itch.io

Interesting idea.

I think that this game has a good idea, but it somewhat falls apart within its execution. Namely I think the spikes are just too difficult to time yourself with, given their count only gives you one correct permutation of timings that will work, so you are then left to just sit around and wait till it happens. Giving them a longer sequence would provide the same puzzle idea of 'Pass the spikes on the beat when they are down', but prevent having to do it perfectly.

The levels where you are also just pushing boxes, while more fun due to the lack of spikes, don't really use the mechanic in any interesting ways, since you are just simply waiting to move.

I think this game would maybe benefit from being a top down style, and giving a 4 direction movement. And making most of the enemies / obstacles move in a predetermined pattern. Since then it will be easier for players to predict where enemies will be and track their movements and timings.

There are also some other QOL things that could be added, that would improve the feel of the game for players. The first one that comes to mind is letting players read the opening text before you start any countdowns, otherwise they will likely die trying to read the text and understand how the game works. This method should also be applied to all levels, in that the timers don't start until you do a initial input, so players can scope out an idea of how they will traverse.

I like the idea of timing the game with the music, and it brings some of the 'feel' of the game. But I think you could've taken a different approach and map out the bpm of the song on a timer of some sort within the game, and then you wouldn't need to keep restarting the song to keep it in sync. Since being able to listen further into the song would make it feel less repetitive.

You could definitely also get fancy with the music, and have it have moments of multiple beats in quick succession. So the player would have to quickly plan out a route, especially if that section of the song has a memorable part right before it.

The art is very charming. And having a simple intro cutscene adds a lot to the character of the game.

There is good potential here, and I think it would just require some reworking on the mechanics :)

Originally the ores did respawn, but I was worried it would've just led to people doing the same route to farm them and not explore more of the areas. And I decided making them not respawn was a better solution than making more unique ores.

The music may be partly my fault, since I did slow down the original song to not be as fast paced, which likely made it feel more repetitive.

That had happened to me a few times during testing, and I thought I got rid of it, but I guess I just made it less likely :(.

Do you remember what spot it happened at? It mostly happened to me on the right side portion at the top.

I did throw in the end sequence as a way to have a little bit of fun with the movement mechanics. I do agree that it could've been more present in the first half of the game, but I sort of limited myself in space by having it all be in the same X axis.

I do think a randomized world would be pretty fun, especially if you can unlock different abilities to help you get to different places in each run for some meta progression. But I think the procedural generation would've broken me for a 4 day jam ;)

I think one of the reasons the puzzles came out to be simple was having to make sure the player wasn't able to buy anything that would've gotten them stuck, and thus led to making it a get item -> solve -> get item loop. And in turn, I think this made the puzzles rather easy.

Although, I would definitely rather have people complain that the puzzles are too easy, and be able to experience the entire game, over not being able to. I was worried about making anything too difficult due to the non standard game format.

Thank you for the detailed feedback :)

Thank you! Its definitely a lot of practice and years paying off to make a larger game in a short jam :)

Thank you for the feedback!

I tried to make sure it was impossible to soft-lock yourself by buying the incorrect upgrades, and I didn't even realize it was possible to get to some of the bones without the ladder or crouch jump. I assume you made it there by mining in the top layer and tunneling over?

Wow, nice work!

This game really was a lot more in depth than I was expecting, seeing the upgrade screen surprised me.

I enjoy it when idle / clicker games branch out into more unique forms of 'growth', and I think you managed to find another good way to present one. I like the various upgrades and how they change the gameplay in fun ways, (multi-shoot, machine gun, auto microwave, etc.) I think it would be fun to keep iterating on ideas that can enhance the gameplay in fun and unique ways, that stray away from the general +% based upgrades.

One simple upgrade I thought of would be giving the hook a homing upgrade, so it'll lock on any nearby food. I think it would also be interesting to be able to combine lower tier foods into higher tier ones, which could maybe introduce a flip on the gameplay to be more beneficial to be in the lower orbits to amass a ton of food that you can combine.

Being able to place things on the map would also be interesting, like a mini black hole to suck in food to a nearby spot. Anyway, There is clearly a lot of depth that could be expanded upon with this format, and I think you struck a good amount of it so far within this jam.

I do think the microwave section was more lacking, especially since the upgrades were mostly just automating it fully, although I'm not entirely sure how it would be changed to accommodate more involved gameplay. I did find standing in front of one x8 microwave and not moving to be more effective than trying to put food in all of them.

You have a good knack for writing fun dialogue in a quick manner, I found myself liking Greg almost immediately. And I think that stems from the clean writing and witty dialogue.

All praise Greg!

Cute game!

I like the visual presentation a lot, the minimalistic look really works when you keep it clean. I think it works very well for this game, and some squash and stretch + other small animation additions can go a long way to give it a little bit more juice. Just a simple animation for when you get the block into the final spot would go a long way for the satisfaction of winning.

The spin on the general move count idea is cool, since you don't truly have to plan out every single step, but do need to be aware of where you will respawn and make use of it. Although, I don't think too many levels used this to its full strength, and for most of them respawning didn't make a huge difference in solving. With a mechanic like this, there is a lot of room to explore more interesting ideas. Like maybe having different spots you will spawn from, either in a turn order or needing to stand over them to activate them.

Originally, I also read the tagline for this game as once you run out of turns, your cube will stay there frozen, but you get to come back as another one. And I think there is also maybe some puzzle potential with that, in creating walls with your past selves to get the block to turn.

Having a quick reset is nice, but for games like this it is especially nice to have a simple 1 turn undo. Since a single misplaced push can usually end an entire attempt. And by giving this to players, you can also make harder levels, since the players shouldn't be worried about experimenting with ideas since they know it'll be easily undone.

Nice work!

Cute little game! ..that took a lot of my time :)

I enjoy the idea of a 3D idle / clicker game, especially since you can make the way of gaining more points more involved than traditional 2D clickers. I feel like this one almost captures a similar feel to Katamari Damacy, in that you continuously keep getting bigger things. I think it would be beneficial to lean more into that, and let the player start taking down some truly giant things, like buildings and mountains.

The scaling at the beginning was absurdly slow, I get that it makes for a larger payoff later, but for a jam game people usually don't have / want to spend a ton of time on a singular game.

I think the flood idea can also work well if you designed more around it, other than just having it be a simple timer. If you had a larger map, you could incorporate areas that require you to get there in time, or learn secret paths to get to different places sooner. But, if you made these changes, I think the punishment for getting caught in the flood should be different. Maybe just ending the day, but not losing all of your things? Or causing what you have to count down, and not completely empty. Since you don't want players to avoid taking all risks because they don't want to lose progress.

Having different maps would also be a simple way to add more, just getting new things to destroy would be a fun way to add more replay ability.  And you could also work in some unique mechanics to each map.

The fantasy of progression in this game is very good, since it is fun to imagine clearing out entire hordes of objects effortlessly, and thus gives a drive to want to be there. Although, I do think that the storage upgrade held this back the most, since it scaled by a static +2000, when I could easily fill that every time.

There are likely also a lot of other upgrades that could be explored, like maybe some that let you deal more damage to specific object types. Or changing the size of what you shoot.

Nice job!

Nice little game!

This game definitely requires some multitasking skills, in being able to dodge and focus your cursor on an enemy at the same time in different locations. I think that the autoclicker skill helps alleviate this, but I do feel like after awhile it kind of was the only way to play without getting tired from trying to get max damage.

Because of the dual attention you need, I wonder how the game would change if you managed to break out some of the fights into segments, especially for the bosses. I think if you gave the enemies an invulnerability stage, where you would solely focus on dodging a harder attack, it would help give the fights have a more in depth game loop. Then maybe after they do a large attack they need to recover and stand still, letting the player unleash their fastest clicks / combos without needing to focus on dodging.

Games like Enter The Gungeon are able to get away with doing both at once, since you only need to fire in the general direction of bosses to hit them. And because of that, they can incorporate much more intricate attacks.

The buttons in the menu is a fun idea, but also works pretty well to show how the game works without really needing to write anything else.

I think there are a lot of skills and abilities you could add to this. Given it being a roguelike, there should be different builds that the player can put together. Here are just a few quick ideas, keeping in mind the idea of having an more 'ebb and flow' style of fighting.

• Getting close dodges gives you stacks, next time you click an enemy deal damage for every stack you have
• Not clicking for x seconds makes your next click deal +x damage
• Clicking an enemy x times in a second freezes them in place
• Clicks deal damage to nearby enemies

The visual presentation is nice, and executes a simple theme nicely.

I also tried to do a minimal clicks run, but then I didn't get any auto clicker damage upgrades, so it was a long run. :(

Nice game!

This was really fun!

The visuals of this game where what caught my eye at first, and I really like the presentation it has overall. Having the musical chords build via clicking / orbiting / etc. was very satisfying. Surprisingly, because of this, crashing was kind of fun because it would make it resolve.

The controls for this are quite hard at first, but I knew that after while I would have the hang of it. I think some visual clarity (like drawing a line from the ship towards the mouse, with the length being the power) would help a lot at immediately understanding how to move, without needing to read. Especially for the Dual rocket segment, since I think the other rocket was inverted, but it was hard to always understand where it would go.

I love the idea of the secret worlds, and doing various puzzles to unlock and enter them. It almost gives an Outer Wilds vibe to it. I think if you were to make additions to this game, you could easily take some things from their book and create some mechanics that can be used anywhere, but you are only taught about it in a certain location. A full game with that in mind, and some story, would honestly be very unique.

The message of 'Journey not destination' is played pretty well here, since just getting to the end normally is pretty boring. But finding all the unique paths you can take to get there is fun. I think you conveyed this is a nice manner. As well as having the leaderboard be total distance travelled, instead of a fastest time. (Although, I would enjoy having a fastest time one too.. I want to zoom!)

There are some small adjustments that I would make, like giving the tether poles a slightly larger hitbox that what is shown. Since I would feel like I got it sometimes but didn't. It would also be nice to return back a screen, incase you accidentally go too far when trying to do a sequence.

If the map was larger, it would likely also benefit from being able to warp to any star location, or specific ones in general. Which would also allow you to design a more expansive map without having to worry about the time requirements to get to them. It also would've been nice to be able to open this map at any time, rather than just at the finish / start screen.

One thing to note, is that for web builds, ESC will not pause the game (assuming they are running in fullscreen). So it is nice to give an alternative key to do so (I usually do 'P').

Very neat game!

Thank you! I had experienced the same issues with the recipe bubble getting in the way, but its a bit of a weird case since you do also need to see that information often. I have a post jam update in the works, and it includes a toggle button to hide that UI :)

Cool idea!

I really like the idea for this, and I believe it could be expanded a lot into a full platformer game.

Having a limited number of spears forces the player to think about how they want to use them, and it's cool that you can sometimes draw out a bit of a puzzle element in some of the sections. But it would also be cool if you could draw specific spears back and not all of them at once, so you could create some challenges that require sections of more then 3 spear jumps. If you do end up doing this, I wonder how well it would work to only have 2 spears instead and working between the two.

There are some levels of simple polish that can help the game out a lot, Ill just list out a few ideas that came to mind as I was playing

1. Spears should have a different color than the spikes, although not hard to tell them apart, it should be clearer.
2. Spears seem to stick into walls at variable lengths. Could probably teleport the spear to the edge of the block after it lands.
3. Spears can be thrown way off screen, and take awhile to come back.
4. Effects for spears landing / recalling. Would add a lot of juice to them, and feel very satisfying to use.
5. The jump does feel a bit floaty, but having the y movement stop when you let go helps a lot.
6. Blind falls are generally not fun, even when you don't kill the player, especially when there is risk of losing a lot of progress.

I do wish this game had checkpoints, since losing all of your progress can be pretty though to then decide to try it all over again. I think it would suit the game well to break it up either into smaller levels, or a long level with checkpoints. Then you can also make harder challenges ;)

Great work! I'd love to see where this could end up with some additions!

This is a gif of the spear looping around the player. But I think Itch broke gifs :(

Thanks for letting me know about these, I'm surprised I never found the first one on here, but I guess I just never tried putting a machine directly as an output. I got that one fixed.

Placing the machines in invalid places is probably a bit too much of a "I am trying to break the game" type, so I'll just keep it in ;)

I do definitely need to choose a path on if its an automation game or not, (read one of my previous replies for more depth). But I did try to go for a more Overcooked vibe of doing manual tasks. I do think one of the annoyances is having to re-setup the same processes many times (Ore smelting specifically)

I did think about having the player move faster, or some sort of dash ability to have moving around not feel as slow.

I do somewhat agree with your takes, and I think I either need to lean more into the automation, or lean out of it. I actually added the filter conveyor last minute, because after doing some playthroughs I had assumed that people would want to automate the game a bit more. But overall, I tried to design the game to be more like overcooked (manually keeping track of many moving tasks) instead of Factorio. Although I don't think I hit the perfect mark that overcooked does to keep it fun and not tedious.

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

Pretty fun idea!

Having a short tutorial at the beginning goes a long way for jam games, even if it is as simple as a few pictures on the first level. But there were some other mechanics that needed to be found out through trial and error, which is normally fine in puzzle games, but in a game where planning out your route is important, not knowing how something will behave can be an annoyance.

Drawing out the lines is surprisingly satisfying, especially for how simple it is. A part of me wishes the lines got drawn at the same speed that you made them, but I also like the decision to make them go at a consistent rate, since then you don't need to perfectly speed match your painting times.

The drawing could also benefit from having some form of grid, since it's hard to tell how high the player can jump, so having some point of reference to make sure you are always drawing a viable jump would be nice. I did just start drawing ramps instead because of this.

Although, I do wish that some of the levels behaved differently when it came to lining up your drawings, namely the one that shoots the buzzsaws from the top and bottom. Since the drawing section goes on a loop, you can draw something that seems like it will protect you, but since the saws shoot right away you may have drawn too late. I think this could be remedied by not having the saws shoot until you start drawing, and have some sort of indicator for where they will come from. It could also work well to then pause them whenever the player isn't drawing.

There seems to be some scaling issues when playing not in fullscreen, since I didn't realize there was a paint meter or switches for the gates until I fullscreened the game :)

I wonder what other kinds of mechanics you could build with this, I think involving the world directly is one of the easiest ways to get more thought into paint placement. Like having to navigate some npc across to press a button for you, (Maybe have that one level where the guy moves back and forth, you need to draw a bridge for him.) Although I don't think I got to every level, so maybe you explored more ideas.

The artstyle is very cool and unique!

Nice work!

I'm glad that hearing about the Outer Wilds similarities brought you back into it. It's how I can quickly make the game make sense to others i've found out. I'm not entirely sure how I can alleviate this problem, since Outer Wilds even has it a bit with people often wondering what the heck they are supposed to be doing early on. Maybe I could make a larger hook right away to get to the upper door.

Nice little game!

This is a really unique take on the theme, and that goes a long way in a jam were I think there are a lot of overlapping ideas. Having such a simple mechanic works very well, especially when you use it a a majority of the levels.

Your level design is very good, every puzzle felt like a new way to use the mechanic, and I feel like I would've struggled myself to design many levels without having to introduce new mechanics. Each one added to the complexity, without jumping too much in difficulty. I'll admit that I didn't finish all of the levels, I got to the elevator ones, and was surprised that the game still had more content. This is a great amount of levels to have gotten out when you look at the polish of the rest of the game.

I do feel like the character movement can feel a bit weird. You seem to have some sort of grid snapping system, which I do appreciate, but you can also move freely. Because of the grid snap, I'd often try to just tap a direction and expected to just move one cell, and I wish that that could be a feature on top of being able to move freely.

There is also some (maybe intended) things that you can do with the loops that feel a bit weird, like on some levels you can slide on walls when holding onto a loop, and functionally make it smaller or bigger.

I was going to say that the music was rather repetitive at first, but then it kicked in on the first puzzle with a loop. I don't know if I just got really lucky with the timing, or you actually have dynamic music that kicks in once you use the main mechanic, and if you did bravo to you!

I'm also not sure if you ever tried to use them, but the WASD keys didn't work for me to move around.

I love seeing all the different Godot rep within this game jam, and I like seeing that this sort of style works really well within it!

With some extra mechanics, I could see this becoming a simple released puzzle game.

Nice work!

Lots of game jam experience, with the added jank code. The waterfall in the bottom of the map is literally just me toggling different tilemap layers in the scene tree :)

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

The boxes in the southern area are used for another puzzle down there, don't know if you solved that one (since you dont need to get every torch on the map), and it is probably one of my favorite ones despite being so jank. But, I can look into ways to make the lever more distinct, I actually had a bit of trouble spriting it and making it look nice.

I encountered that bug a few times, and I was able to get out of it by just shooting the hook again. But I'll have to add a priority system for when the hook collides with two objects at once.
I'm glad the hook was satisfying otherwise though, the audio really came through on making it feel good to use!

Thank you for the kind words!

I was definitely weary about the slow start, and the initial difficulty jump of getting the other torches before the hook or book. But I didn't know exactly what to do about it, Outer Wilds solves this by just having so much to explore, that even if you find "nothing" in your first loop you still feel satisfied.

I thought about having a tutorial section that would essentially force the player to loop to get out of it (like grab a torch in a one way door). But didn't really want to then also force them to pause to loop the world. 

I was playing it on Chrome on windows, It could maybe be somehow tied to frame rate? Where if your frame rate is higher / lower the game might process more / less, and let you move further? Does your game incorporate delta?

Nice job!

I like the creative take on the theme, I haven't seen any other games like this one, which feels like a rarity for this jam.

Ill say my hand is definitely feeling tired after a session of this, so I don't think it could be played for very long periods of time. But I think there could be some options to alleviate that. I think the main issue is having to keep clicking again whenever you mess up a circle, maybe having a key you could press that would act as you clicking could suffice. Or the game could automatically start drawing you a new line a little bit after you hit something. I will say I was tempted to get my drawing pad out and try it with that.

This does remind me of the Pokemon Ranger series, and I wonder if some elements could be taken from those games for this. Maybe some enemies or bosses require you to draw specific shapes around them, (and then move slower to compensate for the added time to draw).

I see in your Gifs you managed to get some pretty long loop streaks going, but I always found it pretty hard to get them going to more than 2-3 loops. So maybe having the trail decay faster so you don't get caught as easily could be a power-up you can get.

Im a sucker for the neon aesthetic, so Im happy to see it here

Good work!

Thanks! I do think that the game has a pretty quick difficulty jump after the first torch is gotten. Because, to most players, then you need to either do the lake box puzzle (which is jank in how I implemented it), or wait till the next loop to do the lake early on, assuming they are ready to go there. So I'm glad that so many people managed to get past that initial section.

The slow movement was me trying to make it a bit more 'cinematic', because I kept giving myself Titan Souls vibes when moving around the world and taking it all in. But you can roll in that game so maybe that's a difference. I did definitely keep giving myself the warp item with no cooldown whenever I was testing the map to move quickly ;)

There are 3 torches accessible without the need of the hookshot, so it is definitely possible.

Yep, that's the spot. When I go in I can barely move any further than the doorframe. It feels like I can almost cheese it by using momentum to get up to it, but I never got close enough.

I doubt it, but I wondered if it somehow depended on how close you were to the chain when you pick it up and it starts counting the distance, but I tried to cheese that and it still didn't work.

Of course it was written by me lol, one of my favorite things to do in game jams is give people some long feedback. Because I know it is what I would like from others the most as well, and it is more insightful than the common "good job".

Thanks! Was there any point in time where something happened that helped you understand it?

My intention was to have that be explained via the first sign you read, but I made it a bit cryptic. I thought about adding some form of tutorial, but never got around to doing it.

It was! I wrote down my idea for the game, then just realized I had written how Outer Wilds works. I'm glad that you enjoyed it!

Cute game!

I like that I was actually thinking about which items I would bring with me, and that I needed to separate the good ones with the not as good ones so I didn't use all of them at once. While some items I don't really see a downside for, like the Halo, (in which I could only really see it being not that useful early on, since you aren't likely to pick the tooth early, so you might as well not use it to decrease the chances of the bot surviving.)

Personally, I would like to see some more elements or items that can help you deduce which teeth are aren't rotten, but I think that's just me trying to fight the natural RNG of the game, and that its just a part of how it works. But, I feel as though losing can feel a bit out of your control, which is maybe the point overall though.

I think my favorite item is the coin, since it is either really good early on, getting to be able to remove 3 teeth to lower the chances quicker, or only 1 later on will be beneficial. I think that the item that reveals where the tooth isn't should persist and stay, since the player might not be expecting to have to remember where it is, especially when there is a perspective change right after it shows you as well.

Maybe an item that resets some of the teeth, then moves the rotten one would be nice. Since it can help you raise your chances if there is only a few left. Or lead into a larger play with a coin.

I am wondering though, if the item that adds a rotten tooth is used, then the one that moves the rotten tooth. Are all of the rotten teeth moved? Does it reset the rotten teeth back to only 1? Does it only move the original? That one felt like it could be a tossup depending on how it was implemented.

The theming on this is great, and I love the idea of there being an entire gameshow based around this idea. The art and music really sell on it too.

Great work!

I like the more narrative take on the theme here!

Wrapping your chain between multiple rooms is a very cool concept, and I like how it works very well with backtracking to old rooms with more length so you can optimize their positions. I do wish that with this, there would be some sort of puzzle that depends on how arranged a room you aren't in anymore. Like maybe you loop over it (but not enough to do the whole planet), and so you need to arrange it in a way so that you can get past your own chain thats blocking your way.

You could also maybe implement some objects that you shouldn't break, (easy option would be expensive pots, but you could also do like a space airvent or something else), which would cause the player to be mindful in where the chains are going to end up, making some puzzles that are inverted from the hedges mechanic.

The hedges are a nice touch to add some variety to the levels, making a certain arrangement to get rid of them is a nice break from the general draw the most optimal line paths. 

I wasn't able to get past the 3rd level. It seems like I should be able to grab the chain extender in the first left room, but I am just out of reach. Maybe this was a design error or something else, but it seems like a small fix.

Visuals are nice and cute, but some audio would help bring the game together.

Nice job!

Nice game!

This one is really fun to play, and I like a creative take on the theme. 

I like how throughout the bosses, you eventually learn their patterns and it'll help you know what you need to do within the new loop variant. Especially with the dark modifier, you already know what to expect from the bosses, so its not much of hinderance later on. 

The polish on this game is also great, good use of squash and stretch and everything feels very satisfying. For a game in which you don't really do a lot differently content wise, it was still very enjoyable to throw the boxes at the bosses.

Obviously there is a lot of potential here for more designs, either having more bosses that get rotated in, as well as different loop modifiers. I think there would need to be some amount of structure to the fights to make it work outside of a jam, but nothing a little bit of tweaking cant do. Maybe each boss is its own level, but I do like how it switches between the bosses as you go.

You thought of a good idea for a short jam like this, since you can technically just keep adding loops on top of it for as long as you'd like until the time is out, and no matter how many you have the game isn't left any less unfinished. 

Letting the player choose to have more health and different assist options is very good, since I think the most important thing to have for a game jam game is the ability for players who want to play your game not get stuck by not being able to. And these are nice additions to a game that can't really give out level skips.

Portrait mode seems to maybe sometimes make the snake one impossible not to take damage? Maybe I'm wrong and just bad at snake, but I think it'll cover the entire wall sometimes and you are forced to walk through.

Made it to loop 5 on my first try, is there anything big I'm missing?

Great work!

Nice game!

This reminds me a lot Floating Point, and a random game called One More Line for IOS which I used to play a ton because they were just satisfying, so you managed to bring back some nostalgia for me with this game.

While I like the idea of being within an enclosed room and getting collectibles, I wonder how this game could expand if the rooms were opened up more. And maybe the levels were across larger distances? One of my favorite things to do in those games were get fast and launch across the rooms (only to hit something far off)

It could also be fun to mix with some other random elements for certain levels, like having gravity, all orbs pull you in, etc. Just some random gameplay mixups to vary it up.

If you were to go in more with the theme, I think there could be some benefit to looping around a point. Since as it is right now, you really only loop when trying to time a launch, and not for much other reason. Maybe you could try having the red dots themselves be collectibles, and you need to loop around them so many times to collect them. Then navigating the room may look different since you need to plan out what dots you get rid of in what order.

I like the visual theming, but I am also a sucker for neon lit games. 

Good job!

Nice simple game!

I like the unique ability to able to swap between colors and shapes within the same line, it can really open up a lot of new routes that usually wouldn't be possible, and honestly creates a good skill factor, since I've had to have missed a lot of them because my eyes just cant do it quick enough. Although, the moving of the shapes make it really hard to find patterns, and it was quite frustrating to work around.

Also, it would help a bit to have more of than explained within the game itself, since I only learned that by messing around. It took me awhile to also realize that you cannot connect them via diagonals, since that is a very common feature of many match 3 style games.

The idea of making loops to get triple points does work to change how you view and setup the board, but I wonder if there is more available to work with the idea of looping. A simple (but maybe complex mentally) idea is that the tiles within the board never get cleared out, and simply drop down and when used, go back up to the top and fall within their column again. While this might lead to some infinities, I think just adding some other guard like cant use the same color / shape twice in a row could prevent it. 

The art style is very clean and nice, I like the look of the game a lot. 

Being able to switch colors is a nice touch, maybe being useful to catch different types of color blindness, but its also nice to use as a new way to look at the board if you cant find anything quickly.

Nice job!