similar to zookeeper/tilematch/animatch type games perhaps you could consider putting in some kind of original feature unique to Hexgem that would set it apart from the other games and make it more than just a clone. Here's some ideas, feel free to ignore all of them, maybe you could add:

2 player support over wifi

have tiles that solidify over time if not grouped reducing the playable area

have an exploding tile type that clears all the tiles adjacent when grouped to ordinary tiles

Puzzle Mode
Click to expand...
While I don't like the idea of solidifying tiles,  (I think the number of available plays drops quickly enough as it is) I do like  the other suggestions. :)

- Neelix
 
Neelix said:
Looks very cool but it does seem very similar to zookeeper/tilematch/animatch type games perhaps you could consider putting in some kind of original feature unique to Hexgem that would set it apart from the other games and make it more than just a clone. Here's some ideas, feel free to ignore all of them, maybe you could add:

Monkfish said:
2 player support over wifi

have tiles that solidify over time if not grouped reducing the playable area

have an exploding tile type that clears all the tiles adjacent when grouped to ordinary tiles

Puzzle Mode
Click to expand...
While I don't like the idea of solidifying tiles,  (I think the number of available plays drops quickly enough as it is) I do like  the other suggestions. :)

- Neelix
Click to expand...
Was just playing with some ideas, i know perhaps bad ideas but ideas nonetheless - to expand on the idea you dislike:

Perhaps the different colours of tile could become solid at different rates. And the exploding tile can rid the playfield of solid tiles.
 
A puzzle mode is interresting, and I thought about it. It's time consuming to make good level, so I'm don't sure it will be done for the compo.

Same for 2 player mode. I like the idea, but I'll definitively not have time to do it in time.

I dunno about solidifying gem, I don't see how it could be integrated in the current gameplay.

OTOH I like the idea of explosive gems, it could be a alternative to the "random gem" of zookeeper.
 
Hi,

@ pepone: thanks for this great game :)

I can't wait to play the final version, with sound and high score !

Bye, Magic Sam
 
It's a great little game and tbh anyone that expects the compo games/apps to be completely bug-free is either deluded or expecting waaaaaay to much.
 
How is the main menu supposed to work? I tried the dpad, but that does nothing. I tried using the stylus, also didn't work. I manage to get the game started by clicking somewhere with the stylus, and then using the right nub to left click. I don't think it's intended to be that hard :)
 
It should work with the stylus. It's strange that it don't work for you. Do you have the last firmware?

And when you where in the game, does the stylus worked as intented?
 
In-game the stylus works (I drag a tile to an adjacent one to swap them), but in the menu I cannot seem to use it (except maybe to move an invisible cursor).

I'm using the latest firmware and OpenBox, and if I'm the only one to have the problem it's probably my own fault - I tend to install newer versions of some libraries, which could cause problems. I'll try again with a fresh firmware at some point to see if the problem persists. Don't worry about it :)
 
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