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Block Shop's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Gameplay | #12 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
Overall | #15 | 4.036 | 4.036 |
Innovation | #48 | 3.696 | 3.696 |
Audio | #67 | 3.571 | 3.571 |
Theme interpretation | #81 | 3.786 | 3.786 |
Graphics | #97 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
Ranked from 56 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/FoolboxStudio/block-shop
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Comments
Great game
Hi, I did the training but didn't understand the first level, please help!
Hi Hammerforge!
Do you mean the first level of the training? Or the first level when you click Start?
For the training, you should only have to click on the green tile and drag it to the orange tile.
for the "Start", you can stack the 2 blocks on the right to make the block on the left.
There's also a Walkthrough that's available from the Option menu, hope this helps!
Fun factory game with lots of features! The dragging works so so but this could be due to my poor track pad. Probably it will work best on a touch device. The only problem I can see is the lack of rewards. The black and white theme is nice but maybe too dull. I wonder if the game would be more fun if the shapes were not just squares and rectangles? By the way I only played a few levels.
Thank Magn!
I'm glad you liked the game! I'm reworking the controls for the game, they are already when more responsive then they use to be. I'm planning on maybe having multiple colors for the blocks, but I was trying to give myself that limitation to for my creativity and make more types of machines and such. Also, I thought about having different shapes, like circles, but it doesn't always make it super clear. I'll try to see if there's an interesting way to integrate them.
Thanks for the feedback!
What a good interpretation of theme scale and good design game!
I spend some time to take the training before play, and it is very helpful. You guys designed many features and elements in the game after all, and mechanic is awesome too!
I love strategic game and take time to think or plan. This game is really my type!
Great jobs!
Thanks Makubex!
I did try to jam as many features as I could, the time limit prevented some of the stuff to get in, but I'm working on version 2 right now!
Stay tuned to the eventual full release :D
Great game. Appreciate how much you put into the tutorial to ramp up to the full on puzzles, which were also well thought out. The transition between scenes with the falling pieces is one of those small things that does a lot to polish the game. Fantastic!
Thanks Psynut!
The balancing of the puzzle was pretty difficult, so I'm happy you think it was well done! I'm trying to find a better way to see my levels in the Editor, since all my levels are data driven, but haven't found a good solution yet. This will definitely be necessary since I plan on having 50 puzzles for the next version.
God, this is so neat. It looks like a fully polished game and definitely ready to get published. Very congrats to the whole team who made this.
It looks like you didn't had to, but if there's some feature you had to cut out due to time or other contraints, feel free to share them in my topic "The Features Cemetery" :) thank you and good job again!
Thank you for playing!
The whole team is just me :P thanks for the congrats.
And there is a ton of features that were pushed to the side, but I'm currently working on implementing them so I can release a version 2 when the voting period ends. I might still list them in you post!
"It's too easy", no, just kidding, it is super fun.
It is more like shapez than factorio to me, since it mainly challenges my geometry logics than any factory throughput stuff.
I like how i am confined in a very small space, so not just the geometry logics was challenged, but also how i need to cramp all the stuff in the space.
I'd say the levels 1-12 are like tutorials. I breezed through them with at most 1 failures, then i immediately get what's wrong with my assumptions and fix the problem. Actually quite a lot of them are simply one-shot. It means that you have spent a lot of time tuning which puzzle comes first, so that i am gently taught how to play the game, one trick at a time.
I wish i can right-click a cell to clear it, as if i am using the eraser tool.
Man, your game is very well-programmed. everything "just works".
Another nice thing to add would be the ability to skip puzzles, and/or a puzzle selector, to quickly skip to / from a puzzle.
(Ok, one last puzzle before i beat them all... Wait for it... Ya i watched the walkthrough after lv14, just to see how many levels are there. You can say i got a bit fatigue from it. Still, lv14 and lv15 are engaging enough once i get myself to challenge it.)
Ok, the game challenged my assumptions really well in the last level. While some of the previous levels got me because i wasn't familiar with the game system, lv16 was definitely one that required me to think outside the box just a bit. Although i figured it out while designing (i.e. dry-run in my head), i still got that aha moment, even if just a short while. It is good signs for a puzzle game.
Now i just wonder what more can you put into the game to make a full release. As-is? Cool but is it enough to be sold for 0.99usd? probably.
More shapes? Triangles? more dimensions in the grid? The possibilities are a lot.
I do like the factory-less approach you are taking. I feel like the throughput requirement in shapez is not adding to that game.
Oh forgot to mention: It is a very good idea to not put the expand-x and expand-y operators in my toolbelt. It makes that operation ever-so-slightly more challenging, as i would need to first expand-xy then shrink-x to produce what i wanted. Really meshes into the sim-city gameplay very well.
Thank you so much for the stream of conciousness comment! It's really helpful for me to have you're review as you go through the game!
I'm really glad you enjoyed the experience and that you noticed the slow but deliberate learning curve I've created by having the levels placed in a certain order.
I'm currently working on adding a level selector, more types of machines and readjusting how the controls work to draw conveyor or machines on the board. Hopefully, I can get a more fleshed out game and see if it can actually break the $1 USD barrier.
I do need to find a way to keep the player engaged, I do feel like there is a risk when the levels become increasingly complex that someone would just drop the game all together. I'm thinking of having "Worlds" and having them be unlocked based on how many levels you've solved. This way you can still progress even if some levels weren't completed, and you can revisit them later on for achievements and such. I'm not sure what else I could add, maybe a different game with similar mechanics, like having a limited amount of machines, or a time challenge, or bigger challenge in between the levels so it breaks up the gameplay a little bit and keeps it interesting. If you have more ideas, let me know!
Feels like the Zachtronics Opus Magnum approach would fit very well to your game, if you ever expand the type of operators available.
Say, footprint would be a nice metric to compete with other players, also players can try minimize their type of operators. Think of modern ICs only using the same NAND gate for every logic gate imaginable.
Of course you can compare the number of ticks to finish the puzzle as well. (i basically quoted the entirety of Zachtronics histograms)
Yeah, that's what I had in mind, I think I'll expand the idea and see how it would all fit!
Thanks for the ideas!
Very nice work! And thanks for providing video it did help to understand all the elements available!
Thanks for playing! You are the first person to mentioned the Walkthrough! You win... my gratitude! Yay!
Amazing game! Very polished and well thought. Congratulations!
Thanks! I'm glad you liked the game :)
Amazing puzzle game that looks great and plays even better.
Lovely puzzle design, very well built tutorial.
This should be continued after the jam to be made into a full fledged game for sure!
Great job !
Thank you so much for playing!
I am planning on continuing working on the game, you can follow me to get some updates on a future release :D
This was great! Very well executed, and I had to tear myself away from it :D
It reminds me of Space Chem, which is one of my favorite puzzle games!
If I had to nitpick, I would like some hotkeys and tooltips to the tools menu. And maybe use right click for the eraser.
Well done!
Thanks for playing! And don't stop playing... this game is everything you need... now and forever... ;)
The controls are definitely something I'll be working on for the release of version 2. I've had some many comments on all the things I could do that I don't really know where to start, but it will be done!
This is an amazing game considering the time limit. It is already engaging from the start and the detailed tutorial. Each level made me pause and think, but really fun to play. I love playing puzzle games. I always wanted to create one, but it was very challenging for me to come up with difficult and also reasonable puzzles. That's why I think this game did a very great job on level design and shaping simple mechanics to complicated puzzles.
The scene transition is actually interesting and creative. But I personally think the blocks fall a bit too fast, which makes the transition too dazzling to watch on screen.
Thank you some much for playing and for the comment!
You are the first person that mention the transition, but I was also kind of annoyed by it. I might just be used to it now, but it's always like my eyes want to look at every single dots at the same time. It's also very bad for compression on Youtube and Twitch, so I might try to find a different way of transitioning so that Demo and Launch trailers don't look bad when they're released!
Wow, excellent game. Definitely the best game I've played for the jam so far. Tutorial is well done, concepts are easy to grasp in isolation but make for excellent puzzles in combination, and the polish is immaculate. Well done!
I only encountered one issue: when restarting the level, I had one instance where the goal node disappeared and I had to reload the level to get it to reappear.
I really don't have anything else to say -- I honestly think you should keep going with this game and try and publish it for real. I would definitely pay for a fully fledged version of this game. Bravo!
I'm glad you enjoyed your experience!
That's a very specific bug your having, and I've not been able to reproduce it. Any way you could give me a step by step of what you did so I can troubleshoot the issue?
I'm currently working on version 2 and setting up a Steam page to start taking wishlist, so make sur to follow me to get informed of when the game will actually be released ;)
I just tried to repro the bug, but couldn't. Maybe it was a transient issue? Anyways, here's what I remember when the bug occurred:
- The stage was 3x2
- The goal node was in the bottom left
- I think the level was level 7 or 8?
- When I reset the level to try again, the goal node in the bottom left turned into a singular conveyer with no connections
- Resetting the level again caused the goal node reappear
Hope that helps!
what a fantastic game! as a huge fan of shapez and factorio, this really hit home for me in all the categories. Great take on the theme, fantastic level of polish with a great tutorial, great visuals / audio and really simple mechanics translated into clever puzzles and fun gameplay. Bravo!
I'm glad you like it! You're exactly the demographic I'm going for, so I'm glad I hit my mark!
Really well done on this game! Going through the tutorial, I felt like there could only be so many different machines, but you just kept adding more of them! Each of them had a place, too - all of them were pretty straightforward to understand, with maybe the exception of the stacker, but I felt like it played a pretty critical role in many of the levels. Menuing was really polished (liked the level transition effect) and most of the audio and art were consistent to the theme of your game. I liked that the tutorial was interactive, it communicated the core concepts very effectively.
Not a whole lot to say otherwise - as placement of the machines is on a click-and-drag effect, it would be nice to see them attached to the mouse cursor, just so that you can be sure of what you are putting onto the tiles. I found in a few instances I would start placing down conveyers when I meant to place down a machine.
Very well done, best of luck in the jam and on your future games!
Thanks you so much Hal! I'm really glad you enjoyed the game!
The shadow image for the cursor is a thing I've added to my list, I'm be sure to integrate it in the next version.
I plan on working more on this game and releasing a solid demo on Steam for the end of the voting period, we'll see how that plays out! Hopefully I'll be able to get some wishlist and release something more official in a couple of months :)
Feels good to be a Certified Block Shop Operator. I really like how polished the game feels, it has a clear color palette and style.
I think the puzzles are paced well, maybe the difficulty could ramp up a little faster, but it's okay as is. The last 2 or 3 puzzles are quite challenging and fun. The tutorial expained the basics very well and I understood how to play immediately after completing it.
I think in games of this genre it's important to have a level select screen so you can skip puzzles that you got stuck on and try different ones. Even in a game jam, not everyone is equally good in solving puzzles, but if people were able to skip 1 or 2 levels, they would see more of the game before rating it...
Another idea is adding hotkeys for placing blocks and especially for turning delete mode on and off.
Great job making Block Shop! Good luck with your future projects!
The level selector was definitely something on my list, but I had to reduce the scope of I wanted to finish in time, but it is plan for version 2!
I'm glad you enjoyed the game!
Wow, this game made me think and analyze. I loved it. Congrats!!! The best I've seen so far in the game jam :D
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Wow, scaling and squishing makes this way more complex than I thought.
Great job! (but tbh I only played until level 10, 1 am is not a good time for puzzle games, but ill check it out again later)
No worries :P I'm glad you liked it.
There is only 16 levels right now, so you're almost there ;)
This is so interesting! What a great job!
I have some advice for you:
1. Change the icons on the left side and use the same block you see in the game (it is easier to understand the meaning and will become more consistent).
2. You could add a drag animation (a ghost block) because I didn't understand this mechanic at first.
3. It is strange that the action blocks also have a color (this does not help perhaps).
4. I would add an icon to help people distinguish the start and exit blocks the color sometimes is not enough (especially for those with vision problems).
Otherwise it is really a nice game, congratulations!
Hey! Thanks for playing the game!
I'm not sure what you mean by point 1 and point 3. Could you explain further?
For point 2 and 4, this is in the backlog of things I want to add to the game.
1. I meas that you can convert the white icon in graphic like a block that you use inside the game
4. Add a dart or some effects to distinguished the starts points and the exits points
;)
It's an epic game for a month's worth of development. It feels like it would make an excellent mobile game. Getting the controls down took a little while, but the training helped with this. The puzzles are engaging and get more challenging as you go along further. As others have mentioned, I can see this as a complete game on steam or mobile.
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed!
I'm already making plans to rework how the controls works, so that they will be a little more intuitive.
And with all these comments about having the game one Steam, I'll be working on getting a page up so that people can start wishlisting it! Guess I should also start making some devlogs of some sort huh... ?