Help Play test a Flash game!
Posted by: Owen, 06 Jan 2010 22:52
On Monday I started my effort to complete a flash game in two weeks, making a simple Spider-Solitaire-as-a-colour-matching-game... game.
For this project, the intent is not necessarily to make the most engaging play experience ever, but simply to just get a finished, polished game posted on a game portal site. That being said, I'd still like for the game to be somewhat fun to play, so I'd like to get feedback from some play testing, if you would be so kind to give it a shot please?

Below is a working prototype (meaning it won't look like much, as it is all place-holder graphics, but the gameplay is mostly all there) that I've put together in the two and a half days since getting started.





[edit: prototype removed. see post above]
How to play:
  • To win a game you need to clear the board of all pieces.
  • To clear pieces you need to stack shapes of the same colour in increasing 'size' from top to bottom.
  • Shape 'sizes' in order, ranging from 1 to 5, are circle, oval, triangle, square and pentagon. So you want circles on the top of the stack, pentagons at the bottom.
    (This will hopefully be more intuitive with final graphics)
  • You can place a shape on top of another shape of the next size up regardless of colour (e.g. triangle on a square, square on a pentagon).
  • If you disable the 'strict' setting, you can place a shape on top of any larger shape (e.g. circle on a square)
  • You can only move multiple shapes at the same time (moving one shape and everything above it) if all the shapes are of the same colour and in the correct order.
  • Not all of the pieces are on the board at the beginning. You need to choose when to 'deal' in these additional pieces, which will be added to the top of each column.
  • A column cannot go more than 12 pieces high. If a column is 12 high, it will block the next deal.
  • If you find yourself not able to make a move then you lost that game (no prompt as yet)

That's the basics of it. It's not too hard to understand once you go through it once.

There are three levels: easy with just one colour, medium with two, and hard with four (it starts on medium).
If you have some time to perhaps play through a few games of each, with and without the strict setting, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could give some feedback below. Was it challenging? Was it fun to play? Or only somewhat? Completely boring? I hate these games!

There are likely to be a few bugs floating about, so if you run into any if you could mention them below too would be a great help.

Thanks for your help!

[edit]
updated the graphics a bit to make it a bit easier on the colour blind.
Tags: Games, Programming, Flash, playtest

3 Comments
Comment by: chooseareality, 06 Jan 2010 23:10
That was fun! Great start and it seemed to work just fine. :)

Comment by: KStarfire, 06 Jan 2010 23:43
Well done. Love the change from cards to shapes. Fun to play, now to beat the hard level, ok who am i kidding i havent gotten past medium yet ;)

Comment by: Tachevert, 08 Jan 2010 21:43
My biggest comment is that I'd love to see "live" feedback while trying to place blocks... a little highlight when it's a valid place to drop would make it feel a whole lot slicker. Very fun though, and I like the graphics - ESPECIALLY for programmer art.

Also, I suck at this game, and haven't managed to win above Easy!



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