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!
![](/img/blog/89/screenshot.jpg)
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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