Double, Double! by metadept

[raw]
made by metadept for LD25 (COMPO)
Double, double, toil and trouble! Stir the contents of your cauldron into order to cast your nefarious spells!

...OK, so witches aren't actually villainous (except in contemporary fantasy) but this is what I came up with.

Objective:
-Arrange blocks in rectangles of 4, 8, 16, or 32 blocks
-When the appropriate block type comes up, valid rectangles will be cleared for points (upcoming clear is displayed in upper left corner)
-Blocks are dropped from the top of the cauldron each clear cycle
-Clear cycles become progressively faster
-Game ends when there is no room in the cauldron for blocks to fall into

Controls:
-Arrow keys move the cursor
-A and D keys 'stir' blocks in the cursor counterclockwise and clockwise
-Space advances through menus, and pauses/unpauses the game

This is my second LD entry, and I'd say I improved on some aspects but still fell short in others. Graphics are typical programmer quality. Sound effects are bad because this is the first time I've made a game with sound! Music is missing because I'm not a composer and it's 5:50 on Sunday.

Written in XNA, so it requires Windows and the usual C#/.NET dependencies.

Ratings

Coolness 55% 3
Overall 3.50 115
Audio 2.70 271
Fun 3.52 78
Graphics 3.43 194
Humor 2.21 471
Innovation 2.79 394
Mood 2.84 332
Theme 2.48 638

Feedback

Crowbeak
17. Dec 2012 · 05:20 UTC
Nice, solid puzzle game. :D The sounds do their job just fine.
nihilocrat
17. Dec 2012 · 05:28 UTC
"Double, Double" makes me immediately think of this: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Double-Double

Nice game! Fun, with nice graphics.
ZwodahS
17. Dec 2012 · 05:34 UTC
Not sure what else I can say since Crowbeak said it. Good job =). Kind of addictive
Cy4n1d
17. Dec 2012 · 09:37 UTC
I love XNA and C#. Switched back to HTML,JS and CSS after 2 years.Very nice game. :-)
KWL_TW
18. Dec 2012 · 08:09 UTC
I love action puzzle games!
Christina Antoinette Neofotistou
18. Dec 2012 · 15:29 UTC
Very cute and arcade-like
hints
18. Dec 2012 · 16:28 UTC
Great game, very fun and challenging. Once that speeds get ups there it is very hectic.

Perhaps adding a button to clear early would be nice in the beginning though.
gameXcore
19. Dec 2012 · 21:31 UTC
Good solid puzzler.
Shugor
19. Dec 2012 · 21:46 UTC
It's a pretty nice puzzle game, the clear mechanic made it pretty interesting. It gets more fun as it goes along, so it's addicting in that sense. Music would have added something to it, but nice job otherwise~
Maple
20. Dec 2012 · 12:43 UTC
Good spin on a tired puzzle game mechanic, and well put together overall. The sound effects worked fine, too, no worries.

~Spaceoff
dek
20. Dec 2012 · 12:47 UTC
Well executed :)
h.attila
20. Dec 2012 · 18:12 UTC
It's a solid puzzle game. No complaints, really.
Jeremias
20. Dec 2012 · 19:27 UTC
My best score was 5440. Played it multiple times. The art is absolutely okay and your game is very, very fun and solid.

I needed a bit to get, that only specific colors are cleared dependent on the color of the text at the topleft of the screen. You should add/show the respective icon, too.

It would be nice too, if 2x3 blocks (etc.) get cleared, not only 2x2, 4x4, ...

You don't need to force the player to install your game. It is also better if you make a zip instead of a rar. I made a tutorial about this topic: http://www.stevencolling.com/index.php#howto_publish_xna_gamejam

Nice game!
csanyk
21. Dec 2012 · 04:00 UTC
Pretty good. The "villain" theme seems a bit arbitrary -- you could have skinned any theme onto this, really. But it is a solid puzzle/falling block game.