The day 1 is almost finished for me and it is time to show something. Here’s a screenshot of what I have so far:

My game will be a match-three puzzle with blackjack and other stuff. You’re playing an alchemist who should mix potions by matching three or more ingredients of the same color in a definite sequence (ie red-green-red-blue). If you match ingredients of incorrect color – they’re simply ignored and doesn’t help reaching the main goal.

The trick is: you have only one minute to mix potion. If you fail – you have to start the level once again. If you succeed – you get additional time and next potion to mix. The difficulty is supposed to grow with every mixed potion.

As usual, my first day is not very productive and this time I wasted few additional hour trying to figure out something not as commonplace as “only one minute”, but in the end I gave up and decided to make something that I’d love to play by myself. Match-three is a very simple mechanic and I’d love to include it to my main project after the Ludum Dare.

Ok, the progress report.

Done:

• Mockup art
• Image preloading, animation loop, controls
• Main game mechanics – swapping ingredients, match detection, affected cell update
• Basic animation
• Deployment

Next:

• Potion mixing
• Time limits
• Boosters & special blocks
• Scores
• Art
• Sounds
• Tutorial (video or few screenshots with text)

I’m going to get back to the game tomorrow morning and continue working on it till the end of the Compo time frame.

You can try the current version of my game here.