Mosaic
Saturday, 12th March 2022 ◆ A poem omits a creative historical region (11) 7DRL Game jamsExactly one year ago, I submitted Escorial to 7DRL. Despite the game's crude appearance and simple mechanics, I was overjoyed that people really seemed to enjoy it. I had a real blast working on that game, and I was sure I would want to repeat the experience in 2022. Well, the year went by incredibly quickly, and surprisingly the time has come to reveal another submission!
This time, I have teamed up with a friend, Corey Hardt. We had a lot of fun working on the project together, and we are so proud of the final result. Go try it out, and let us know what you think!
Background
Corey and I first started talking last year after Escorial was released, and we discovered we have a lot in common. Primarily, he is also a huge Michael Brough fan, so right off the bat, we were sure we wanted to make a game in the "broughlike" style. (What is a broughlike?).
After a bit of back-and-forth, we settled on the idea of combining a broughlike with the match-3 genre. At that point, the rest of the game really "fell into place", as it were.
Technology
Due to smooth experience I had developing Escorial, I went for Pixijs again. I can't stress how quick and easy it is to use, and I continue to be very happy to have discovered it. Corey took care of the visuals, and went for a pixel-art style. That brought it's own challenges, as I haven't worked much with pixel art, where it is important to ensure the integretiy of the pixels. Pixijs does have some tools to help with this, but even so, I didn't get it quite right (if you are keen eyed, you will notice that the pixels don't always line up). This is something I will no doubt improve on next time.
When making Escorial, I also created an Actions library for Pixijs. This time, I could just sit back and benefit from it, and it made development so quick and easy. Anything which moves in the game is controlled by this system!
Response
We've received a lot of positive comments in the days since the game's release, which has delighted us.
On release, I thought a score of around 60 would be the maximum. Well, a few days later, and the highscore currently sits at 268. How wrong I was. I find it so satisfying that someone can enjoy and understand the game to that level!
Some exciting moments include:
- Featured on Bart Bonte's blog. Bart Bonte is a legend from the Flash game era (remember Factory Balls?)
- Featured on Itch's YouTube channel
- Featured on Terry Cavanagh's free game of the week series (and also was one of his top free games of 2022)
- Retweeted by the maestro himself, Michael Brough
- Mentioned on Metafilter
- Mentioned in electrondance's March 2022 newsletter
- Pancelor, formerly holding the top leaderboard spot, included it in their GOTY, and also posted a video of their highest scoring run
- Nookrium did a stream taking a look at various entries, including Mosaic
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