Concentric Circles
- Match same colored circles in groups of 3 or more
- Matches are done by distance to each other, try to be clever in grouping them
- Matches of > 3 score much higher
- The middle circle and text on it show what color you need to match to advance
- The middle circle shrinks as a timer. This timer is reflected in text at the top of the screen
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Such a cool idea for a puzzle game -really fun!! :D
Love the concept, it's a cool take on match 3. Played it on my phone, so not the best experience. Wish it would at least go wide screen when I rotate my phone, when it's tiny like that it's a little tough to have precision.
Effects are nice, I think you could reinforce the scoring a bit if you had the effect go towards the center only on a correct match. Since my screen was tiny, I didn't notice the score wasn't increasing at first on bad matches, eventually figured it out when I noticed sometimes it auto matched.
Anyhow, great core, could see it evolving into something incredible!
Thanks! Always great to read your feedback. This one just came together so quickly. It was weird, I did spend a few days confused by it. It didn't work at first! But once I got the center circle concept, it was basically a free ride from there. I agree with making the color VFX flow toward the center, that is something I wanted to do.
Played it on PC now! I was confused about how it worked before, I see now the match happens on mouse up if you have a match highlighted? Something like that. It felt nice.
One thing I'm noticing is an urge to "game" the "rules" I randomly assigned the level. Like I want to intentionally line up zigzag shaped lines that combines matches from multiple columns at once. It's tricky though, and the time pressure made me decide to give up that tactic, no matter how tempting.
Another thing I noticed more on the second play was the lack of plan-ability when matching, so to speak. Any match you make is simply replaced with new circles, so at most you can hope to get lucky (an important puzzle game feature!) instead of the long term manipulation of the board of matching these to move those. You have planning ability with moving the board itself and it's interesting to try and perceive all the different ways to manipulate it, so maybe a non-issue. But I can't help but think it might be improved slightly if there was some kind of predictable consequence for each match. Like the pieces moving inward each match, or the circle collapsing on itself where the missing spots are (where would new pieces come from? I dunno!) - you could even get experimental and away from the norm with spawning pieces based on the matched pieces. Like a Blue match always spawns 50% red, 25% orange, 10% yellow, etc... still a bit random, but predictable enough to make hoping for luck a more active experience... maybe?
...sorry to ramble. Still fun to play!
One thing that really worked with this one is that I actually am not doing any match checking through data structures, but instead, through distance checks. I did this because the circle structure was just confusing to work with as an array, of course. Which lead to a problem you described, unfortunately. No planning allowed, heh. I call it a "lack of collapsing" but there is no advanced strategy here, due to no way to know what is coming in. Couldn't figure it out either, without relying on an array to collapse or move remaining circles around.
It's interesting to think about. This is a key element to match-3 or any puzzle game design, but I've never read anyone really talk about it. I have to admit, I've discarded entire prototypes because of a lack of this collapsing or planning ahead. I stuck with this one because of the distance based matching, I felt it was unique enough. And the movement. It needs something else though. I think if I collapsed circles toward the center, it might make it more interesting, but that's a lot of work to test something uncertain.
I think I would need a powerup pieces as well, a bomb, or match all type.
I like the idea of spawning based on the matched color too.
I don't have a huge breadth of experience in the arena, but I play a decent amount of the Frozen match 3 (and it's predecessor). I think Russ's studio did those? Anyhow, I like the power ups they use and the methodology for earning them. As for collapsing... the lack of a firm grid certainly makes it a tough problem, though I don't understand the data structure issue. The distance based approach sounds novel, however... seems like any solution should leverage that rather than fight it. Could be a differentiating feature.
I'll give it some deeper thought and get back to ya!