I really like how you swap the cards with the hints, however it wasn't that intuitive for me. There is plenty of "juice" like animations and they feel very nice.

The swapping of the words felt way too sensitive. Words where swapping quickly and when I release my finger it often ended up on the wrong side. I think it has to do with size of the words, when you swap a long word for a short one it will swap back because the spot where it would go changed, a possible fix would be to have static spots whenever a user starts dragging a word.

The concept is good but it feels rather shallow, I have been playing till lvl 8 however. I have been thinking about how you could make it more interesting and came up with something. Only one initial word can be created and the board would either change up or being pulled together after the letters disappear, then another word can be created. This would make it slightly more challenging I think, and perhaps more interesting.

Pretty good for a 48 hour jam game! But I'm not here to praise, I'm here to roast. There is no learning curve and I was pretty much stuck at the 2nd level without any out of game help, this is a big no for any game imho. Controls should be straightforward or explained in one way or another. I know the controls are intentional but I find the shooting/jumping horrible.

With the art style you have going I'm sure you can create a much better game even within a weekend. Have some timing traps, puzzle mechanics and slightly smarter or more interesting AI and you got something very interesting.

Thanks a lot for your honest and detailed feedback. I aimed to create a fresh and relaxing atmosphere but I guess I did the opposite. I will attempt a redesign as soon as possible but I'm not a design guy as you noticed :).

I have given the GUI a complete make over, I am very pleased with it but I like to know what you think. I removed the scoreboard for now but it is still on the things to do list.

Wow, what a hard game I almost made it to 7 points to reach the world leader board, which is a very nice feature.

Although the graphics are simple they are consistent but I think you can improve a lot. Adding a paralax map does wonders and is pretty easy to do.

Gameplay can be improved perhaps by some bonus pickups. It's currently too simple imho.

Way too many ads, I liked to try a couple more times but watching a ad every couple seconds (Yes I died a couple times at the first barrier) made me stop playing. Implement a timer that either counts the amount of games or the time and show an ad only after x amount of time.

I'm talking about the old school parallax background that gives the impression of depth in a 2D game. You can add multiple tileable backgrounds and let them scroll at different speeds. The closest background would move fastest and every background behind that moves slower. Here is a article about it: https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/parallax-scrolling-a-simple-effective-way-to-add-depth-to-a-2d-game--cms-21510

You could put a nebula in the front, then some planets or asteroids and a starfield in the back. Tone it down so it does not interfere with the actual game elements too much.

I am amazed at how little people know about game development and still manage to develop a simple yet fully functional game. I started game development 8 years ago but only managed to complete a couple of games, so good job!

Thanks and indeed it's something for puzzle people, I think Sudoku players really like it.

Anyway, your not the first saying the UI is too small and I will be redesigning the UI. The thing is, with the 9x9 and 10x10 I cannor really go bigger or make the camera pan, but that would really break gameplay imho. So for my future UI I will make everything bigger but the 9x9 will only be slightly smaller in size and the 10x10 remain the same. I actually based everything on the 10x10 and have just one bigger font for titles.

Thanks for the comments! I am working hard on a total redesign. Not sure if this post can contain bbcode but otherwise just follow the url if you are curious.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/ExgCOU2.png[/img]

Forget about the green buttons, they still need to be implemented. I didged the 10x10 since I really don't want to make a panning board. I thought about adding a smaller font for the larger devices but I want to treat users equally. The smaller boards now grows to match the width of the screen so for people having trouble with the larger boards can still play fine on smaller boards.

The tutorial is a bit further down the list, I still want to implement a couple of extra comfort features. I will add a proper readable how to play soon for the time.being

I finished up the design makeover, I'm interested in your opinion on this. I added before/after screenshots on this site but it would be nice if you could open up the updated version and have a look at the largest board.

Thanks! I tested it on a S6 with a 5.1'' screen and 9x9 was perfectly readable. Could it be that your devices resolution is lower then 720p? I made this GUI for 1280x720 and upscaling this was not an issue for my S8 and my wife's Huawei, however I could not test it on a device with lower resolution. Perhaps I can change the scaling filter to get some improvement for your device.

I really need to sort these issues since I am currently prototyping a game much larger in scope and need to nail the resolution. I thought about using a dynamic font that is the same size on each screen but this would change the GUI so much that a small device would look cramped and a large tablet almost empty.

The best thing about your review is the thumbs up for the GUI graphics since that got the thumbs down prior to the GUI makeover update. I agree about the mechanics, they are a bit dull and I'm personally a fan of deep strategic games. But I believe people that like to play number puzzles like Sudoku or Kakuro will enjoy it, for a while at least. I still got a few features I want to implement and then move on to something different and more challenging as a developer.

Thanks for your honest review.

I roast this based on the video and screenshots. I think a game like this does not benefit from the randomly generated terrain I would at least add some hand made chunks in it or extend the generator with more interesting terrains. A platformer just needs those gaps and platforms in just the right spots. With some precise jumping the game gets even more difficult with all those enemies flying around.

I like the individual art peaces but they do not fit well together. It's a mix of regular art and pixel art and even the pixel art is of different pixel sizes. Go with one style and pick that for the GUI as well. Even with programmer art it's possible to make a good looking game as long as the style is consistent and the colors picked well.

Does it have a story or just 10 levels? The game screams for a story line, whats the wizard doing there and where is he going to? How did all those creatures came to be? It can just be short and I always have a weakness for some comedy and parody on other games. I feel just the 10 levels are not going to cut.

One extra tip for steam releases is to add cards and achievements, there are people hunting all cards and achievements and it will probably get you additional downloads and revenue from the cards.