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added option for this to the pause menu!

added that to the pause menu!

They feel right when i use X and C on the keyboard but they do not feel right on the gamepad to me... i wonder if i can set up a toggle in the title screen or pause menu or something

spectacular!!

Tahnk you !!!

it's pretty much just jurassic park 😅 all the species are featured in the move (except compsognathus, but compies pop up all the time in the book... oh and stegosaurus i guess, but stegosaurus is in the book too, anyways)

partly this is a fun way to reference a movie i like as well as a nod to the zoo sim games from Frontier (Jurassic World Evolution 1 and 2 esp), but also for people who ARENT dinosaur nerds, i have a theory that they're much more likely to recognize species from the movie which i thought might help for learning the game... hard to prove i guess!!

the door will open once all the other tiles are cleared!

yea its a dumbly specific Jurassic Park dialog reference  😅

Official update! Bumped up the overall quality of generated levels and put together a new daily results screen, much happier with where it's at now:

this is really fantastic, i love the art, the music, juice, and especially the way you designed the levels around this novel leveling and exploration approach <3 <3 <3

oooh that's a v cute idea, i obv never figured out how to add a crying effect to them 😅

he is

aww thanks! and yes, finally 🦕

thank you!

yea i think that friction is important - its nice to like scoot around (no pun) the focus from puzzle to puzzle to keep some freshness

the real thing it adds i think is not annoying 16-puzzle grinding loops but hopefully a more Rush Hour style like... procedurality, in terms of like... oh ok in order to execute this arrangement, i need to do X, then Y, then Z... but having a little looseness in that too, i think pure sokoban and even rush hour are a little strict for my taste

idk - i do totally think there are other interesting ways that friction could have been introduced, but the sliding tile method i chose is not without its merits either, even if they're not obvious (even to me sometimes)

thank you!

yes for the generated puzzles, it's random and solvable... it basically places some rocks, and then takes a bunch of tries at putting some by-definition-winning placements... e.g. if its trying to add some tyrannosaurs, it picks a random coordinate and then checks if that coordinate has a prey species for a neighbor AND no other tyrannosaurs nearby. so that but for all species, at random

if the result is too mono-flavor, too dense, or too sparse, then it discards the whole thing and starts over. once it has a layout with enough flavors, then it "unsolves" it with a ton of procedural shuffles. if the result is still basically solved, then it discards the whole thing and starts over. dumb but reasonably effective!

this was my initial instinct as well, and the first iteration of the game allowed for pass-through (well, swapping, but basically pass-through).  this had the added advantage of making a level generator WAY easier to do as well

unfortunately it also essentially ruins the game... the base matching rules are SLIGHTLY too simple / shallow / naive, and you need the slightly fussy friction of 16-puzzle to make it "complete". otherwise almost every level is disappointingly trivial

game design is such a tightrope! i know there was multiple other ways to introduce the "right" amount of friction tho and im eager to explore those possibilities in future games

same

yay i'm glad that "hit" right <3

they're the best right

that's my favorite part too

ah shit i ranked cuomo

mole mole!

246 !???!

next one is about dinosaurs i think  :3

谢谢你！

waaahh this rules! amazing!

its designed to sort of notice and learn as you go, but this post has helpful shortcuts in it ! https://itch.io/post/12902304

hahahaa holy craaapp amazing

<3 <3 <3

yea

HOLY CRAP

omg noooo

this was cool to read, i put a lot of focus into thinking about how players might learn the game a little at a time, its nice to see that paid off !

while this may be suboptimal in terms of your score i think it is still badass

this is a lovely observation, idk how much of this is conscious for me as a designer when im in the midst of things, so thank you!

thank you, that's great to hear!

the door will unlock once the whole board is clear <3 good luck!

on the title screen, if you press Z, X, or C on your keyboard you should be up and running!

yeesssss

loll