Eyy, another match 3! I definitely have to give yours a try.
Yeah, that does seem to be the best strategy, and the mana system does a little to counter this (you get more manna when there are more of the same color orbs around you), but it needs more. I like the losing mana idea and am considering it for the future.
Currently it's a simple brute-force method. It checks all possible matches (it even checks for gravity to see if there are combos) and scores them based a number of factors:
- If the player is in the match or next to it
- How close the player is to the match
- How many orbs the match contains
Right now, it just chooses the best scoring match, which for this jam led to the most interesting gameplay, but this could be tweaked to make differing difficulty levels in the future.
Thanks for the great ideas and feedback!