[Game][2.0] Droptype - A Match-4 Falling Block Puzzlegame [v1.3.1]

Meiguro

Update: I've updated Droptype to SDK 2.0! Download is below.

Here's a match-4 falling block puzzle game variation I've been working on. I took the large field size of Lumines, the clearing mechanics of Puyo Puyo, and the small amount of Pebble Buttons and made Droptype.

Not to mention that you may play it sideways. The idea is to match four of the same block type by dropping floating pieces, but you can only move left or right. No rotating. Droptype gives you relatively small pieces at first, but based on your performance, it'll scale up to pieces I hope you've never seen in any other falling block game (at least one's I've tried .

Controls

Up: Move Left

Select: Drop Floating Piece

Down: Move Right

Back: Pause to Main Menu

The game is endless, you lose when a block overflows. However, when you chain -- that is, clear blocks successively before getting your next floating piece -- you gain a free block. When you overflow with free blocks, you lose free blocks instead of losing. Droptype however is wary about letting you have too many free blocks, so there is a risk.

I included a main menu that you can use to pause the game by pressing the back button. If you pause your game, you also get to access Infinity Mode. In this mode, there is no clock to race against. This reduces battery usage to just whenever the status clock updates, when you press a button, or when you trigger an animation. If you like the game enough, you can pretend it's a watchface! Infinity Mode appends an infinity to your score to let others know how you obtained the score.

Read more about Droptype

Download

Download according to the Firmware on your Pebble. If one doesn't work, try the other. If you've never heard of SDK 2.0, try 1.14.x first. You can check your firmware version in Settings > About > Firmware.

Download for 1.14.x at My Pebble Faces [v1.3]

Download for 2.0 at My Pebble Faces [v1.3.1]

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it and I'm happy to take feedback

Changelog

v1.1

- Add drop react indicator to show if a drop will cause a reaction

- Change game over animation to only sweep 2 or 4 times, infinity mode or not

v1.2

- Fixed an issue in v1.1. Please update again if you've downloaded v1.1. v1.0 is unaffected

v1.3

- There is now an options menu accessible in the main menu even when you pause. With it, you can enable vibrate on react or disable light on react. The settings are per-session and are not saved after you exit.

- Blocks are now rendered via images, so Hard mode should now perform just as fast as Normal mode. You should no longer feel time slowing down when the field is incredibly full.

v1.3.1

- Updated to SDK 2.0! Sorry, no new features, but rest assured I will be improving Droptype in the future

DonaldBubbins

I think this is the best game made for pebble so far! It isn't an action game. You have all the time in the world to make your choices. Things don't move or animate when they shouldn't but to make up for that you put some really nice style into the UI. And I LOVE that the back button doesn't kick you out right away. I think we may need to play it for a while before we know if the balance needs tweaking but people will let you know about that. All and all though, you've done a great job! Thanks for work.

8a22a

Like it. Got 30890.

Meiguro

Donald Bubbins said:

I think this is the best game made for pebble so far! It isn't an action game. You have all the time in the world to make your choices. Things don't move or animate when they shouldn't but to make up for that you put some really nice style into the UI. And I LOVE that the back button doesn't kick you out right away. I think we may need to play it for a while before we know if the balance needs tweaking but people will let you know about that. All and all though, you've done a great job! Thanks for work.

Thank you for the kind words! It's true, you can pause whenever you need time to think, or enter Infinity Mode to remove the drop timer. Sometimes I forget to enter infinity mode, pay attention to something else, and look back to see that I've entered Game Over.

About tweaking: I literally spent entire days fiddling with the piece generator mechanics in Normal difficulty to get it just right, but I would either end up with a rather truly endless game, or a very earth shattering instant game over. In the end I slightly upped the difficulty and changed the drop timer to reduce the amount of time you have to decide to drop your piece as you play (it doesn't reduce to 0 like in Tetris, but it might feel like it . I felt like I was cheating by falling back on the drop timer, but in the end I already had infinity mode which can remove the timer. But I definitely would enjoy balance feedback; in fact it's partly why I released it just now.

More on the backing/pausing: I finally have time to check out the other games! But to be honest, all I've done is have the player push another window on the stack, a function kindly given to us by the SDK. I imagine that if others' games aren't doing it already, they can easily either add a fancy title screen, or push two windows right off the bat. Pushing two windows might violate the UI guidelines of navigation though, so a title screen or main menu is probably more desirable. Since my game is also about getting a high score and there isn't any way I know of to save data between sessions, I definitely didn't want players to lose their hard work by accidentally hitting back.

DonaldBubbins

After playing this I feel like a drop 7 style game. (Or drop 7 exactly) would work well on pebble. I feel the main point is that action games just don't work on pebble.

errorist

This game is the first of the games that I have installed that I actually played for an extended period of time. Well done, well built, well thought through

Meiguro

Barry_Ward said:

Like it. Got 30890.

Glad you like it. Is that Hard mode? To be honest, I consider Normal and Hard to be slightly different games as they allow for very different styles of play.

@Donald Bubbins

Ah, I had forgotten about Drop 7. Reading more about Drop 7 turned up some very interesting articles about its depth of strategy. I may have to consider this if it's not a legal issue.

@errorist

Thank you, I have played the game myself until 1 million score of course before it had a power ramp to make it difficult over time.

In any case, I present version 1.1. I managed to refactor enough code to allow for another feature: the drop indicator will now indicate if the drop will result in a clear. I've updated the screenshot to show this feature as well. This will help those that play the game while wearing their pebble on their wrist . I've updated the first post, but here is a download link too.

Edit: I just found an issue with v1.1 and uploaded v1.2 which includes the fix. If you have v1.1, please update again. v1.0 is unaffected.

DonaldBubbins

Good reads. I was browsing Gaf today and saw this: http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=57652230 Maybe give Eighty-Eight a shot. - written on my iPad

Meiguro

Here's version 1.3! In this version, you now have an options menu to toggle vibration on clearing and the backlight on clearing. Enable vibrate to get that console game feeling. The game triggers the backlight while clearing occurs so that those that play in the dark can follow the chain reaction. However, if this is undesirable, you can disable it. The options menu is also available when you pause. For now, the options aren't saved across sessions.

This new version also includes a performance enhancement by drawing the blocks using images. Hard mode now will feel just as fast as Normal mode, and having a large amount of blocks on the field should not noticeably impact the speed of animations.

The gameplay remains unchanged for now Download via the first post or this link.

Suzanne Schiller

I agree with all who say this is a perfect Pebble game. I haven't kept any of the others on my watch because

Meiguro

Thank you @SuzanneSchiller for your post, I'm glad you enjoy the game.

I've now updated Droptype to SDK 2.0! The download link is in the original post, or visit the website http://meiguro.com/droptype/pebble/ which has links for both firmeware 1.x and 2.x versions. It doesn't make use of the new 2.0 features unfortunately, but I have plans to do so such as tracking score and play time. It was quickly ported to 2.x, I will be releasing updates if I find any issues.