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Cart #palette-3 | 2024-03-16 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
6

Hello Everyone,

I’m a beginner programmer, and I just submitted my first game, Palette!🎨

Palette is a simple puzzle game🧩.
You’ll land in the middle of a colorful, filled canvas.
Each time you move, the tiles you land on will dynamically change color according to a pre-defined sequence that is visible to you.

Controls

Controls are simple, juste move your character with ⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️ !

Game mode

Quick Play

In Quick Play mode, you’ll land on a randomly filled canvas. Your objective is to create rows and/or columns of the same color as long as possible. *The longer the line, the higher your score will be.

Challenge

In the Challenge mode, you’ll solve 7 pre-defined puzzles. Make color sequences according to the requirements of each level, displayed on the right side of your screen. Aim for perfection to earn a star!

Import (Draft)

Import a custom level! More information below.

Import

To create custom levels, I made myself a quick level editor in Google Sheets. It’s a bit rough, but if anyone wants to try making a custom level, here’s how:

  • Open the sheet: Google Sheets Link
  • Use either unlocked_1 or unlocked_2
  • Draw the canvas, color sequence and the score needed to pass the level.
  • Copy export code (right-click --> copy).
  • In Pico-8, start the game, go to import and paste (CTRL-V). Then press X or O to start a custom level

Versions

Thanks everyone for your nice advice and comments that allowed me to improve my game.

  • 0.1: UI modification. Score for every colors is displayed. Smaller grid. 3. You can now freely move (without painting the block), if the block you are standing on is same as the first one in the queue.
  • 0.2: Added 7 pre-defined levels (Challenge). Added possibility to import custom levels. And few ui / sprite modifications.

End Thought

Okay, so this is my first “game” and my initial attempt with Pico-8. Let’s be honest. It’s not so great 🙃.

The game feels too random, and your score is closely tied to the randomly generated canvas at the beginning. However, I still wanted to share it to mark its completion. If anyone wants to take a look and provide feedback or improvement ideas, that would be fantastic!

On top of that, I enjoyed working with Pico-8. It’s a fantastic tool for beginners. Having everything integrated within the software is incredibly useful. Plus, the ability to play the game on various devices is amazing!

Sorry, there is no music and so-so sound effects (SFX) in the game. I was unable to create anything due to my nil art skills.

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Congratulations on your first creation!

I think your game idea is fun and easy to understand. The presentation is clean, controls are intuitive, and nothing gets in the player's way of interacting with the puzzle.

Below are a few things that could be improved upon, and some personal suggestions. Take my suggestions with a grain of salt, since it's your game and your vision!

Clarify the score calculation. Perhaps display the points earned by each color's row/column, so we can see how they add up to the total score.

Let the players know if they did well. Perhaps include a collection of non-random levels, and define a target score for those levels. An easy to way generate non-random levels would be to pass predefined values to srand() before the board is generated.

Provide a little more choice on a turn. Your basic gameplay idea is simple and intuitive, and I think it would be great to keep it that way. However, I think adding a little flexibility would allow more moves to be meaningful. A way to do this would be to allow the player to freely move between blocks that share the same color of the block that they're currently standing on, and they only use a block from the color queue when they step outside of their current color.

Overall I like what you're going for here, and I would like to see where you take it!
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Hello Skarrmann!

Thank you so much for taking the time to write your feedback. Your suggestions are very smart and interesting, and I will definitely work on them.

Regarding the three topics you listed:

Clarify the score calculation. --> You are right, I will think about it. I'm just afraid that the screen will be crowded with numbers, as the print() text is quite big and there is no way to easily change the font size (if I'm not wrong?). Anyways, I will try and see how it looks. Maybe I can also display the score by colors.

Let the players know if they did well. --> I love the idea and will try to design a few pre-defined levels. Then I can have two game modes: one with levels (like a Sokoban game) and one mode, as it is today "quick-game"-"high score".

Provide a little more choice on a turn. --> Your idea makes a lot of sense. I mentioned that I felt like it was too random. Your mechanic idea may improve this feeling. I will implement it to see how it feels afterward. I will also try to brainstorm other mechanics that can help involve more strategic movements.

See you for v0.2!

__

PS: I saw that you made I puzzle game on Pico, I looking forward to try it as soon as I'm out from work 😀.



😎👉👉 Make the canvas smaller, such as 8x8 or 4x4.

This is a really solid first cart. Don't be scared of the SFX. remember: it's more afraid of you than you are of it. Can't wait to see more. ❤️
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Hello Steven !

Thank you for your kind words and advice.❤️

For the next version, I will try with smaller canvas size! I will post an update as soon as I got a new improved version done.



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@Zellkoss_ I like your improvements!

Nice job expanding the score display while maintaining a clean presentation.

The new movement option feels good when planning paths for colors coming up in the queue.

And the smaller board size works better with the move count.

The gameplay and decisions feel considerably more meaningful now, keep it up :)

I concur. Cleaver improvements! Good work!



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