Posted On: 2024-12-02
I've recently been looking back on my bi-weekly games, and considering whether any of them could be turned into a new (much more polished) game. The original impetus for this was something I teased in my previous post (an intention to make something new by year end) but changes in my personal life have put that ambition on hold for now. Despite having no imminent use for it, analyzing the (accidental) design of one of my older games has revealed some intriguing insights, and I thought they would make for a good end-of-year post.
The untitled match-3 game was supposed to be a very bland and simple game, but due to a single (seemingly small) change and a stroke of luck, the resultant design is unlike anything I've ever seen before. Much of the design aligns with the common (Bejewled-style) match-3 game: swap two tiles so that 3 (or more) tiles line up, creating a match and removing them from the board. While most games of that type add new tiles after a player completes a match, this one leaves the remaining tiles exactly as-is, meaning every time you make a match you'll be left with fewer tiles and fewer possible actions. This gives the game a solitaire-like feeling of complicity over the late-game board states: a player can always cast their mind back to prior actions and wonder how things would have been if they'd made different moves.
Having a finite number of tiles implies that the goal of the game should be to match them all - but after a couple of tries it should be readily apparent that doing so is impossibly difficult. Indeed, many of the starting configurations actually can't be cleared at all - that is, unless the player uses "hidden moves". Where most match-3 games only allow players to swap two adjacent tiles, the untitled match-3 game also allows players to swap tiles according to seemingly mysterious/unknowable rules*. Curiosity is rewarded with new possibilities, and, as a player learns to use the hidden moves, they will find they are ending games with fewer and fewer tiles remaining on the board.
While they weren't part of the original design, it's clear the hidden moves are an essential part of the untitled match-3 game. If you don't realize the hidden moves are there (an unfortunately common situation), playing it is an exercise in frustration. Yet those who find them, and enjoy seeking them out, seem to find the game immensely appealing. Considering how few games use hidden moves as a cornerstone of their design, I think that anything following up on the untitled match-3 game would be unique - and quite possibly provide a kind of joy that one doesn't often see in games.
Hopefully it's been interesting to read about how a couple simple changes can completely change the tone and focus of a match-3 game. Digging into the details has gotten me motivated to try and make a follow-up to the untitled match-3 game, but, as mentioned in the opening, some ongoing personal matters mean that I cant't pursue that at the rate I would like. Those same matters also mean I can't make any specific commitment about what the next post will cover: ordinarily I start the year with a retrospective and a new plan, but at this point I still don't know when I'll be able to properly assess what the new year will bring. Regardless, I hope you join me next month to see how things are unfolding.