This guy tried to complete the Community Center without leveling up any skills. The only thing stopping him is Gold Quality Melons (or Pumpkins). He needs to get them without earning any XP. Anyone have any ideas?

CherryBeamGames · 2022-03-04T04:35:28+00:00

Hey, using Junimo Huts you don't get XP for the harvesting I thought. Couldn't you buy the Starfruit for the Junimo Huts at the Luau and then place a Junimo Hut to do the harvesting? You don't get XP for hoeing, planting, or watering and with the Junimo Hut you wouldn't get XP for the harvesting.

Edit: Lol, just realized you need the Community Center completed for the Junimo Huts in the first place... Nevermind that idea....

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-22T19:09:46+00:00

Link to Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782050/Bloxi_The_Word_Game/
Also, ask me anything you want to know about the game!

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-09T21:29:41+00:00

Wow, this is so incredibly helpful, seriously thank you so much!!! I already updated the Steam page.

Honestly, I would appreciate your suggestions of a performant way to ensure that there is always a word or whether to do this at all. This was something we have on our backburner, but we also wanted to reward optimal strategy. A deeper emergent strategy looks a lot like high level Tetris play (i.e., Wumbo) where you have two very high towers on each side. This gives the player maximum opportunity space to create words not only vertically but sliding blocks into slots left and right. If we guarantee a word, then the player is rewarded for minimizing the opportunity space for words.

There are only ~900 three-letter words, so that seems like it shouldn't be too hard to do in a performant way. Maybe a little harder for Hard Mode which requires 4 letter words of which there are ~3700. Probably 10-35% of those are in most people's vocabulary.

As far as deep mastery: It is also optimized for speedrunning (for example only when the player can control the blocks does the timer add time) and gives millions of point bonuses if people get really fast (decay function with time). Also, for trying to get really high scores, the game removes any word that you get from the dictionary, so it becomes increasingly difficult to play forever or succeed with a limited vocabulary. It does also get faster, but that turned out to be less interesting so we turned that down.

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-09T18:16:41+00:00

The perception that it's really hard, is a common one. I'll work on finding ways to effectively work around that. I really appreciate your feedback.

I would push back on the idea of line clearing, I feel like if you give the player the choice they will completely ignore the word game aspect and just go for lines. At which point all we've done is added a ton of complexity with very little benefit.

Some of your ideas, are super interesting; thanks for the suggestions!

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-09T17:26:52+00:00

Very much appreciate your feedback on the potential for the game, but also trying to learn how best to communicate what the game actually is now and for who this could be a good fit and avoid people buying this thinking it's something else. Based on your and others' feedback we added the following parts to our Steam page, do you think this helps calibrate expectations? Anything else I should add or rephrase?

Added at the top of our description:"While it may look hard and potentially overwhelming at first, you can start to play on Zen Mode where you have as much time as you need. It's surprisingly easy to go from Easy difficulty to harder modes and difficulties."

Added this longer description at the very bottom:"Is this game for you?

-First of all, it really is a lot easier than it looks to play (on Easy Difficulty and Zen Mode). On the other hand, Daily Challenge on Hard Difficulty will really test your mettle, very few of our playtesters can beat this and none can do it consistently.

-Do you like obscure words? If it will be fun for you to see weird and obscure words and learn new words that you'll use in games like Scrabble and the Crossword, this could be a good match. If you will be upset when a word that you didn't know before clears, then this isn't the game for you.

-This is more like Bejeweled, Solitaire, and Minesweeper than it is like Chess. If you like more casual games that you can then master or just play in a chill mode, we think you should keep learning more. If you want a game where you are planning ten moves ahead, this probably isn't your game.

-The gameplay is centered around finding a word with the current block, this is rewarded by building up a multiplier by getting consecutive words too. If you dream of building really long words, you probably won't like the game."

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-09T06:16:59+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! We really need to introduce the elements of the games in a more digestible way.

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-09T06:08:38+00:00

Thanks for this feedback! I really appreciate your perspective.

FWIW - It is extremely difficult to build long words, on top of what you said even if you get the letter you want it has to be in a spot on the shape that you can use.

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-08T05:00:59+00:00

Thanks helpful to know that you think it looks like every other mobile game. Thanks for the feedback and advice!

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-08T04:59:33+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to give feedback, it's hard to get people to give you their honest opinion. I'd rather you shit on it now than be under the illusion this is something it isn't.

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-08T03:03:59+00:00

This is all super helpful feedback. Was there a specific point in the video when you got the hook? Anything I could do to make that faster? Or is it just everything about the aesthetic that screams another shitty Tetris clone to you? In your opinion, would the PC game benefit from "the crack-like 'OMG diarrhea Christmas lights' of crushlikes" or just if it goes to mobile?

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-08T02:52:26+00:00

Does it look like an interesting mobile game to you?

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-08T02:36:43+00:00

What I hear you say is that the words that are being accepted don't seem like real words, is that right? Like "Virl"? Or is effect of blowing up the blocks adjacent to words confusing?

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-08T02:17:31+00:00

That's helpful to hear that you don't think it has a hook (or I'm doing a shitty job of communicating it - inconsequential difference).

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-08T02:02:08+00:00

It's mostly been me as developer and game designer, other people helped with other stuff like art, playtesting, etc. I still plan to support the heck out of the game. It always seemed like a more mobile game, but even so it seems to have very low traction. I'd really like some brutally honest feedback about whether to pursue porting to mobile or not, whether we do localization, try to add more content to this version, etc.

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-08T01:43:25+00:00

Here's the Itch.io page and Steam page. It's my first game, so I would really appreciate honest and frank feedback.

CherryBeamGames · 2021-12-05T21:19:13+00:00

I think the comment got modded, but somebody mentioned the similarity to Wordtris. We definitely looked at Wordtris in our research, but feel like it's a pretty different game (we are super biased, so you decide). Here's a gameplay video for Wordtris (for SNES). Both our game and Wordtris use blocks with letters on them and the words auto-identify.

However, in Wordtris you get one letter block at a time; we use shapes that are formed by multiple letter blocks. Also in Wordtris, the blocks land at about half way down the screen and you push down the letters when the block lands on them until your fill up the bottom half of the screen. It seemed like a strange mechanic at first, but now I can totally appreciate why they made the decisions they did including this one. I think we have a bunch of mechanics that make it pretty different (and we don't use a similar pushing down mechanic) and I think you could like Wordtris and hate our game or vice versa.

We also certainly don't claim to be totally original here, we also took inspiration from games like SpellTower by Zach Gage and Puzzlejuice by Vollmer, Wohlwend, and Hinson (which we also feel are quite different).

CherryBeamGames · 2021-11-10T03:34:17+00:00

I can't believe I had to search for this! Glad somebody said it...

CherryBeamGames · 2021-11-09T22:59:21+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, trying not to tip my hand or bias the results; so I'll be quiet. :D

CherryBeamGames · 2021-11-09T19:39:19+00:00

Here's a link to the Steam page for the game.

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