The Pirate Tales

[andresen]

We have finally released our very first game at Twintale Entertainment. It has been in development for four months. As this was our first game we wanted to go with a common game type, so we did a match-3 type puzzle game, but wanted to have the story have a much greater impact on the game than is usual seen.

The trial version of the game can be downloaded from here.

Screenshots:
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3
Screenshot 4

More information about Twintale Entertainment is available here.

Martin Andresen
Twintale Entertainment

[Bmc]

Dunno about the gameplay but the graphics are nice, although I'd recommend making the different colored balls stand out a little more from each other by adding different translucent symbols over each color, over even better redoing those graphics and making them fit the context of your games setting (crossbones, gold coin, treasure chest etc)

[Coach]

Wonderful background graphics. Makes me want to pick up and practice traditional painting techniques.

I suppose the game play is ok for a match-3. Has this drop & pick-up type of swapping mechanic been used in match-3 games before? Actually I didn't realise a swapping action was taking place until the third or fourth level which changed the gameplay quite a bit. I did skim through the instructions but perhaps there is a way to illustrate the swaping part while playing? Or perhaps not?

The said story & level integration was what aroused my interest as a game designer. Due to the nature of the gameplay, however, I guess the story connection will always seem artificial and constrained in my eyes.

[Lukas_CTXM]

Really good game! Well polished theme. All the sounds and graphics fit well together. I like the concept of different tasks. But still there are some minor issues:
1) As I understand there is no hint if you are searching for a move for too long. That's not good.
2) As already mentioned above, some ball color is too similar and it's hard to find difference between them. Plus sometimes there is an image above a ball.
3) Same problem is with boxes (field squares).
4) As I understand there is only one sound track. After some time it started to piss me off.
But generally - Well done!

[andresen]

Thank you for your feedback. We really appreciate it!

Regarding different shapes for the balls we did try this, but because we also overlay icons on the balls it just became too messy. This approach does have it downs regarding being able to tell the gems apart, but for all the different kind of stuff we had going in the levels it just didn't work for us any other way. For future games we will definately focus more on this issue.

Lukas_CTXM:
1) Yes there is. One of the legal swaps will start flashing after a while.
4) How many levels did you play before coming to this conclusion? Actually there are six scores; one for each of the six scenarios we use.

Again, thanks for giving us feedback. This being our first game we do feel we managed to do pretty well.

Kind regards,
Martin

[Grey Alien]

A wuick look at the screenshots only makes me raise the same point about making the gems different shapes. Colour blind people may have difficulty otherwise.

[Nauris]

Patterns on balls could not be used since often times there are story/goal icons overlaid on them already. Of course, ultimately player does not care what were the reasons for this or that art decision, so complaints are valid anyways.
I do think we managed to make game pieces readable enough, though, of course, it`ll be players who`ll be the final judges.

[Kaos]

nice:

http://d.trymedia.com/d/twintale/60m...Tales-v1_0.exe