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A jam submission

Gloopers, Assemble!View game page

Build equations. Get big numbers. Crush monsters. A falling-block puzzle game with tactical combat.

Submitted by skymanvn — 9 hours, 34 minutes before the deadline

Rated by 4 people so far

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Gloopers, Assemble!'s itch.io page

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Ai Usage

Human made

Genre

Strategy

Turn-based | Card Games | RTS | 4X

Rating

Family Friendly

Comments

EllaDisenchantedSubmitted1 hour ago

Hi skymanvn! I really enjoy these block falling games and seeing one with a roguelike twist was really fun!

Started in the tutorial, just a couple of little notes

The first move you are getting the player to do is drop a 2 piece item into a 1 piece slot, but don't tutoralize the rotation so it felt to me like I was doing something wrong and had to exit out of the game screen to see the controls because intuitively I wanted to press R for rotate, which pulled me out of the experience (specifically on your main menu screen controls: players unfortunately don't read a lot of the time and I am totally guilty of this)
Your tutorial has a lot of text after the 1st move, so much so that I forgot half of what it was saying, you may want to split things up a little bit because there is A LOT of information to take in with the math equations
Unfortunately I came out of the tutorial really not understanding the game outside of fill things horizontally to attack, fill things vertically to defend, how things were calculated was totally lost on me

For the game itself

The items not falling after being cleared really threw me off, but that's probably more of a me problem then the game itself so take this point with a grain of salt
With everything that was going on I started to totally ignore the values on the blocks themselves and just started to place things down to create lines vs actually thinking about what was going in those lines. I'm not sure how you would reduce cognitive load on a new player around this, but it is a lot
And sort of playing on these 2 above points I really just found myself reacting defensively to what was falling down sorta like "Ah! I just need this to go somewhere, wherever so I can clear out at least something so my board isn't totally scuffed"

I know I've been a little negative and I'm sorry, but I really do think that this is such a fun and interesting idea and the block falling section plays super well and smoothly and I had 0 issues with it at all. I just feel like there's either a couple of things that could be simplified OR some more gradual onboarding into the complexity is needed (Slay the Spire's slow mechanic introduction by not giving you all of more complex the cards until you level up a bit by playing the game is a good example of what I am talking about here). I hope you continue on with development would love to see what it becomes when you are done!

Submitted

In Boxes

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Two Hearts Endure2 days ago (1 edit)

This was really fun! A nice refreshing twist on the line clearing block stacker. Some general comments:

It would be good to introduce the controls to the player during the tutorial. I was able to guess the correct controls coming in using prior experience, but any game could be someone's first game.
it's not immediately clear how repeating blocks will behave (ie. more than one operator or number in a row)
It's not tutorialized that equations resolve left to right for attacks and also top to bottom for defense
It would have been nice to know that creating a negative value hurts the player instead
The defense line muting out any tall stacks is a little confusing. It initially seems pretty punishing, especially since it's an unknown mechanic. It might be enough to know about it in the tutorial.
It's not too clear when a block falls to the bottom or if it just drops one line after a clear. (seems verticals drop all the way down? and horixontals only drop one line?)
the randomness of the next block feels like it takes a little of the player's agency. The complexity of anticipating the next block (or possible blocks) is like trying to play two simultaneous games of blackjack. Rather than trying to orchestrate combos I felt like I was simply reacting to the next block without planning anything. There is a good cognitive harmony with the combat for it, but the player will be missing out on dopamine hits from high skill line resolutions.

The VOD of the review is linked below, and will be available for 60 days from the day of broadcast:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2870092300?t=0h54m40s

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skymanvnDeveloper2 days ago

Much appreciated for trying my game on stream and leaving such detailed feedback! I've checked out the stream and it was really helpful to actually see live reactions to the game mechanics (this is my first experience with streamers jam).

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linaSubmitted4 days ago

what a fun and addicting take on a classic!!! i love this and really enjoyed my time playing. besides the game mechanics, the art is also looking polished and i love the character designs. the only out of place thing that happened is that i was in the middle of the battle against the bat and the music stopped looping. overall, a very promissing game, congrats!

Submitted

vengeance of the vegetables

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skymanvnDeveloper4 days ago

Hi lina, much appreciated for giving my game a try, and for the encouraging comments!

In case you don't mind some follow-up questions,

Did you find the tutorial helpful?
Did you find yourself deliberately placing pieces to form equations, or mainly focused on placing pieces just to clear lines?
Was the visual indicator of enemy effect (such as Bat's confusion swapping player inputs) clear or did you feel some text description of the enemy skill is necessary? My concern is whether having texts will be too distracting / cluttering

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linaSubmitted4 days ago(+1)

1. i skipped the tutorial, sorry.... i think many people are impatient and do that, so you could consider a tutorial that is part of the first round of playing?

2. i did consider the equations, mostly just avoiding losing too many points

3. the visual indicators were super clear to me

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zatomeisisSubmitted10 days ago (1 edit)

I love it, it's really fun! I don't understand at all how making the lines and the equations work, but even with that, I had fun.
Like, I made a line and I thought the number next to the plus or minus made the equation, but it took other numbers instead.
I couldn't tell when it was a shield or when it was damage.
I didn't pay attention to the deck, I didn't notice that is there until I read what feedback you were looking for.
I mostly just cleared lines, tried not to lose, and beat a few bosses.

The art is amazing! Maybe adding a background or even a simple parallax could make it even better. As for the rest, I love the slime, the bosses, and the UI.

This is a really good game!

Submitted

TowerBits8 (Free Demo)

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skymanvnDeveloper9 days ago

Thanks for playing and your kind feedback!

In case you don't mind a follow-up question,