Swapwood Quest R by Saturnyoshi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBh8H1Az1ts

Swapwood Quest R is a unique block puzzle game with an RPG twist. Combo your enemies and match enough tiles to protect against opposing blows, but make haste, You only have 10 seconds to prepare before your turn ends!
Features:
- 12 Levels of strategic combat against challenging foes,
- 3 unique worlds to explore,
- A handful of interesting attacks and spells to learn and harness,
- A lovingly handcrafted original soundtrack,
- Charming pixel art graphics.
Controls:
- Arrows or WASD to navigate UI and move the player around the overworld,
- Z or Space to swap blocks,
- X or Shift to make the screen scroll faster,
- ESC to open the pause menu.
Matching more than 3 tiles will yield an another move for each additional tile.
Credits:
- sarn - Programming
- THX - Art
- SnakeBlock - Art
- Not Your Sagittarius - Art
- valentines - Art
- jordy - Concept art
- tup - Music
- Oroshibu - SFX
Game design by everyone involved.
Swapwood Quest R was originally created in 72 hours for Ludum Dare 51, with the theme "Every 10 seconds".
| Link | https://team-bugulon.itch.io/swapwood-quest-r |
| Link | https://team-bugulon.itch.io/swapwood-quest-r |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/swapwood-quest-r |
Ratings
| Overall | 14th | 4.388⭐ | 100🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 13th | 4.342⭐ | 100🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 135th | 3.914⭐ | 101🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 366th | 3.878⭐ | 100🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 2th | 4.798⭐ | 101🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 22th | 4.397⭐ | 99🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 320th | 3.335⭐ | 90🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 14🗳️ | 6🗨️ |
My only negative feedback is, as many stated over on Itch, some of the earlier fights can be beaten optimally by just spamming swap. In my experience though, some of the later fights forced me to think strategically, setting up matches to actually use on later turns. It was good fun!
I didn't play the entire campaign but I really enjoyed the parts I did.
In the full release, it would be cool to be able to rack up extra seconds somehow.
PS: this game reminds me a little of "Pick Pack Pup" on the Playdate :slight_smile:
EDIT: Doing better now :-)
This game is beautiful and really well polished!
I had a lot of fun playing it!
Anyway, nice work :clap:
I found it a bit hard at the beginning to grasp the swapping and the combos and couldn't make them as fast as I wanted to, but eventually I got a bit better with practice ^^.
10 seconds is a really short window and this game exploits that very well. The difficulty curve gets interesting after a few levels which is great too.
Solid entry, very polished! Thanks for making this!
The swapping blocks mechanic seemed extremely simple at the start but ended up created a ton of depth which was really nice. Since it only worked to switch side to side it forces you to think more about your moves to get some big lines built up vertically (as opposed to random spam) which ended up being fun to plan out
Managed to defeat the final boss after somewhere around 10 tries. Congrats on making the game and hope it does well!

It's also really really well polished! The art, music, gameplay, and overall feel of the game all are great and complement each other really well.
I don't have much else to say other than it's a great game :)
It's also really really well polished! The art, music, gameplay, and overall feel of the game all are great and complement each other really well.
I don't have much else to say other than it's a great game :)
It's also really really well polished! The art, music, gameplay, and overall feel of the game all are great and complement each other really well.
I don't have much else to say other than it's a great game :)
It's also really really well polished! The art, music, gameplay, and overall feel of the game all are great and complement each other really well.
I don't have much else to say other than it's a great game :)
It's also really really well polished! The art, music, gameplay, and overall feel of the game all are great and complement each other really well.
I don't have much else to say other than it's a great game :)
It's also really really well polished! The art, music, gameplay, and overall feel of the game all are great and complement each other really well.
I don't have much else to say other than it's a great game :)
Another thing to improve would maybe be the tutorial: it might have been nicer to force the player to acknowledge what is going on rather than just go with the timer as usual.
The blindness attack got me more than any other. I don't think there was a single time I was able to remember what blocks were there before the attack. I just treated them like they didn't exist for the duration.
I spent at least an hour on that dragon level. The fact that I have to make four combos (two shield and two sword) just to take one life *and* half the time I set something up it would crumble once they turned a key block to slag, made the level very very difficult. After my last round, I couldn't bring myself to continue. I got one heart away from victory and then my soul drained from me as I realized I had almost no attack or shield blocks left. And wouldn't get any more before the screen scroll would kill me. So that's as far as I got or am willing to go.
That aside, I played it for two hours and was more invested in it than any other game I've played so far. So what can I do except give it five stars? Excellent game.
There is also the dragon boss that has magic defense and an ability that makes the blocks unmatchable. You can still destroy the blocks using the missiles, but they will always target the blocks at the top.
Speaking of magic defense you really had to make it only usable to magic attacks. It's one of the rarest blocks in the game too, making it even worse to play. Also regular attack blocks are just as rare.
So in order to beat the game, you need near-perfect RNG. If you don't have good RNG, then the game is impossible.
Also the final boss feels like you just need to play well until RNG decides to smile upon you kindly. The junk blocks not being removable without an RNG rocket blast removing them for you feels bad.
But, that's just a few blemishes on an absolutely MASTERFULLY put together game - nice work!
Everything about him is cute. I'm amazed that I have to make such a good game in such a short amount of time.
congratulations really!
Only in innovation that I won't give such a high rating, because I've played a lot of games like this on the SNES.
Loved the game so far, good job!