Khombo 

A randomized and combo based puzzle game

Queue up color bombs to align colors and produce chain reaction on this score based puzzle game. Plan ahead and try to get the biggest combo posible. Think ahead. Be Precise.

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Gameplay:

1.  Position a color bomb on a tile to paint all the connected tiles of the same color to the bomb's color.
2. Try planning ahead to color tiles ahead of time as the next bomb could be able to paint the previously painted tiles also.
3. Put all bombs on different tiles to then explode them in order.
   1. Careful with the first bomb! You have to put a different colored bomb based on the color of the tile
4.  Get as many points and combos as possible!
5.  Have fun and share your high scores!

Controls:

• Arrow Keys:
  • Left and Right to move horizontally
  • Up and Down to move vertically
• Confirm (Z):
  • Add Bomb
  • Detonate All!
• Back (X)
  • Remove Selected Bombs

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About:

Based on Disgaea's Geo Panel System, this game was made as a prototype for the main game's mechanics and posted as part of hentaiphd's Tasting Room Jam. This jam had the theme of Precision, so I tried to make a procedural puzzle game where the player would have to think the solution before executing the sequence designed as the main gameplay mechanic; so this works as a prototype for that idea.

Difficulties and Challenges:

The main challange of the game was to color the grid of the same color. This has a huge problem behind it, because it can not check for solvable puzzles before hand as it takes a huge computational toll and PICO-8 is not made for those kinds of calculations.

As a solution for this, I though of a few alternatives, so feedback is very welcomed on this regard (or any by that measure):

• Leave the randomness in, and add a lives system to make up for the possible unsolvable puzzles. This would eventually end the game on randomness alone (on the basis that the player can solve any puzzle)
• Make a sequence to shuffle the panels until the player feels comfortable enough to tackle it. This would eventually end in exploiting the system until you can get an easy enough puzzle, lowering the difficulty to the player's confort.
• Make exponentially dificult levels, adding tiles, colors and limiting bombs, letting the player tackle levels as many times as he wants until a cap. This would ease the difficulty curve and would also work as a game end situation.

Future Improvements:

• A win or lose panel depending on complete coloring
• A timer scheme
• Music
• Scaling levels of difficulty
• Arcade based level progression
• Scaling sizes and colors for stages