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vvv Ludum Dare jam version here! vvv
(for anyone rating LD games!)
Description:
You are the Wax Whisperer. Your powers may well be unmatched, but some of your enemies are still out there… Not for much longer though, not with what your are about to unleash.
Burn continuous lines of candles to score points! The longer the fire survives the more points it brings you, and the closer it brings you to unfathomable power from this mysterious temple you’ve found your way to!
Controls:
- left & right to move pieces horizontally
- down to make the pieces fall faster
- up to make pieces fall instantly as far as it can
- Z & X (or A & B on gamepads) to rotate pieces
- You can select a difficulty on the titlescreen! (start with normal!)
Notes:
This is my entry for Ludum Dare 55! The game was entirely made within the 72 hours of the jam category... (ran out of time for the 48h compo)
But the token limit got me! I started hitting it a couple of hours before the end and fighting it left me no time for adding audio. (not that there would have been any tokens for those music() and sfx() calls anyway!) Oh well! I'll try to add some soon in a post-jam version!
Revisions 1,2 & 3 are just me fixing errors and crashes, nothing was added or changed from the original jam work in the game.
The postjam version is here!
Here's the full changelog:
Gameplay gif:
Thanks for the kind words everyone!!
I just updated the game with the postjam version! Tried to fix as many little issues as I could and to make the game generally better. Also added sound of course. Let me know what you think! :)
Here's the full changelog:
- Added audio!
- Controls now appear on title screen
- Reworked interface
- Reworked and optimized the true ending
- Fixed overlap checking on score texts
- Fixed overlap checking on candle light vfx
- Reworked the flames slightly
- Reworked scoring: now depends on level, is less exponential, continuous burn value capped to 10
- Bombs now set fire to neighboring candles with a value equal to the number of block destroyed
- Doubled the bonus for fires going out without getting snuffed
- Level-up gets a little animation in the score interface
- Fixed bombs exploding instantly if catching fire when you place them
- Reworked gravity speed acceleration so that it's not exponential anymore
- Flame frequency now goes down slower by half
- Made soft-drops a little faster
- Added a highscore for each difficulty
- Doubled the score goal for the true ending
- Candles appear 1 block higher than they used to
- Added fade animation on starting the game
- Added game illustration as cart image
This is as good as Tetris, maybe even better! I thought this was another Tetris clone before the first fire came in and i knew what to do. So good!
It took me a while to work out what was going on in this, despite the visual similarities, it's really nothing like Tetris. Once it clicked though I was seriously hooked and had to keep playing until I'd beaten the game on every difficulty. Here's my best score:
The graphics are so stylish, I love the glow of the candles and the smoke. The little animation and deliberate 'crash' when you play the game is cool too. Super impressive that this was basically done in 72 hours too, serious kudos.
I just spent 4 and a half hours straight summoning Satan. 10/10 absolutely fantastic
Got a high score of 40,746.
My mind is blown that this was made in only 72 hours, since the strategy and gameplay are so deep. Incredible job designing this game. I've been playing nonstop since I found it, going for higher and higher scores.
When I close my eyes, I just see the candles, and I am constantly planning and strategizing for the next time I go to play.
My recorded high score is 99,817 on hard level 51, though it's probably more since the counter jumbles at 100,000. Would love to see an extra digit added so I can keep watching my score improve!
(98,417 on normal and 95,058 on WW, though I'm pretty sure these have rolled past 100,000 as well.)
I really like this cart but can't get out of the Tetris mindset and rely on bombs far too much. What are effective strategies in this game? I've been trying to lay a sequence of fuses so that they are in line vertically and then drop a long candle into that gap.
If anyone can explain how to be good at this game, I'd very much appreciate it.
Hi phil, I'd be happy to share what I've learned about playing this game.
You definitely have the right idea trying to line up the wicks to spread the flame, but that are many more ways to do it than just a long candle. In general, the key to making effective structures is ensuring that the wick of each piece you place lies next to any existing candle section, so that the flame will spread when that piece burns.
The orientation you place each piece matters as well. For every piece except the red square, starting a burn from the bottom up will result in the candle snuffing itself before it completely burns (unless the last piece to burn is resting on another candle, but that's a bit more advanced and is best learned through experience). The only reason the red piece is safe from this is that it's the only piece that splits a flame all by itself. Also worth mentioning: when there is no clear "best" orientation, try to leave a wick facing upwards, where its easiest for any future candles to spread down to it.
Splitting/duplicating flames is the other most important part of this game. For most turns, each new candle adds four pieces of "mass" while each flame only burns away one. If you only have a single flame, every turn adds a net of three pieces of mass, and your board will quickly fill up. So, to keep that in check, the only way to have a net loss of mass is to have at least five distinct flames going. In practice, this is usually unachievable (which is a big part of why bombs are still crucial) but overall, your goal should be to split the flame as often as possible. Each pair of pieces does this best in a different way, but in general, you should try to place new wicks not only against pieces that will burn, but ones that will burn soon. That way, the flame will split sooner, giving you more turns with more flames, further giving more oppourtunities to further duplicate the flame.
On the same note, bombs are best used when maximizing the number of tiles exploded, since these are by far the most efficient way to clear out a lot of mass fast. It can often be smart to place a bomb not against a flame, but against a candle that will burn soon, delaying the bomb, giving you time to stack candles around it so that it blows up as many as possible. (That said, beware putting too many candles above the bomb, as these are likely to fall and snuff themselves when the bomb explodes, leaving their wicks snuffed and unexposed.)
Lastly, try to avoid ever letting every flame go out. It's often worth doing a "poor" move, such as setting a piece up to snuff itself, if it's the only way to keep a flame alive. Even if this piece will snuff itself, you're still burning mass away, and may still have a turn or two to try and spread the flame again.
Hope this helps, and I hope you start setting some new high scores!
very interesting concept, here's my best score so far:
strategy discussions ahead if you wanna figure it out on your own.
in classic NES tetris, which is what I play, we have the concept of a "well" which in that game is a column of empty space you can score 4 lines at once (also known as a tetris) by dropping an I-piece into (corresponding to the white candle here). ofc, this doesn't work directly for Hot Wax, but I have found a similar concept that has seemed to work well for me. if you build a solid column of candle with the wick foing vertically all the way through, the fire will spread all the way down unhindered (unless you place something on top) since nothing can fall down onto it. from here the fire can then be horisontally spread outwards making it grow. ofc, per how the game works, you wat on average around 4 "minos" (unit squares) of candle burned per block placed (bit less because bombs and fire) otherwise your board will quickly fill up. these well-like columns are great at spreading the fire making this more achievable.
currently my main strategy is having the left-most and right-most being well-like, I can then build one while the other is burning, so I don't put out the other fire. now, the main problem is that fire gets more and more rare as the game goes on, which makes this kind of set-up very hard to sustain, especially with the speed increase making it hard to get fire to the edge of the board reliably, this can be remedied with "platforming", basically placing blocks that can help get the fire over to the well, this can be done since pieces don't lock into place if they are being moved.
I theorize that from a certain point onward, a set-up with a singular well (potentially placed in the center) will be optimal, since it will require less fire to burn the whole board, and the fire will spread faster, though placing subsequent pieces without putting out the fire will be hard.
ofc there is also the option of more optimal strategies than my "well" concept will be found, I do not claim to have this all figured out, this has just worked for me. I have tried to theorize ways to keep the flames alive for longer, which may be doable, but I haven't figured it out yet, I think it'd require ways to elevate the flames, which is hard but not impossible, just some ideas if someone else want to try to tinker with that.
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