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A jam submission

TETRISLANDView game page

A relaxing city builder about fitting houses on an island
Submitted by janistch — 11 hours, 31 minutes before the deadline
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TETRISLAND's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Game Design#144.2004.200
Adherence To Theme#294.3334.333
Originality#394.0004.000
Style#414.1334.133

Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

It's strangely therapeutic. I think with some improvements to the RNG and some extra game mechanics, you could have a very relaxing and fun game that's nice to play after a long day.

Developer

Thank you for checking it out! I'm glad you had a good time with it. :)

Submitted(+1)

Nice, fun, simple game. Great art and style made the game satisfying to play, well done :)

Developer

Thank you for checking it out! 

Submitted(+1)

You also went for a more soothing game, very nice change of pace from many of these entries being quite hard to play.

Summary:

Adherence to Theme 
  • You are trying to pack your Island full with blocks. Excellent!
Game Design 
  • It was quite fun, thinking about the different shapes Island Generates and where they would come in use for future Blocks to appear.
  • Sometimes the randomness gets a bit frustrating, I've had Islands where I needed to re-roll the first batch, since one large piece's placing wasn't possible.
  • This in mind, the player is quite limited in what he can do at this point. This is totally fine, for what it is at the moment, but if you plan on taking this game a bit further, you should consider some tricks the player could use. Maybe buying one off Upgrades to fill some Landmass or remove trees. 
  • Being able to rotate blocks is also a key feature of Tetris, so I was wondering if I was missing a button.  The entire ordeal reminded me more of the old school Sim City for the SNES rather than Tetris, since fully packed lines didn't disappear either. Something to consider.
Originality
  • It's a very unique twist on some old school games, that uses the theme well.
  • It's played a bit safe. Almost sterile, which may or may not be on purpose to get it to be very relaxing. So there's only a small trade off.
  • Maybe for the future you can go a bit off the rails with it. Maybe it could be a blend of Tetris and Sim City, maybe something else entirely, who knows? 
Style
  • Everything was very beautiful.
  • The colors where quite excellent. and everything was clearly identifiable.
  • The Atmospheric sounds fit the game extremely well and make for another layer of deviation from the original Tetris concept, where you have action packed music and race against the time.

Overall:

It was enjoyable and got me playing around for a great 20 minutes of relaxing fun. I'd like it to have a bit more leeway for the player though, right now it's kinda "use these or re-roll. Can't re-roll? Too bad!"


Developer(+1)

First of all, thank you for taking the time to write out your thoughts about the game!

I agree that it can be frustrating when you only get shitty cards and have to re-roll in the first round. I hope this changes once I implemented a tree cutting/land placing mechanic like you mentioned. This will give the player more choices and the game more depth.

I think giving the player the power to rotate buildings would make it too easy, but I might give it a try in the future. I wasn't really going for "Tetris meets city builder" kinda game, the shapes just reminded me of Tetris and I could combine the name with "island" :D. But I can see how the looks and the name can be misleading.

I'm glad you liked the style. I had an image in my head of how the game should look and I'm happy it worked out so well even though it's so simplistic (and very game jam friendly).

Again, thank you for playing and giving highly detailed feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Jeah I thought about the rotation being like a one off upgrade. I indeed thought about it and it would make the game stupidly easy. But maybe if you keep it like the tree cutting and land mass mechanic... That would give another layer of depth and might not be hard to implement.

Jam HostSubmitted (1 edit) (+1)

A fairly familiar game concept but with a style that works incredibly well for it. Really helped me to unwind and relax. Managed to reach island 11. Wanted to suggest adding a tree cutting block and saw that others suggested it too. I think it'd be cool.

Developer

Thank you for playing! I'm glad you like the style of it. The tree cutting will definitely be added in the first update!

Submitted(+1)

I launch the game at 4 pm and when I close it, it was 5, can you fix this issue ? :D

Developer

I'm afraid fixing this issue is far beyond my capabilities. :D

Thank you for playing!

Submitted(+1)

As others have said, a great game, and very soothing. As a longtime fan of Tetris, I'm loving all the tetris-likes in this jam, but this one is my favorite of those so far. Played through a couple times, got to island 15 or so. If you add a couple mechanics to this (Things come to mind like limited-use tree cutting, or using sandbags to squeeze one more tile out of an island) this is easily worth a few bucks on the app store. Great great job, and good luck in the voting!

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for the kind words! Island 15 is my personal best too. I like your ideas for future mechanics, they are on my to do list now :).

Thank you for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Oh this is a very relaxing game, and the sound effects are really soothing. I got to island 10, and I'd say my time was spent well.
(Those 3x3 tiled houses were near impossible to place tho >.> )
Well done! ^.^

Developer

Thank you for playing! I'm glad you had a good time. The big tiles are frustrating sometimes, I agree. :D

Submitted(+1)

The feedback when placing tiles is soooooooo satisfying... yesss give me moore. I actually came back to this game twice, so great job! Really cool idea that I think you could expand on by adding more visualy interesting islands and buildings. Maybe even an element that would let you add a tile to the island. Really good job, one of my favourites so far :) 

Developer

Thank you so much for playing! It means a lot to me that you actually cared to play it multiple times. Also thank you for your ideas, I do want to keep working on the game and improve it.

Submitted(+1)

Creative, and fun. Awesome work, looks good too.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing! I'm glad you liked it.

Submitted(+1)

Thats a really creative use of the theme. Plus your game is really fun, well done

Developer

Thank you for checking it out! 

Submitted(+1)

Hey dude! I enjoy stacking (or.. packing! )stuff on the map ->  I think you reached your goal


Just spotted a small issue: when you pick a tile and do not have anywhere to put it, oyu can't click anything.. So sad :(


Gj!

Developer

Hi, thank you for playing and giving your feedback!

You can put a tile back by clicking the right mouse button if that is what you meant.