tetrenga was probably the best ratio of work to good response ive ever experienced with a game, taking only a comfy weekend to make
we maintaned top 10 most popular in the entire jam for the full rating period
we came #33rd in enjoyment out of 7,700 ENTRIES, that is the top 0.4%
here's a list of things i'm very very glad we did:
over time ive discovered that the best way to get good ideas is to just absolutely fart out 50 very terrible ideas
this completely stops the "think of only 1 idea and then keep rotating it in your brain until it explodes in scope" issue. throw all of your judgement to the curb, don't think about scope, don't think about game design, just smash out the ideas. if the idea is bad, pinpoint why it's bad, then make an iteration. now you have 2 ideas. mash up two ideas youve already come up with to make a new idea. make gigantic leaps. and DO NOT think too hard about any 1 idea. don't try and mental gymnastics your way to justifying any idea - the reason you're making so many ideas is because you're fishing for what gives your gut instinct the best response. your gut is usually right!
*(this is mean but.. this is also why ideas are a dime a dozen and generally why ideas guys aren't very valuable. they usually have 1 idea that they rotate in their heads and justify to themselves, rather than doing the work to explore and discover ideas that are organically exciting)
me and miredly both came up with >10 ideas, discussed them, ranked them, and mashed them up. our best mashup was "build a structure on a small platform and score based on how heavy it is". from there, the game easily grew into the tetris/jenga idea with the risk/reward random generation. out of all of the ideas we had, this one just felt the most intuitive and air-tight. we already drew similarities to it and popular games like Suika Game, so we knew it'd at least have an audience and we had examples to work from
to make a game as fun as it can be, you have to experiment. if you scope to the limit of your ability, you by definition don't have the time or skill to experiment. you WILL NOT get a game perfect in your first shot, you gotta give yourself breathing room to try out different stuff
to give an idea of the scope, it took just 1 hour for miredly to make the core game. all we needed was the wobbly physics tetronimoes, the base, and the zone at the bottom which restarts your game
that was fantastic, because that meant we could spend the rest of the time experimenting, polishing, making art and menus. you have no idea how important menus are and how long they take lol
one thing im REALLY happy we got to experiment with is the randomly generated shapes. my original idea was for it to generate a random polygon, and you have to somehow incorporate it into the rest of the tower
miredly instead really wanted to have randomly generated tetrominoes, following the same formula of having a connected set of squares but just in a random formation. i was actually averse to this idea and i didn't believe in it.
"like, if they're all just squares, surely you could just stack them too easily"
i was so so so wrong, having randomly shaped tetrominoes made this far more fun
in the old version, it'd pretty much always be high-risk low-reward to try and stack a totally random polygon into your tower. miredly basically never pressed the button. i pressed the button at first, but found myself deciding against it when going for the high score, which basically meant i was just stacking regular pieces like i was playing regular tetris
but in the new version, it's a lot more hopeful, and incorporating the strange shapes feels pretty similar to saving yourself when you missdrop in regular tetris. this, combined with the new way of thinking about tetris where you care about balacing your tower instead of clearing lines, really helped with how readable and approachable the game is
im very happy we had the time to actually try out this idea rather than me being silly and dismissing it instantly. our game would have been far, far less fun if we didn't give ourselves time to try it out :3
im so happy we added tetrenga chan. she was inspired by Rhythm Heaven minigames and Nintendo's Nikky from Swapnote
i think having her there made this game more addicting and emotionally interesting, because there's a girl Live Reacting to the stuff you're doing!! you feel empathy for her, if shes nervous im nervous, if she gets happy because you saved your tower or integrated a super heavy piece, it feels nice
idk if this is just me, but she makes the game feel less like an abstract shape-puzzle game, and more like you're building an actual tower. the tower feels physically there, in tetrenga-chans world, and she's watching you piece it together and is cheering for you. ok i may be going insane do you understand what i mean
im quite happy with the art on this one. it feels a bit soft and approachable, like a medium-budget mobile game of olde a la Cut the Rope or Suika Game
we were originally toying with the idea of making it look like Money Puzzle Exchanger for the Neo Geo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhnZAy_CNlA
its silly but a lot of people really, really dislike pixel art. even beautiful, masterful pixel art. often, even the crappiest vector graphics would get the popularity vote over good pixel art, and i'm still not sure why. i straight up do not share that same taste, i don't understand it, but it's something ive witnessed
(i actually wonder if it depends on if you were brought up on rasterized retro games vs vector flash games? i grew up with the SNES so i love some good pixel art..)
i've always drawn pixel art because it's a very helpful limitation to stop yourself adding infinite detail, and its far easier to make every asset of your game harmonious.
BUT, drawing scribbly high-res graphics in this style was SO much easier than drawing pixel art. and the audience felt it was higher quality for it. maybe i should try it more...
im just happy with this project! its teeny tiny was a lot of fun, and i'm very proud of the results
for most of my jam games, i ask my friends to play it and they play it for that evening and are very lovely. but this game has literally got a life of its own. so many friends would join call like "toffee ive been playing this game for like 4 hours"
people are STILL playing it weeks later and posting their screenshots
its incredibly flattering, and this has been a huge success
