Very cool turn on the match-3 mechanics. Great balance of difficulty and game duration as well. The graphics are pretty nice and clean, love the sea effect. I liked the music and sound design a bit less, the accordion was a bit too much at the end :p great job anyways !

Graphics and gameplay worked well, especially the water in the background. The music was nautical but the loud sound effects were not my favourite part of this game.

Loved the sounds on picking up the blocks

this is awesome my high score is 3825 on easy mode also i love the music

This was a very interesting take on the match-3 style. Very interesting and I could see this being turned into a puzzle style game with some work. I think in the current iteration it can be a bit tough because getting a giant piece tends to put you in a loop of getting giant pieces, but it is still fun. Nice presentation too.

Hey this is really pretty cool! With enough time I think somebody could really develop some strategy here and go a long way, sadly that wasn't me but it was fun all the same. Might of been nice if you could flip pieces or maybe throw away a piece from the board.

@forgin-bits Thanks for playing and glad you liked it! Yeah, the waves turned out pretty well (just adding sine waves, just like real waves ^_^), I was happy with those =).

@tiny-pig Glad you enjoyed it, and hopefully the "mute sounds" button worked for you ^_^.

@psytron Thanks for playing! Good to know that someone liked the sound effects.

@magicdweedoo Great score, and that's an impressive number of turns! I think you also currently have the highest score on Short mode, among Ludum Dare folks (the other higher scores right now I recognize all as non-Ludum Dare folks I linked the game to in Discord ;).

@zettabit Glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, I considered adding something else to deal with the giant pieces (power-up to split them or something?), but they fit the theme well, as they're pretty inevitable, and actually played into my strategy in some games (it's going to be big, but if it's fits just right, a giant piece costing you a 5-6 turn penalty but completing a hole from scratch can still be a net win!).

@simplepotential Thanks for playing! Yeah, I started to get some strategy going after playing _way_ more than I'd expect a Ludum Dare reviewer to play, but glad you had fun anyway =). I did try adding rotating, but the gameplay slowed down to about 10% of the speed, it just added _so_ many more options, and turned into a very different feeling game (definitely more "how do I make this perfectly" instead of "how can I do this with minimal errors"), though interesting in it's own right ^_^.

A great concept, well executed! I'd love to try a version with just one more block color: it feels like the pieces accumulate into giant unmanageable blobs very quickly, which takes a little of the strategy out. (Disallowing rotation definitely feels like the right move, though.) Nice work!

Hi @caeonosphere, did you try the "Long" mode, it's got 4 colors (indicated, perhaps poorly, by a little icon next to it with 4 shapes)? It has a bit more (different?) strategy, but I wanted the default to be something shorter a Ludum Dare player could finish in a sitting without getting too bored, but maybe that was wrong ^_^. Placing the big blobs fits the theme well though, too, I thought. Thanks for playing!

Good entry!
I don't usually see this level of polish on a game with a custom engine

Things I like :slight_smile:
* A lot of feedback about the result of a movement
* Nice blocks, background and animations
* Leaderboard!

Things to improve:
* The sound effects and music are ok but after a while they start to be a bit annoying

This is a very creative puzzle, and a super polished game! Great job!

@jesusnoseq Thanks! Quickly settling a simple idea really helped me polish it, I even got a few playtest sessions in and discovered some key things people were missing that the placement feedback really helps clear up - I was really happy to end up with a game that, I think, *didn't* need a tutorial, or even instructions, compared to the complex beasts I often end up creating ^_^.

Though it is a custom engine, it's one I spend 100% of my work week working in, on other projects, so it really helps that I know it well, and it's pretty fully featured, at least for jam-scoped games ^_^.

@conradoclark Thanks for playing!

Awesome integration of the music into each turn and also signifying when you're about to lose! The animations and graphic really help with the play experience. I also liked the addition of a leaderboard.

Polished simple but well executed. Takes a well known and over done game type and makes it feel unique and new! Great job

I absolutely love games like this! And you executed it brilliantly. I don't really have any suggestions for the game, because it's absolutely well done! The leaderboard is also great!
And even though I (Dalon) didn't manage to get first (yet), I managed to last for 69 turns which is nice :)

@idunnyx Thanks for playing, glad you liked it!

@stefan-laimer Pretty good score =). Lasting longer is, arguably, a more impressive feat than getting more points, I slightly regret not ordering scores by turns first, points second, instead of how I did it ^_^.

Played a few rounds and managed to get to #7. Pretty enjoyable and has a lot of hidden depths. Personally I would've added one or two more colors so that you don't get these giant unwieldy shapes as fast.

Great stuff! I rated Mood 5; ya'll have made some great vibes here with the sights & sounds. I really appreciate no time limit.

This game was super addictive. The preview of what your score was going to be was a really nice addition.
My only critique is that the music "speeding up" didn't quite feel right. Maybe it was the music itself, or maybe it just needed some other sound effect/ui element to display the urgency.
Awesome work on this one, loved it!

Love the unique mechanic of this game! It works so well! Really enjoyable to play. Did you ever consider the ability to rotate the clusters of blocks before you place them? Could be interesting, but I also did enjoy the limitations of just trying to fit them in wherever I could. Really well done game! Bravo!

Great job! Unique take on the puzzle mechanic and solid throughout. Beeing nit-picky adding even more colors would have kept me playing for longer i think (tried the "easy mode" but still managed to pile the same color into a massive blob quite quickly :smile:). Well done!

@nekusoul Nice job, I think that's the second place score for any Ludum Dare player (the others above you are not from the jam / kids with too much time on their hands ;). There is a second game mode with more colors, but I really liked how placing the big blobs was inevitable, and could be delayed ^_^.

@yeramia Glad someone appreciated the sounds, even if I didn't ^_^. I heard you on no time limit, I really like thinking puzzles, not clicking quickly puzzles =).

@byazzle Yeah, music transitions weren't good, it was just fading between 3 pre-recorded tracks, really should have sped up one track, or faded in the new track at the right point so it sync'd up. The background did turn red when you've got only one turn left, but depending on what you do, you could end up skipping that entirely (I had slightly different mechanics in the game at the point I added that, and reworked the turn economy, generally for the better, near the end ^_^). Thanks for playing and glad(?) you found it addictive!

@diego-escalante Thanks for playing! I did try rotating the blocks! It ended up slowing the pace down to about 10% as I super-analyzed every move I could make, which suddenly became a very different game (trying to make all patches perfect, since it was _much_ more possible), also interesting, but I thought it was less fun, so, more restrictions felt the way to go.

@generalsturgeon Glad you enjoyed it! Maybe I should have tried 6 colors or something =)

Very nice entry! A simple mechanic with some spice on it! Easy to grasp and replay! Well done!

@hadryel Thanks for playing and glad you liked it! Also good to know it was easy to grasp - I made the intentional decision to include zero rules explanation for this entry (usually I make something much more complex that needs a big tutorial or at least instructions ^_^) and just throw people in, and I am always slightly worried people won't figure it out.

It's so hard to stop playing... love it!

Classic and simplistic look, the main mechanic is easy enough to understand - without being too easy, and the music fits the maritime setting / story very well.

Even though I am not necessarily good enough to be on the upper end of the high score list, the game does make a lot of fun, it works very well and also fits the theme.

Great work!

Really nice puzzle game, I love to see them in LD! I had a lot of fun with this, I think so far, this is the game I will be most likely come back to—I definitely have some ideas on how to develop a wee bit of strategy.

There were definitely times where I was wishing I could rotate pieces. I had several times where I had 2 turns left, 4 or so holes in weird places, one huge piece that, due to my rotten luck, couldn't quite cover the empty holes all at once, and a bunch of small pieces that were rotated at every possible angle except the one I needed. 😔 But after reading what you have said in your responses, I can definitely see why you didn't want to add rotation, in order to preserve the feel of the game. I'm not sure what a happy middle-ground would be, maybe limit it by using a power-up to rotate? Idk, that might be clunky, and change the game a bit too much, as you've previously mentioned.

Really great game, super polished, clever and innovative, I could go on! Kudos to a good job, I expect to see you high in the rankings!

@frogsicle @games-by-tom Thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed it!

@gardenovena That you might come back to it is high praise, indeed! Powerups is actually a pretty good idea, whether they're something you get when things combine on the match-3 board, or they're something you cover particular squares in the leaks, either would probably work, and "rotate" and "split giant blob" (general match-3 reshuffle/new board?) seem to be two pretty clear choices. If I ever expand upon the game, will seriously consider that ^_^.

this is honestly amazing - super addictive gameplay, clean ui, wonderful!

@gglyptodon Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed it. Nice high score, too!

Good game but needs to find a more relevant theme. I liked the puzzle aspect... really liked the puzzle aspect. It is a nice different take on matching lines. The music and sound were fine and I like the fade out/in when you toggle the music... nice touch. Game play was interesting and challenging. Does not take long to catch on but takes a lot to get good or master.

However, plugging leaks in a ship... just did not work for me. It needs a different backstory... or even none at all... It's a puzzle game where you fill in the shapes before you run out of turns. It make the player develop a strategy, use the turns and mistakes wisely, keep an eye on the build up of large clusters, etc. It has a lot going for it as is... in my mind it does not need a back story such as you are fixing a boat.

Great little puzzle game and there are many aspects I like.. the high score board was a nice touch.

What a clever idea! I would have loved a "rotate" piece button but other than that, everything felt pretty intuitive and elegant.

👍

Nice. I'm also of the mind that powerups or some other sort of mechanic (probably not freely allowing rotation, for the reasons you've already outlined) might serve well to spice things up a bit and give the player a sense of "lucky excitement" -- we all know how that works out in match 3 games, where you feel like you're almost about to run out of matches but then a lucky chain reaction or powerup comes in to save the day.

As is the gameplay is more "pure" which I think rewards strategy nicely (not that I'm great at it), but I think that sort of "sporadic reward" can add an extra element which keeps someone coming back.

But I do think that the building up of inevitable large pieces that screw you over is also pretty fitting to the theme as well, so maybe with that in mind, what you have is plenty appropriate.

@ddrkirbyisq Thanks for playing and the feedback! Yeah, I think I like the big blobs for the Ludum Dare theme, but they're not actually a particularly engaging mechanic when it comes down to it. Some "lucky excitement" is a great idea =).

Very innovative game, I managed to get the top high score in the default mode (3821).

Graphics are simple and fit the game very well, I don't think I could have come up with a better design. I felt the audio, though simple, certainly had its place in the game and it didn't feel like the game would be better off without it.

I discovered a strategy which allowed me to get the top score, which I would describe as the "dying breath" strategy, but the way it works, I'm not even sure whether it should be there, or if you perhaps intended for it to be there. Basically, how it works is on your last turn, you place a big blob of one colour into a leak to complete it fully, but also generate a ton of errors that subtract turns. For some reason, after doing that the turns that are supposed to be subtracted because of the errors don't get subtracted, but the turns that are supposed to be added from completing the leak get added, so I go back up to 3 or 4 turns and essentially just resurrected myself from the dead. Not only that, I also just cleared a big blob that was clogging up the play area and now my playing field is much more favourable. I will attach a video of it later if I can. I managed to do the above strategy twice, which allowed me to push my score by quite a few hundred before finally losing. But it almost feels like cheating, because of the turns that don't get subtracted. Perhaps you could look into this and decide whether you want to keep this "hack" or not.

Here is the video of the strategy:

https://youtu.be/CJn6y9174DY

@escapade Thanks for playing and the breakdown! Yeah, I think that's actually just a bug - the UI even tells you you're going to end up with 0 turns after dropping the piece, but you end up with 3 after releasing (probably clamping to 0 somewhere in the middle of the operation ^_^)! I'll leave it for now though, just to keep the high score list "fair". I see you were playing on mobile! How'd that work for you? Apparently well enough =).

@jimbly It worked mostly fine, although there was a constant offset when I dragged the blobs, and I sometimes placed the blobs slightly off, so they ended up in the wrong spot which was a bit frustrating, but I'd blame that on my phone screen being small. Could be something to consider if you make this into a mobile game.

@escapade Yeah, the offset is intentional, but hard to know how big it should be - on my phone, without the offset, my thumb covers the entire leak puzzle, so could not see where a piece was going at all, figured with an offset I could at least see the preview before dropping it, but still doesn't work super well ^_^.

This game is amazing! I really like that you have to manage both the leaks and the "storage" simultaneously. Graphics and interactions are very well polished!
I guess some width-8 leaks could help removing large blobs in the "storage", and therefore making the game a bit easier. (I must admin, i didn't got very far, place #28 on the score board, so maybe there are leaks this large.)

Great game