what a cool game. So glad it was posted up on the forums so I could find it. When there are over 1,000 games that have been submitted and I've been working my ass off just to rate about 5% of them (50 so far) its sometimes feels criminal that really good games can elude me and fly under the radar. There are games in the jam that have incredible graphics and UI's and loads of polish, but are boring. And then there are games like this which are just plain fun. I stopped at level 9. I loved the challenge and the combination of a sort of Tetris with minesweeper. I especially loved when you build up quite a big combo and it just explodes with noise and little critters. I thought that using 'saving them' as the score to get to the next level is totally innovative - I haven't seen it done like that before at least. I really, really, enjoyed this game. I would love to see it with a few more shapes - the shapes you've created are great, but chuck in some of those classic Tetris 't' and 'z' type shapes as well to give a bit more flexibility in how you build a block to blow-up. Loved it - fantastic work.
Viewing post in SquareBots: Tiny Match 3x3 Rescue! jam comments
Thank you so much for the review! I agree on the criminality. I was even thinking of starting up a streaming channel just to play through the games in GDTV '25 (I've never done any streaming before). I'm sure my views would be measued in two digits but honestly I feel the games deserve their 'stories being told' in some digitally preserved way...
Re: the additional shapes, this was on my todo for the last day, but I bottled it. I'd had my crack team of playtesters (ahem, two good friends) playing it the day before the deadline and was afraid new shapes might introduce (more) bugs.
The T shape would be a game-changer and was present in the original game. As it stands I think the shape-roster is dancing a fine line between trolling and challenging :) I'm planning on cleaning the game up and remaking Squarez (and including my more relaxed spin on the game as presented here...)
In years gone by people have made YouTube videos and streamed themselves playing the jam games so its a bit of a pity that nobody in the community seems to have done that this year. I definitely would in the viewership of that kind of stream or video. I think the only challenge I had with your game was that it was a bit unreliable moving the shape with the mouse cursor (not sure if there's another way to do it that I just didn't think of) but other than that it was solid. I came up with a strategy to handle the shapes and once you understood the 3x3 nature of it I really wanted to focus on making the biggest explosions possible lol - and it was truly satisfying when I pulled that off haha. i'm telling creators of good games to consider web releases on platforms like crazygames where you can monetize them with ads if you're interested in that (an alternative for people that aren't trying to do a full Steam release). Your game would fit the model quite well with its sort of endless levels.