This game would be better if there was a tutorial to explain the game mechanics. It took me until the final boss to realize that if you held down a slime that has a horizontal match possibility it'll show you where the angled fireball reflects to on the other side (except if it's in an L-shape, then it doesn't do it, that's a bug to fix).
And the game itself also seems too RNG-reliant. Many times there are three countdowns at once on the board which you sometimes can't even kill because you don't have a match capable of reaching them. I also have no idea why sometimes the fireballs can break through to the boss row and other times they get stopped. Cascades also do nothing other than points, which makes getting them sometimes unwanted because then one of your match possibilities to kill an effect countdown are gone. (I shouldn't say nothing, actually, they also sometimes spawn another countdown for some reason, no bueno)
Overall an idea that at least looks workable but needs actual explanation so that someone other than you can understand the quirks and begin to form the idea of how to properly attack a situation.
Hi jray, thanks for taking the time to play the game and provide some detailed feedback. It’s my first time making a proper game and it’s definitely easy to get a bit too close to the project, so I appreciate any opportunity to improve the experience for the player. It’s still very much a work in progress and there are plenty of things to tighten and polish up, so I’ll step through the valid points you raise.
A friend of mine played after it went live and said they weren’t sure what was happening or what they needed to do, which was totally fair and certainly not optimal to say the least! I am in the process of providing some more detailed instructions to the page and am considering better ways to provide that feedback in the game itself. It was probably less intuitive than I had led myself to believe, although I do think the mechanics have potential. I have a lot of fun playing it, but it no doubt helps that I actually know what is going on! 😆
The RNG element is definitely a bit overdone at the moment. To be honest it was probably the cheapest and easiest way to generate tension and gameplay, there are some bounding rules but it is too loose at present and needs to be tightened up. This was definitely something on my list already, along with some issues with the enemy timers.
The ridiculously named slime guide arrows that show angled attack points, were a relatively late addition and a little undercooked at the moment. I found it hard to figure out where reflected shots were going to end up in the heat of the game so added them in. I’ll see if I can figure out any bugs, it was one of few bits of code that I thought was pretty solid. I suspect it might just be the way it displays having a potential match in both directions, but I’m not 100% sure what you are seeing at your end. And if that’s the case, then it’s probably too confusing anyway and needs to be addressed.
I’m not sure what to do about the cascading issue, it’s definitely a feature of match 3 games. It does boost your score and help increase/maintain the multiplier, but I definitely don’t want it to affect player agency. Should it be possible to prevent or stop a cascade do you think? Dunno, will have to chew on that one.
Certainly have plenty to work on, but again thanks for your input, I hope you will check it out again sometime and let me know what you think.
For the arrows I meant that if you are moving a slime horizontally into an L-match, there wouldn't be an arrow for a fireball despite a fireball needing one going to spawn.
And cascades, the main thing for me is that sometimes getting one counts down or spawns another enemy(ies), which feels a bit unfair. I can live with it not spawning fireballs if it would not do that.
Overall priority one to making the game better, I would think, is that a player would understand all the mechanics and situations that can come about. I eventually figured out most of what is going on (not when voiding happens or when the fireballs don't reach the top, I still don't know those) but I've also played match-3 related things for basically forever so it comes easier to me than it probably would to many others. A tutorial battle with explanations would go a long way.