A reversed match-3 game, where you're a fruit trying to survive!

Made in 48 hours for the GMTK 2023 Game Jam (Reversed Roles)

Check it out: https://hulien22.itch.io/fruit-punch-saga

For this game jam, we decided to aim for a smaller scoped game. We've been burnt too many times in the past with games that were way too big - leading us to be super panicked and not have enough time for game testing / polish.

For the "Reversed Roles" theme, we had other ideas such as a reversed Vampire Survivors, a reversed golf game or a game where you play as the npc in an rpg. Ultimately, we decided on this reverse Match-3 game after a team member's off-hand remark: "candy crush but you're the candy". The game seemed small/simple enough to quickly get a prototype and iterate on, and had lots of room for fun particles and animations, so we went with it!

Originally we were thinking of making the game more of a puzzle-based game, where there would be separate levels and you had a set number of moves per turn (we were thinking you would also see a preview of the fruits to come). But after some early prototyping, we quickly discovered that a more arcadey version of the game was much more fun. So we dropped the levels + the limited number of moves, and instead opted for a timer based loop where you had a limited amount of time to move before the finger.

The other interesting design choice we made was that we don't resolve any player matches until the after the finger's move. This change made it so that you can setup larger combos and have more color explosions :)

Overall we're pretty happy with how the game turned out - hope you give it a try and let us know what you think!