itch.io

Yeah getting the pinky/magenta bar filled advances the level 😂 Thanks for playing, and it sounds like you did great! As I wrote on the page, it's definitely not balanced and I wasn't even sure if the game is finishable in its current state, haha. Not that it has an ending, it goes to level 10 and nothing further happens even if you reach higher levels than 10, which you can lol.

I imagined it as a kind of combo system where you try build up the blue bar (dubbed mass) to advance the pink bar (dubbed stability).  At first the puzzle is easy; its easy to build mass and stability. Then it becomes more complex because later some consumes has to be used correctly to advance. The last levels are more chaotic with crazy conversion rates, mass(blue) is starved and the player has to find a loop where he can chain certain combinations to raise mass far enough to afford to eat the big converter (like -5 blue + 5 pink) or something like that. What definitely isn't communicated but was necessary for balance was the feature that trying to convert mass you dont have, the mass you have too little of is taken from stability instead, to prevent a free conversion/free points. so if you have 2 of each, then get -3 mass +3 object, stability will put you at 0 mass, 4 stability. If you try it again with 0 and 4, then you still have 0 and 4 (because you lose 3 and gain 3). What started as a simple system quickly became complex with specific rules and emergent puzzles from the mechanics I had lined up. It was a real mess 😂