Raft Blaster! by Alchemic
Intro
You are a castaway surviving by building a raft from driftwood to prayerfully get to safety & protection.
The diaphanous profundity of your challenging survival is dawning upon moment by moment. Just when you think things couldn't get anyworse a magical beach witch starts throwing bombs at you...
Controls
- Arrow keys / WASD - Move, push, or drop
- Spacebar / X - Interact - pick up or drop, x2 to swap
How To Play
Press the interact button to pick up items, then press a direction to place it:

You can also tap interact again to swap places with an item:

Match 3 objects together to clear them:

When the enemy appears, match cannons to blast em! Matching bombs will damage your raft.
Put out fires by tapping and holding interact:


Gameplay Video
https://youtu.be/-OolHIzbMe0
Credits
- @Alchemic: Programming
- @karkadan: Programming, game design
- @chume33: Programming
- @Arnenia: Music & sfx
- @Gizmolo: Programming - High Score of < 1000
- @WiredOverload: Programming, scrum master - High Score of 4560
- @xxAtrain223: Programming
- @Montjuleant: Art
Tools
- Godot 4.1 - Game engine
- Aseprite - Artwork
- Presonus Studio One 4 - Music
Assets
| Link | https://github.com/apples/ludum-dare-54 |
| Link | https://alchemical.itch.io/raft-blaster |
| Link | https://alchemical.itch.io/raft-blaster |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/raft-blaster |
Ratings
| Overall | 487th | 3.651⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 609th | 3.395⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 322th | 3.651⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 123th | 4.314⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 326th | 4.023⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 355th | 3.549⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 565th | 2.892⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 740th | 3.321⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 64🗳️ | 73🗨️ |

This was a really interesting halfway point between Match-3 and a frantic putting-out-fires game. I really liked how you built the raft up as you went, and that it slowly filled up with junk faster than you can combine things leading to very hectic gameplay.
I do wish that time stopped or slowed while you were placing new raft segments. Near the end, with a large board, I would frequently get random builds at inopportune times, and be forced to navigate the UI for a couple seconds while the raft explodes around me.
Art is charming and the tiles are well-designed so that the different objects look very distinct. Music also fits the mood of the game very well. I'm always impressed with games that feel very cohesive made by large teams; you must have had some very effective communication/project management to keep eight people on the same page.
Great work for 72 hours!
It does the theme well, with space limited and maneuverability limited. But I think the movement is a bit *too* limited. You can only push one block at a time, so if you end up with a 2x2 square then you can't push any of those anymore.
Being able to better manipulate stuff on the raft would help. Or maybe making diagonals count to the match-3 would help a bit. I played on easy mode but it still felt impossible.
Everything else besides some fixable gameplay issues is perfect.
Good work :)
I played several rounds on easy/normal and the game always ended the same way - being stuck on a new raft piece that I had nowhere to slot. Unless I'm missing something, it feels really bad and punishing further into the game to match logs to create new pieces that just have nowhere to go. Sure I can maybe pick a config that will fit, but the select screen covers part of the raft sometimes so I can't be certain what space I have. On top of that, sometimes logs match themselves and I'm busy clicking elsewhere when that happens and a piece gets selected for me, so I have no control over it. And, I can't do a controlled burn with the bombs to make space because other pieces can auto match themselves and put it out. So then, I end up just waiting for my raft to fill up while I can't move. In this case, it feels like the player is being punished for doing too many matches, which feels really bad in a game of match 3. There's enough to juggle between navigating and fires and losing squares that I shouldn't ALSO have to worry about not having space for a raft piece. I think just letting the player lose the piece is fine, it lets the game continue and the player can still lose by being too slow and getting overwhelmed. Again though, if I was just missing something in the controls and there's a way to back out of the piece select, then pay this no mind!
Despite that one thing, this game is honestly so fun and I could see myself playing more!
I just played the easy mode, but even then I felt like I was getting overwhelmed with items really quickly; maybe the easy/normal modes could be better balanced so that you don't get too many materials all at once, that way it would be a gentler introduction to the game and mechanics. Overall though, very solid submission and I had fun with it, good job!
Even on easy mode, I felt pretty swamped immediately. But I can see that a good quick person would do well!
The graphics were really nice, and the music light and appropriate. Well done!
There definitely needs to be a smoother difficulty curve, with items coming at you more slowly at first until you've gotten used to things. There's a good idea here, and it's very well-presented with the polished artwork, but it's all rather undone by the non-existent difficulty curve, which makes it almost impossible to enjoy.