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A jam submission

MatchBreakerView game page

Play as a youngster with a cursed name as she takes revenge on rhyming words in this short puzzle game.
Submitted by Plat — 1 day, 56 minutes before the deadline
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MatchBreaker's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Innovation#314.0364.036
Game Design#333.9643.964
Audio#1283.6073.607
Fun#1343.6793.679
Overall#2313.4703.470
Theme#8572.7142.714
Graphics#8752.8212.821

Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

In what way does your game fit the theme?
The hero begins the story by unleashing playful chaos on rhyming words, splitting them apart into non-words or non-rhyming words out of spite. The letter-placement mechanism uses physics rather than typing, for a more slippery and disorganized feel. The rest of the game is pretty chill though, not gonna lie.

Did you write all the code yourself and made all the assets from scratch?
Yep, unless you count the word list (dictionary), which is based on data I've collected from a variety of open-source lists over time. Original audio (voice, music), puzzle curation, vector graphics, etc. I didn't know anything about Unity until this week either, but here we are. :)

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Comments

Viewing comments 22 to 3 of 22 · Next page · Last page
Submitted

Wow super game. I liked how it started out very easy at the start and got harder to the end. Very innovative and fun gameplay, very good audio. The graphics could be improved but overall im glad that i played it. And also an interesting interpretation of the theme. Very impressive for you first time with Unity.

Submitted

One very unique puzzle game which I've never seen before up until now. The audio's a bit loud, but nonetheless it's an awesome game!

Developer(+1)

:D I was wondering about the volume levels. I tried tweaking them with V1.1 (updated now that voting's over), and added some volume sliders, but overall volume normalization   still needs work. Sounds like I'll need to research more about normalization and mastering for video games. Thanks for the nudge.

Submitted

felt really good to play and the challenges were pretty varied in difficulty which kept me wanting to play more! I just don't get how it fits the theme. But really cool game!

Submitted

Very unique, and addicting. One of the few games I have seen with slow pace that fits the concept. love how the letters fly around the screen

Submitted

What a cool concept! I have never seen this before.

Submitted

You've been using Unity for one week??? You're either a prodigy or you've got lots of programming experience under your belt. Probably the former though ;)

This is a really fun game. I love word games. And the story with voiceover is a welcome piece of fluff that you rarely see in jams. A lot of the puzzles, especially in the early stages, feel almost too easy with just requiring one pieces to move. And even then, there are few real brain burners until maybe some of the last stage puzzles. I personally would play a whole game of this with tough puzzles. However, I'm guessing you made this for a young person in your life to play as well as us jammers. As a 'kids' game, I can see this being a huge success. 

Well done, and congrats on making this in just a week!

Developer(+1)

:D I'm afraid it's just a lot of programming experience. And man, Unity is a lot less painful to iterate on than Phaser was. The feedback loop from their editor is just so much faster.

Thanks for the feedback on difficulty! I wasn't actually trying to target kids, but I did try to keep the puzzles fairly simple. (Most puzzles require moving just 1 letter, as you noted.)  I was worried that it'd get frustrating if I made it much harder...but once there's some sort of hint/skip system (as others have suggested), that should balance out nicely. Thanks for the push to make some harder chapters.

Submitted

Interesting game. I liked how it was wrapped around a story. The puzzles were pretty clever and I liked how you broke the line for added complexity.

Submitted

Hey, a word game, neat! I think this is the only one I've seen in the jam. I liked the voice acting and it had a cute story. There was one puzzle I couldn't figure out, so I appreciated being able to skip to the next level to at least get the whole story.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback about difficulty and ability to skip chapters! I've added a hint system in V1.1 now that voting's over, so hopefully other players  won't feel as stuck.

Submitted (1 edit)

An amazing and well thought out game. The concept was very creative and the story was very beautiful and well done. I love your art style of the game and it gave it lot of originality.  The music was also very good. The narration was also very good and made the game even better than it was. The evil laugh was a bit iffy but still very entertaining. A very polished puzzle game even though it was made in a week. Good luck on the jam!

Submitted

Hi, I love the game story and the game is kinda fun , the innovation is just wow but the graphics are kinda bad but overall the game is great!

Submitted

It's an interesting concept and I'm wondering how the rhymes are calculated. The first level looked like a tutorial, which confused me a bit cause it required no effort to complete.

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks for the feedback about Chapter 1's simplicity. Yep, that was meant as a tutorial level, and also to play into the story. Also why it ended in "WHY, TRY". I'll probably remove some puzzles from that set in the next version, so we can get on to the meat sooner. Thanks!

EDIT: Version 1.1 fixes this; removed 2 puzzles from Chapter 1

Submitted

Very original idea. Some more graphical effects and its perfect

Submitted

This game has a great look, easy to master controls, suitable challenging puzzles that build in difficulty, and fun voice acting :). Lots to love about this game.
A hint or skip system would have been nice, to be able to progress the story when i got completely stuck :D, and possibly theres a few to many levels. (perhaps the need to get say 7/10 done to move forward, but a bonus of sorts if you get 10/10).
Great job, super well done to you for creating this in a week having not touched Unity before :)

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback on the difficulty! You're not alone, and you're the first to suggest a skip option vs a hint system, which I hadn't thought of before. Do you think it would help in general if it were more obvious that puzzles required moving just 1 letter (until Chapter 5 or so, which requires moving 2 letters)? I didn't make that very obvious in-game, and maybe I should've. I know I still got stumped when play-testing the levels, and that's after finishing the game a few times.

Submitted(+1)

Even knowing it's only 1 letter difference, when you're stumped, it's hard to progress at all, and also stops being fun. 
Some of the earlier ones i moved several letters on occasion, because that's what worked for me. 

Developer

Got it, thanks. It's helpful to know that the "move 1 or 2 letters" advice isn't necessarily good enough.  Now that the jam voting is over, I've updated the game to use a new hint system to Chapters 2-5 which hint at which letter(s) should be moved.  Hopefully this helps future players from getting stuck. Thanks again for the feedback!

Submitted

Okay that was really greatly done. The voice acting was perfect for a little girl who felt like she was doing evil, and the levels were really good where it really only did take a letter or two. Just fantastic vibe. 

Submitted (1 edit)

Amazing voice acting especially the cruel mother. This is a great idea and is very fun and relaxing although some combos took a long time to figure out. I think I was over thinking them haha. A hint system would definitely help! Also it sounds like you just improvised some stuff on the piano to go along with it?

Developer

Yep, you called it - the piano was improvised throughout the game.  Thanks for the feedback about a hint system. It's funny how even though most puzzles require moving just 1 letter (until chapter 5 or so), the challenge can spike at weird times. I'll get some sort of hint system on the roadmap!

Submitted

The main thing I didn't like was it felt sort of heard to control the letters.

Everything else was freaking awesome. Great use of audio and the story was funny, (your daughter is a budding voice actress) and --- it was super original. I loved it. Good job!

Developer(+1)

Good points on your stream. I'll try to make it more obvious that letters don't need to be right next to each other in the future. I was tempted to lock the Z-axis rotation, but it was one of the few game mechanics left that could be construed as chaotic.  I relayed the voice-actress comment to my daughter...she's thrilled to hear it. :D  Also you're on-point about the Eminem freestyling. When writing the ending, it reminded me of Eminem's 60 Minutes interview, ranting about rhymes of "orange".

Submitted

Great idea and concept! Definitely one of the most unique games I've played. I like how the game slowly incorporates different challenges that tie in with the over-arching story. Very neat!

Submitted

Awesome and innovative game idea.. make more levels and add features to make this a bigger game.. would be interesting to play..

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing, and the encouragement to build more levels. I'll have a bugfix/quality-of-life update out shortly after the jam's over, and I've got some ideas on how to add more mechanics. I'm not sure when that'll be out, but it's on the roadmap  !

Submitted

Absolutely love this game, the story is a perfect device for delivering the gameplay that not only fits the theme but sets up new levels and challenges, and the whimsical childlike scribbles and narration during the narrative parts perfectly delivers that feeling of a young kid out to cause trouble. 

The way that you drag and drop letters and are subsequently forced to deal with the consequences of physics for them adds just enough chaos to the gameplay itself. Really clever idea and super charming story, solid game!

Submitted

not being good at english left me thinking for some few minutes just to try to find the correct word haha, overall pretty good gameplay

Developer

Good point, and thanks for the feedback. I suppose, if English isn't your first language, you've enabled the top-secret "hard mode" :D.

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