Devlog - Enemies / Interactions / Puzzles

Devlog – Enemies / Interactions / Puzzles

This devlog will mainly focus on the interactions between the players moves and what happens on the game board as match 3 games generally do not have enemies in the traditional sense and by its nature, match 3 games are one big puzzle.

The main component of match 3 games is matching 3 tiles.  This is what can be seen in figure 1. This can be done through several different methods such as using raytracing. But in this game, it was done using the objects tags. Each object has a tag attached to it. E.g. a green star has the tag “GREEN” attached. A script searches the gameboard for 3 or more consecutive tags in a row. When it finds one it activates a script that marks the tile that it has been matched. A second script is then run that searches for tiles that are marked as matched and destroys them. As a result, the tiles disappear.

Figure 1. Matching 3 green tiles.

After the tiles disappear, a gap is left in the gameboard that needs to be filled. This is where collapsing each column comes in. After a gap in the gameboard has been found, the tiles above it all move down to fill the spaces below it, leading to a gap at the top of the game board instead of in the middle somewhere. After this a new tile is created slightly off the gameboard where it then slides into place filling up the gap in the gameboard (Figure 2).

Figure 2. A gameboard showing collapsing columns, a score counter and a move counter.

The next step to implement into the game is having each swap made move back to its original position if it does not find a match (Figure 3). This is done by running a check to see if a match was found on the gameboard after each of the user’s move. If no match was found, the tiles are moved back to where they were.

Figure 3. Users’ swaps moving back when an invalid/no match move is made.

Basic score and move counter have also been added (Figure 2). At the moment every time a tile is destroyed, the user gets 1 point. There are plans to have bonuses added for making matches greater than 3 in length.  The move counter counts up every time the user make a move, regardless if a match results from the move or not.  The plan is to have it not add to the count if a move does not form a match. 

This forms the basic gameplay mechanic of the match 3 game. A check to see if there are any potential matches available on the board still needs to be implemented so that the user does not get stuck with a gameboard without anything to do. If this does occur, 1 of two things could happen, the game could shuffle the tiles into a new gameboard and the user can keep on playing, or if no more matches are available it signals the end of the game.

Feedback

At this stage in the project, feedback received was quite positive.  It was noted that the game had a Candy Crush vibe to it which is what the game was going for.

It was also noted that there was no end goal. Meaning the user can just keep swapping tiles forever without winning. To combat this there are a couple of ideas. One of them is to have the game finish after you reach a certain score or after a certain number of moves.  But the plan is to have a couple different game modes. Having an “Endless" game mode where there is no finish criteria, the user can just match tiles endlessly or until there are no matches anymore. A “Timed” game mode where the user has 3 minutes to make as many points as possible. And a “100 Moves” game mode where the user has 100 moves to get the highest score they can.

Another observation made was that when the tiles are destroyed, they just disappear. Having an explosion effect would add to the atmosphere of the game. There are plans in motion to have effects and sounds play when matches are made, and they will hopefully be implemented in the future.