LudumData

The Gemancipator by spooncats

[raw]
made by spooncats for Ludum Dare 51 (COMPO)

You are Crush Stonejaw, and you really really hate match-3 games. Your hatred for them was so powerful that it caused the gems from those games to come to life and start attacking you.

Capture1.PNG

Destroying gems is simple, just click a set of 2 or more matching gems to shatter them. However, matching gems isn't as easy as it used to be. Every 10 seconds, as a new wave of gems arrive, the criteria for matching gems changes, as shown in the HUD at the bottom of the screen. You must alternate between matching gems by color, shape, or facial features. It's game over if the gems reach the end zone.

Tools Used:

Engine: Godot 3.5.1

Artwork: Procreate

Audio: ChipTone, Bosca Ceoil

Edit 10/3: Uploaded windows version

source code https://github.com/spooncats/LD51
Itch.io link https://spooncats.itch.io/the-gemancipator
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/the-gemancipator

Ratings

Overall 272th 3.361⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Fun 260th 3.278⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 253th 3.278⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Theme 216th 3.639⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 173th 3.639⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Audio 308th 2.861⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Humor 136th 3.125⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Given 43🗳️ 2🗨️

Feedback

Steffo
03. Oct 2022 · 17:04 UTC
:warning: Your itch page is still a draft, nobody but you can access it, please set it to published! :D
Ale
03. Oct 2022 · 18:21 UTC
I found this game on top of the queue, but couldn't play since it wouldn't load. Fix it quick so you don't miss out on those ratings!
Gangrue
03. Oct 2022 · 18:22 UTC
Yep, Steffo is correct. It isn't available on itch.io and the html5 isn't working.
GameJMunk
03. Oct 2022 · 19:09 UTC
Great game! The graphics are cute, and the sound effects are satisfying. It feels really good when you pop a whole screen of gems!
SciDev
03. Oct 2022 · 19:49 UTC
It looks nice and feels satisfying to explode things, but I couldn't understand what clicks were causing them to explode (eg. matching seems broken: If I click on a red gem near other red gems, they may not explode, but some other gem surrounded by gems of other colors, when clicked don't explode).

One thing this game definitely does have going for it is that it is 1: satisfying to explode things, 2: the nostalgia of the old mobile games like this definitely kicks in.

Overall, enjoyable, but confusing.
cafebeef
03. Oct 2022 · 20:43 UTC
This was a fun game! It's pretty cool how the board effectively completely changes every ten seconds, without the graphics changing at all. Quite exciting trying to click a match before the match criteria changes! Unfortunately on something like the fourth level, the game glitched and froze :(

![game_frozen.png](///raw/a6a/84/z/50c31.png)
LDJam user 277876
03. Oct 2022 · 21:14 UTC
Satisfying game, especially when you get a whole slew of 'em. My main complaint is that the game doesn't seem to give enough of a challenge to care about the central mechanic (most of the time I am just spam clicking random spots around the map and I seem to be doing well). I will say though, it was a treat when I found out the protagonist's name was "Crush Stonejaw".
Pixelydian
04. Oct 2022 · 13:20 UTC
Absolutely love your story in the description :laughing: I love the little faces and the application of the theme was good. It was surprisingly hard to find matches of anything but color at first but after a bit I got the feel of it. As far as constructive feedback, there should be a penalty for just clicking like mad. Outside of that, this is a great game that feels and looks good! Congrats!
Ben Parisi
06. Oct 2022 · 03:30 UTC
I love the concept. And the gem graphics are really nice!
The problem is that you have unlimited ammo. So the most efficient way to play is just to click like crazy on everything. I think if you limited the number of bullets the player has, the game would be better.
ghostbomb
06. Oct 2022 · 08:43 UTC
Nice game. This is a good twist on this type of puzzle game. I think no one would have faulted you for bending the theme a bit and letting waves come faster at higher levels since otherwise you spend a lot of time waiting for waves to get enough points.
CodeChomper
06. Oct 2022 · 13:24 UTC
I enjoyed the twist on the gem matching game. The face matching was the hardest one for me. I am glad that type of match was not random as I was able to get in a grove and make it pretty far. I too think that a penalty for miss clicking should be added. Maybe a a new row to the end if you miss click. Great entry and I had a lot of fun, thank you!
gagapete
09. Oct 2022 · 12:37 UTC
Nice game, for some reason the tile sometimes got stuck, overlap and sometimes weren't treated to be on the position they were. If I'd need to guess I'd say this happens when the sideway shift animation and the falling animation occure at the same time. The gameplay is fun and kept me playing for around 10 minutes straight. After a while it got repetitive though.

PS: Your ldjam.com-Webbuild seems broken.
Misfire_dev
11. Oct 2022 · 19:37 UTC
great use of the theme, having the criteria change kept everything feeling really fresh, nice graphics and satisfying gameplay loop
Steffo
13. Oct 2022 · 17:17 UTC
Now that I'm finally able to play the game, I'm also able to review it!

I agree with everyone else: it's a great twist on the [tile-matching](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tile-matching_video_game) genre!

Being able to match up to two gems made it a bit too easy, though, as all I had to do to cheese the game was to mash everywhere in the board to find a match: a cooldown between invalid clicks could be great!

Mashing clicks made me find a weird bug:

![There's an empty space between the gems](///raw/d4d/z/531ba.png "There's an empty space between the gems")

Your little lore about Bejeweled was pretty fun, so I scored you on Humor accordingly ;P
JoshuaRabbit
15. Oct 2022 · 20:58 UTC
This game is interesting. I think putting the twist on the rule every 10 seconds is good idea
quadtree
17. Oct 2022 · 07:58 UTC
Clever idea, and the graphics, animations, and sound worked well. If there's one thing I'd change, it'd be to add in a penalty for clicking on an invalid match. Otherwise, it's just too easy to cheese every level by clicking on all the jewels.
amarokczukay
19. Oct 2022 · 10:41 UTC
pretty challenging twist on the genre! at first my brain could only see colours haha

you've lost me for many minutes!

there are some little bugs, but the game feels kinda polished tho, good entry!