That was absolutely brutal. I got to day 4 but the computer virus screwed me all up
Gameplay could use some work. I found that moving around tiles felt unresponsive which made it unsatisfying to play. I think you could’ve used some kind of marker to indicate the currently selected tile. I noticed that there’s a glitch where the slight highlight effect on selected icons will randomly stop working which added to the feeling of poor responsiveness.
Having to pay 1 dollar at a time to buy items was very confusing at first, and I thought purchasing was either broken or there was an item limit to prevent me from buying new items.
The gameplay balance was very tight and I always felt completely hopeless until the last hours of the day where I barely managed to make ends meet. I did like this to a certain point, but the pace of the rounds and addition of new items and tiles each round made it hard to keep up and create strategies. It felt like matching tiles was futile and was hoping to luck into combos or some bombs and board refreshes.
I think the only way to win is to hoard items and use them in the right order all at once to nuke the board. Matching the tiles normally doesn’t seem to give enough money to reach the goal, and the timer is so fast that it gives you no time to properly set up combos. That leaves only the item hoarding and nuking strategy.
I did really like the art style and the music. The songs were catchy and kept me bobbing my head through 3 playthroughs and the little cutscenes were a nice touch. I did try out the CRT filter but after a couple rounds I could see why it was disabled by default lol. Maybe if you tone down the effect it would be less distracting.
Overall a solid entry with nice graphics and music, but the gameplay balance feels a bit too unfair which makes it difficult to engage wtih the mechanics