I've been learning game development for a few years, off and on, with a focus on Generative Narrative Systems and Artificial Life Sims. I want to make a really amazing virtual pet one day.

I was walking to work about a year ago and I saw these amazing patterns on a sign...

When the Game Jam theme was announced started thinking about a game called A WHOLE LOT OF FANTASY TRASH. Which was a game where you wander around in your Grandmother's endless attic, going higher and higher in search of items which you then auction off. You only have so long in the rooms, the auction itself is a timer too! Win win... but then I was walking past these symbols again on the walk to work and I thought... why go complex?

I have always really like the idea of a game that incorporates these sorts of graphic design shapes. These seemed like a really cool reminder of how simple a game can look to be fun. 

I came up with the idea of a game which worked via tiles. You matched tiles and they dissolve away and a new tile appears. 

So I drew some of my own in Figma.

I made the tile grid 7x8 and the made a system that mapped the svg of each shape onto the top and changed the colour of the tile to fit a simple system.

COLOUR | SHAPE | NUMBER

The colour was easy, the shape was set and the number was just a number in the top right of the tile.

Match three tiles with a shared colour ✓

Match three tiles with a shared shape ✓

Match three tiles with a shared number ✓

And you can also stack the matching! ✓✓✓

The issue was the number... It was always too small and insanely hard to make matches with. I thought... maybe the symbol can change, so they become a symbol family and they would follow the dots on a dice.

Which was where the first stars came in. After that I got more creative about the placement.

So then I thought... I'm doing all this work based on dice... wouldn't it be amazing to project a plane mesh over the sides of a 3d dice (bevelled for some cosiness) and that seemed way more interesting and dynamic.

So that was how things started.

It has been a long hard slog of days. I worked evenings after work on Thrusday and Friday and then all day Saturday (with a few hours break to attend a pottery workshop I love) and then up to the wire on Sunday. 

Submitted at something stupid like 17:40... I had no idea what I was doing, as I've never used Itch.io before... I think next time it would be fun to do Devlogs etc... 

Hopefully you like it.

I asked AI a HELL of a lot of questions, but made the whole thing in Godot and used a lot of very clever people's resources on github to solve a lot of technical questions.

I'm really proud of myself and would love to add things to it...

I'd love to add bonuses like:

• Destroy Whole Row
• Destroy Whole Column
• Destroy Area (Where you can click to choose which dice is the epicentre)

I'd love to add a campaign mode and mobile version because I can see it being fun to play on mobile!

My goal in life is to become a full time game developer. I really now, through this process, think that it matches how my brain works and what I love doing with a passion... solving problems, working creatively and using my system's thinking brain (which seems to work against me in most other areas of my life!)

Thanks for your time.