Chao Ab Ordo by ZeroDivide
Maintain order on the board for as long as you can before it inevitably devolves into chaos!
CONTROLS:
Arrow keys to move, Space to instill order.
My first Ludum Dare entry. In retrospect, I am rather displeased with it; the idea seemed better in theory than in practice.
KNOWN BUG: sometimes, upon hitting Space, the block doesn't turn back to grey, just stops switching colors. I couldn't find the cause of the bug, so it remains in the finished game.
CONTROLS:
Arrow keys to move, Space to instill order.
My first Ludum Dare entry. In retrospect, I am rather displeased with it; the idea seemed better in theory than in practice.
KNOWN BUG: sometimes, upon hitting Space, the block doesn't turn back to grey, just stops switching colors. I couldn't find the cause of the bug, so it remains in the finished game.
| Web (Flash) | http://pancake.io/290b63/LD26/index.htm |
| Source | http://pancake.io/290b63/LD26/ChaoAbOrdo.rar |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=20934 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 77% | 2 |
| Overall | 2.98 | 758 |
| Audio | 1.47 | 1047 |
| Fun | 3.16 | 395 |
| Graphics | 2.51 | 968 |
| Humor | 1.96 | 756 |
| Innovation | 3.19 | 494 |
| Mood | 2.55 | 889 |
| Theme | 3.41 | 680 |
I think the game isn't that bad. It is a bit unclear what leads to chaos (beside that it's inevitable) which makes it hard to derive some kind of strategy.
I did get to a point where I could manage the remaining blocks ongoing. Generally though I thought it was very cool.
+1 sound
(For some reason the game didn't show up on Chrome, but worked when I tried with Firefox.)
but there's a point in the game where everything slows down and I ended up with doing nothing to make the game end.
spend some more time on the difficulty curve, and you have an awesome game ;)
I don't think I'd play it more than once as it kind of feels like luck, but the experience is interesting all the same.
As for pointers - mouse control might have made the game feel a little fairer, and I think it's a mistake to make the game-over screen disappear when you press space - by the end of the game I was spamming space, and I totally missed my score!
I don't think the idea is bad in practice. But I struggled with the same problem and started with an idea that I thought would be great. Sadly it wasn't, so I tried several other ones and finally came up with one that was at least a little fun :) But there are always things to improve.
My best time was 207.8 seconds.
You should definitely keep going with this - tinker with the algorithm and controls and such. I'd suggest allowing the player to move multiple tiles when holding down an arrow key so that he/she doesn't have to repeatedly press it and get carpal tunnel syndrome.
Full points for theme. :)
I only missed having a feedback of how well I'm doing, like a score. But alas, this way is more minimalist.