Week 4 - Match-3 Game - Weird Shape Matching

 Before we start, here's the game. 

Last week was pretty rough. At first I decided I wanted to make a moment from a 2D "soulslike" platformer. On top of that I wanted to try skeletal animations. I figured if I made the characters from rectangles and circles it should be manageable. I also thought I'd try Godot, as it has a skeleton system built in. There were two problems with that setup: 1) I still can't get into Godot and find it tedious, 2) I quickly realized there was no way I'd complete it with my erratic schedule. You see, I have a very small child who's taking a LOT of my time, and last week was pretty rough with that. So I gave up early and decided I'd do a match-3 game. It was on my list, as I've never done this before, so why not?

Here I had a rough start as well. First I went to microStudio, but I quickly found that the fact that it insists on the "natural" coordinate system, with 0 in the center of the screen and the Y axis going up instead of down, made it a nightmare for me to mentally juggle object positioning. It wasn't a huge problem in Space Boulders, but as soon as I wanted to display a two-dimensional array of objects, my head started spinning. So I decided to ditch it and go with my trusty Pico-8. Me and Pico-8 are veterans of several game jams and we go back a long way. It's my favorite tool for creating small games and prototypes, and while I wanted to try new things for this challenge, this time I decided that I had enough fumbling around, and picking Pico-8 gave me the best chance of getting something out by the end of the week.

Then I proceeded to watch some tutorials on how to make a match-3 game, but it took me a few days before I put something together, due to my erratic schedule getting exceptionally erratic this week. When I did, it didn't look very impressive. It was bland and boring. But I didn't worry, I was doing this in order to figure stuff like this out. It was when I started adding animations, tweens, particles and sound that I had this week's revelation, which was this: for some type of games, polish and juice are absolutely everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. I started with a functional, but extremely boring prototype, and as soon I added all this visual flair, it suddenly started being addictive and fun! I even tested this on my wife, who confirmed that it was really a fun game. And I changed NOTHING about the rules or gameplay. Even without score or progression, it was fun to simply blast the jewels and watch the colorful sparks go in all directions.

So this is my lesson from this week. Polish and nice visual effects can make a HUGE difference. This, and that I shouldn't overscope and try to figure out an engine and an animation technique the same week. Therefore, this week I'll probably try something simple, tiny and relaxing. Maybe a bitsy game? We'll see.