Hey everyone!
I just (3 hours ago) posted my jam submission, play and leave some feedback if you can! I really look forward to seeing what everyone came up with!
Alright, first thoughts: this is a VERY cool concept. Took me a bit to orient myself, but when I 'got' it, I was amazed.
That said, it feels like it might be a bit too easy to softlock yourself: just place some blocks around yourself or the key so that you leave some 1-blocks gaps that you can never fill. That's basically how I lost in my two attempts. I'm not sure if there's some tetris-like mechanic for clearing blocks, does the game ever explain it? (I haven't read the tutorial very thoroughly, sorry).
Anyway, when you softlock like this, I think the only way to lose is to intentionally stack up pieces, which feels bad. Also, now I wonder if using tetraminos instead of weird 6-block pieces would've helped...
Another thing: I wish I could keep pressing the down arrow to make the piece fall faster.
Anyway, all of that doesn't matter, juggling two different screens at once is so novel (to me, anyway) that I can't help but like your game.
Thanks for playing! Glad you enjoyed it and I really appreciate the feedback!
As of now there is no block clearing mechanic, it was something I was planning but had to scrap in the end. The bomb was made to help lessen the possibility of softlocking, as well as a little "escape" that you can get in the Pause Menu on the second floor, but yeah I realize it didn't help that much. But more consistent shapes and a block clearing mechanic are definitely on my list if I continue this!
Once again, thank you so much for the feedback, very glad you enjoyed it!
Here's my submission that has 3 screens at once!
http://www.lostwords.org/falling-block-jam-start/index.html
Wow, you did a multi-game thing too! Please invite yourself to check out my submission. I didn't play yours enough to give honest feedback yet, because there seems to be a lot going on of course! In my game, the three word games interact with each other in real-time. Additionally others in the same game interact as well. This web-socket interaction only works at this URL because of my separate back end server. http://www.lostwords.org/falling-block-jam-start/index.html
(( but here's the Itch submission, it's still playable but the interactivity between games doesn't work due to https/http and separate servers. ))
https://itch.io/jam/falling-block-jam/rate/3887774