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A jam submission

Stack-A-ChanceView game page

Take a chance on the stack! just be careful of explosives!
Submitted by Vertex Games — 1 day, 6 hours before the deadline
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Stack-A-Chance's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall Fun#883.2863.286
Controls / UI#1212.4292.429
Sound/Music#1242.4292.429
Art / Graphics#1332.4292.429

Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Genre

Strategy

Turn-based | Card Games | RTS | 4X

Puzzle

Mystery | Advenure

Rating

Family Friendly

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Comments

  • Youtube Timestamped Link
  • Graphics : Fine
  • Music / Sfx : Fine , more variety would be nice.
  • GUI : Ok but could do with a touch-up.
    • Absolutely lacking options for volume or video settings like res and window type.
  • Gameplay : It's Jenga
  • Notes :
    • You can select more than one block at once, I'm fairly certain this is a glitch.
    • You can "select" a block that you in fact didn't.
    • Blocks can carry over into the next round and sabotage you.
    • The upgrades are a bit lacking.
    • Controls are nearly broken, it's very nearly unplayable, especially on controller. (Thing are faaar too sensitive.)

Overall it's alright, but definitely needs some fixing.

Developer

Thanks for playing! It was super interesting to see you play, and I am sorry you had issues with the controller (can I ask, was it an Xbox or PlayStation controller? As I thought I had fixed the issues with Xbox controllers). I agree that the game is in a super buggy state, and there needs to be a lot of work done (I only just realised that I never explained that the top blocks were frozen), but it's cool to see you had a little fun playing with it! I am currently working on an update which fixes a lot of the issues you had. I am sorry I did not notice you streaming it,  enjoy the Twitch sub!

(2 edits)

It's a (rather crap) Xbox controller from a totally legit company.

Developer

Thanks for the info!

Jam Host

Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

So this was not what I thought it was. I was expecting this to be some sort of Jenga with special blocks, but the entire mechanic of "place removed blocks on top" was just never a thing. At first I thought it was broken, but glad I took another look.

So first off, the audio is too loud and the mouse sensitivity for controlling the camera is too high. Having controls for both of these in your settings would be a good idea. Speaking of controls, you need add a settings to place those controls in as well as a menu you can use to access the settings and to exit the game (so the player isn't reliant on doing ALT+F4 to close it).

One issue I noticed is that if any block falls, you lose. This is true even if you happen to pull a block out accidentally and get it all the way out, at which point it feels unfair to say it's not just removed. It ALSO does this if you so happen to pull out the last block you need to win and then ANOTHER block falls before you choose what card you want. While there are problems here to be fixed, one thing that could help is if you make the point where blocks are considered fallen out of play to be much lower than the board is. This would give players the chance to fix things and would also encourage the player to start closer to the bottom instead of closer to the top when they begin.

I also noticed you have a mechanic to grab multiple blocks at once. I know others have brought up about the need for outlines on the blocks, so I won't tread that. Instead, I'll say you should have something on screen that both says how many blocks the player can select total and how many they've selected so far. I bring this up because I had gotten the "get two more blocks" power-up twice which, along with the starting value of 2, should've meant 6 blocks. However, when I selected 6 blocks and removed them, one of the blocks didn't stay grabbed and fell down immediately.

Developer

Thank you so much for the feedback! It's a shame I missed the stream. I would love to see the VOD once it is posted. I agree with your feedback and am already working on an updated version, which fixes a lot of those issues. The block falling issue is odd, as I thought I fixed accidental blocks falling, but I will definitely take another look, and I agree I need to make my UI a bit more helpful! Thanks again for playing!

Submitted

Fun little game, I like the idea with the special blocks making it increasingly challenging.

Some notes:

  • It's hard, could easily start of easier. And with a tutorial... you know... arrows and text... like "grab the blinking block", "move it away from the tower", "grab the sticky block", "watch it all fall to pieces".
  • It's not particularly pretty, but more importantly... it doesn't communicate very well. Others have commented the outlines, and I agree, but I'd also add that the design of the block probably could be made to communicate the block's properties as well.
  • It took me a little while to figure out that I need to move the blocks far enough away from the tower to get rid f them. This should probably  be mentioned at startup.
  • Controls with mouse+keyboard are fine, but feel a bit... "gamey"? Could the act of removing blocks maybe be made to feel more "physical"? 
  • Music fits well but I perceived them as repetitive fairly quickly.

There's potential here for a fun little time waster, I had fun playing it! I think the upgrades are a good direction for extending the basic game, but I think one could probably find quite a few more physical mechanics to extend the gameplay further. Good luck!

Developer

Thank you for the feedback! I agree with a lot of your points, although I am curious, what would you consider doing to make the act of moving blocks more physical? The tutorial and visuals absolutely need to be reworked, so that is definitely on my list.

Submitted (1 edit)

Fair question. I think one of the things that feels good about jenga i general, and your game in particular, is the "physicality" of it... the very act of moving the blocks just feels satisfying. I'd want to recreate the feeling of direct manipulation of the physical game as far as possible using the mouse, which probably implies dragging the blocks rather than controlling them with WASD. I can see the problem, but maybe constraining the blocks to only moving in the horizontal plane (same as with WASD) and then mapping the mouse pointer onto that could work? It would also leave the non-mouse hand to do camera panning and tilting during movement operations, which could come in handy. Or maybe WS could be used for vertical movement and AD for rotation around the up/down axis, to be able to perform a clean and careful extraction? I think this would need to be prototyped.

In general I believe that the feel of manipulation is probably the most important thing to get right with this kind of game.

Developer

Thanks for the elaboration; it is really helpful. I am definitely going to find some time to prototype it!

Submitted

Fun little phone game style thing. Would like the blocks to have an edge around the outside of the blocks to make them more distinguishable. Had fun with it though.

Developer

Thank you! I definitely need to work on making the selected blocks more distinguishable. 

Developer

Stack-A-Chance Quick Fix #1 Released!

Issues fixed:

  • Background music not playing
  • Adjusted balance
  • Made file size smaller by removing some music
Submitted (1 edit)

I played the latest 0.9 version.

I really like the idea and admire the audacity to take on a physics based Jenga game.  It's a tough challenge.  

The outcome is very janky.  Perhaps that's the intention?  Play is obviously very tricky.

The difficulty is very high right from the start.  You could let the player start with a simpler tower and work up to increasingly larger ones.  

Selecting blocks needs a little work.  It's often not clear which blocks have been selected.  You think you're removing just the central one, but a neighbouring block is also removed despite the direction being clear.  The small black outline isn't enough.

One game play issue, is that although there are different types of blocks, you can only safely remove the ones at the top.  So, you don't really feel like you have much of a choice.

Really could do with some music too.  And some optimisation, the load is really high.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! The physics are certainly a challenge to deal with (a small bit of that is intentional, but I can see where it becomes borderline frustrating). I am coming up with ways to try and make the start of the game a bit simpler. I agree that the selection needs a bit more feedback for the player.

It is interesting to hear about the top blocks being safer. I did not come across that in testing, so thanks for pointing that out! It is odd that you did not hear any music, as there are multiple jazz tracks in the game, but I know there is a bug where sometimes it does not start.

Thanks for playing!