v0.2 - Getting started

Soul Manager v0.2 is here!

The very first version of Soul Manager (v0.1) was published a week ago at the end of the GeoJam, a one-week game jam centered around geometric shapes and the theme “The Other Side”.

The game applies the theme of “the other side” to a tile*-placement game. It’s a simple idea but I feel like there is potential for a lot of fun tiles and extra rules.

(* I’m still actively debating whether I should call them tiles or cards and will for now use both terms indiscriminately)

And my girlfriend likes it and asked for more.

So I’m going to make more.

Here is already a v0.2 with the following changes:

New content!

Nothing crazy, as that wasn’t really my main focus here, but v0.2 does bring some new content:

• an endless mode with randomly generated levels. This will be useful to me to experiment and figure out how to balance game elements.
• a rudimentary settings menu
• the ability to save progress (it needs to be opted in from the settings menu for now)
• two new tiles:
  • the Scam artist card, with a game-changing new effect (yes, already game-changing changes after two weeks)
  • the Generous card, a more subdued tile with some good combo potential

Obviously, you have to play the game to learn exactly what they do :)

Balance

The Snarky card is now worth 0 by default instead of -1.

Bug fixes and UI tweaks

• fixed a bit the discrepancy between the menu and level music volume
• fixed music stopping after level restart
• fixed audio only coming from the left
• fixed score not being updated right away after a tile conversion by the Evangelist
• added a visual representation of the expected score and others level rules directly in the level

Code clean up and i18n

One of my main concern for this version (and at least the next one) was to set things up in a clear and flexible fashion for expansion - it wasn’t exactly my biggest concern for the jam, so there has been and will be a fair amount of time spent cleaning the code, organizing it and figuring out how to write things so that it won’t become an unreadable mess if I end up with a lot of different tiles, rules and funky effects.

The Scam artist tile was a good test here honestly. Its effect impacts both sides and can have some specific interactions with other tiles. It also really required an animation to make the card behavior clearer, and animations mean that not everything happens in the same frame - which the initial code really wasn’t ready to deal with.

Internationalization (i18n) comes with that logic of setting things up cleanly. And some of my friends don’t speak English, so I added French.

And that’s it!

The next update will be probably take longer, except maybe for quick bug fixes. The game remains very close to its game jam version still, but I do think it’s already fun enough for a short session here and there :)