{PIMP} Novendah! the game of blocks!

[coniptionfit]

Hello! Leechmaster and I have made a block game called Novendah.


Novendah is a game of matching blocks against the clock. The further you progress the more colors you see and the harder to find matches.

After certain levels you will find wild tiles that will aid you and brick walls that will hinder you.

Currently we have 40 total levels. This game is broken into 4 stages of 9 levels each followed by a 20 to 30 second bonus round.

If you can fill the meter before time reaches zero, you will advance to the next level. If you can't, you can enter your score on the High Score list and try again.

This demo version has the first 2 complete stages and first 2 bonus rounds. During game play you will find level 1 and 2 will barely show up as you WHIZZZ through them.. but I dare anyone to get through Stage 1 on their first try!

The levels progress in difficulty but we think it is quite addictive!




We are also hoping for some feedback and/or bug reports. We have been smashing bugs for a total of 18 to 22 hours now and feel we have them all, but mushy brains miss some things.

Enjoy!

NOVENDAH! Demo version

[happinessSam]

That's quite cool, just the simple act of letting the player pick-up anddrag the blocks makes it feels different from all the other bejewelled clones out there.

I really like this type of game, so I played it for about 10 min. I didn't find any bugs, but I did find myself getting bored by the end. I think this is because you've chosen to progress the difficulty by adding more different types of block rather than by decreasing the time allowed. Because of the random nature of the blocks when you have lots of different types it always becomes impossible after 2-3 rows, so I would press the shuffle button, do the possible 2-3 rows then wait for the shuffle button to come up again. I ended up feeling that it was more a measure of luck than any skill I had. Added to this, by the end I had over 5 minutes to do each level, which meant I never felt in any danger of failing, and in the end I just stopped playing and waited for the time to run out (while I wrote this email) so I could submit the score.

So my advice would be that unless you can write some kind of algorithm to make it so that there are always possible moves, don't increase the number of types of blocks after a certain point, but instead cut down the time allowed for each level - that should make it feel faster and more furious towards the end.

[tonypa]

In Bejeweled games it is expected to gain more points for making matches of more then 3 tiles and creating combos by getting matches from tiles falling down.

[coniptionfit]

Thank you both for the replies.

@happinessSam you are correct... we both had a debate about the time, in the final version there are 40 levels, and each new stage adds to the difficulty not just the number of colors. There are also brick walls that can't be moved that block the rows, these are also random in placement from level to level.

The time itself was hard to decide what to do with. At first we had the timer starting at 5 minutes and losing 25 to 30 seconds per level... but then came the problem of having the easy rounds with 4 1/2 minutes remaining and needing 2 minutes more on the hard levels.

In the end what we have done (not sure what level you made it to) is add time through the stage, and subtract time when each new round starts. So Level 9 will have 5 minutes, level 11 has 3 (or something close to that) Once again the number of tiles starts over at the beginning of each stage, as you are introduced to the new challenges.

I was thinking after reading your suggestions... what about taking time away for using the shuffle? We already tried taking points away, but that met with disaster.

@tonypa I agree with that. Bonus points for larger strings was on our todo but I think it got over looked.

Thanks again guys!

[LeechmasterB]

I didn't find any bugs, but I did find myself getting bored by the end. I think this is because you've chosen to progress the difficulty by adding more different types of block rather than by decreasing the time allowed. Because of the random nature of the blocks when you have lots of different types it always becomes impossible after 2-3 rows, so I would press the shuffle button, do the possible 2-3 rows then wait for the shuffle button to come up again. I ended up feeling that it was more a measure of luck than any skill I had.

So my advice would be that unless you can write some kind of algorithm to make it so that there are always possible moves, don't increase the number of types of blocks after a certain point, but instead cut down the time allowed for each level - that should make it feel faster and more furious towards the end.

Nice to hear that you liked it until it got boring. Its hard to tune the difficulty without doing tons of testing, which was not easy since we had little time to get it done. I would like to try making it better as soon as i have time to work on it a lot again. So may be you could advice me to resources for such algorithms or even turorial? Either to check if there is still a move possible or arange that always a move will be possible. Or even both features, as to what would make the progression of difficulty better. We have a couple of factors adding to the difficulty:

- Colour Numer (max 10)

- Block Number (there are 70 tiles and it gets up to 15 blocks the most)

- Points Needed to finish a level

- Time limit to finish a level

- Number of wild tiles

May be we could even add more features, have any ideas? Well any kind of feedback and suggestions is very helpful to us and testing is good to find the right difficulty.

In Bejeweled games it is expected to gain more points for making matches of more then 3 tiles and creating combos by getting matches from tiles falling down.

There is already additional score for more rows and if i make it more i d have to increase the whole minimum points needed for each levlel... :I


So thanks a lot for your feedback so far and hopefully we will get it to the right difficulty and gameplay in the future.

greets

[oooooo]

Apologize for any repetition but I guess that
just might emphasize those points.

The dragging of the blocks is very analog. I'd like it
if when you dragged, the interactivity would make
it obvious that you can only move one block away
and only on the blocks (as opposed to in between).

For a while I thought I could only drag into grey
boxes because they were "empty".

Some of the graphics seemed more refined then others.

Overall, not a bad game with much potential.

[tonypa]

For a while I thought I could only drag into grey
boxes because they were "empty".

Yes, I tried that too. The grey boxes look like empty place so I thought you have to drag colored blocks into empty space.

[LeechmasterB]

Okay i had some minutes time to do small bug fixes. The draging is now limited to the valid tiles around a tile.

There are 2 bugs fixed now and as soon as i know the reason for the time bug it will be fixed too. Plus some more visual effects where added...

Any improvement suggestions or hints on how to avoid that there is always at least one possible move would be apreciated.

greets and thanks for all the feedback so far, i hope its a bit better now .


Edit:
I also changed the level settings a bit, so may be its more interesting now and does not get boring. Hopefully its not too hard either... let me know.