Playing jam games.
Ikebana #
https://tallpatsch.itch.io/ikebana Gorgeous art and a nice take on merge games. You’re literally arranging flowers… for the purposes of merging not for the usual aesthetic reasons. But it’s beautiful nevertheless!
Takeaways:
- It’s a one page game that you understand immediately.
- Showing the local top score in the corner is a nice touch.
Bzzt #
https://astralstew.itch.io/bzzzt
Factory building in a bee hive. Took a while to understand what’s going on but it’s pretty ingenious. Holes in the wall allow bees to deliver pollen and nectar, those resources will move to neighbouring hexes if the buildings there can use them. For example, a jelly factory converts pollen to royal jelly so building next to holes that produce pollen means you don’t need to drag and drop the pollen yourself. Then build a nursery next to that, which processes royal jelly and produces larvae and now you’ve got a chain.
Scratches the optimization itch. The progression is a little slow (maybe because I didn’t know what I was doing) but it really makes me want to try making efficient layouts.
…
I came back to this game and had a great run before the game finally crashed.
Another thing I like is that it reminds me of concentration gradients in organisms and how they’re used to move molecules around in the body. In this game you end up with complex structures informed by how materials move from cell to cell.
Melodies of a Dream Keeper #
https://skyanemone.itch.io/melodies-of-a-dream-keeper
Cool idea jumping and dashing on the beat. There are so many platformers out there so why not combine the genre with Guitar Hero and Rift of the Necrodancer gameplay?
I really liked how dashing and jumping would produce sounds that worked with the music. That would be a pretty interesting idea to explore further, I think. Maybe some moves make a sound at the moment of the move but also on the next off beat, etc. Oh interesting. Maybe the move creates a moment in the future which allows you to execute another more special move. Could be tricky to learn… it’d probably need to be skill expression not the fundamentals of the player getting around.
In Melodies, the jump velocity and gravity are set up so that the next beat is at the peak of your jump arc. So they’re already exploring that idea to some extent.
