Isle-Sembler

Interesting emergent gameplay, figuring out the optimal placement is surprisingly deep.

There is a bit of confusion about point scores, though. I couldn't tell if "orthogonally connected sections" meant sections that are directly adjacent orthogonally (meaning only the four tiles on each side of the village), or if it meant all tiles in the entire landmass the village was on that is connected. I also wasn't exactly sure if the amount of points a village earns could change if I modify the terrain around it after placing it, so I tried to avoid changing areas near existing villages. Maybe adding a bit of extra UI elements to inform the player of potential benefits and consequences of their tile placement might make the game clearer.

This is super fun! I would love just a bit more feedback to help show what is effecting your score. Still, the mechanics are really well considered and it has a lot of potential. I could imagine a lot of depth to this type of game with more elements to play with. Perhaps instead of a score have the villages build up based on their surroundings. I could see thins as like a different kind of colony builder type game.

Okay, definitely a really cool idea! Not exactly the type of game that I'm great at, but it's well done, and I see the risk/reward tradeoff in the design. I would definitely be open to practicing and getting better, but the scoring and mechanics, while they are explained, aren't necessarily... intuitive? Namely, with the villages. I'm not sure if the villages count the tile that they are on, I don't know if they're a multiplier, or if it ONLY scores around them. I think the biggest help would be a way to see how many points I currently have, and what's getting me those points. Maybe a button that activates an overlay showing how many points each tile is worth, or mousing over the tiles to see. Another feature I think would make this better is a tetris-style "next piece" display. Cool game, fun mechanics, it just needs more transparency to the player.

Interesting idea! I didn't really understand what I was doing on my first game (I though it was counting tiles near villages instead of a "carcassonne" scoring). I really liked trying to get a better score, but gave up after a few tries because it felt too restrictided by how many rivers spawned. But that's a balancing issue, so not that big of a deal for a jam. And even if the autotiling has some issue, it's still working well enough.

The one thing that's missing imo is some feedback on the score, so that the player can know what happens. Even if it's just dividing the score, something like: "Village x - tile type - points", so that you can see it evolve. I've tried counting to see how things change, but it's pretty hard to know what influences the score as it is.

I like the charming island creation process and what I think is especially great about this is that it is accessible to all levels - if you just want to throw some tiles together and make an island, sure, you do that, if you want to plan meticulously and make it perfect to optimise your score, you can do that too! It's sweet and it's well made, good job!

Sharing a screenshot to show how much time I spent on this haha. Really enjoyable puzzle game, I spent about an hour on it!

I think the idea is really cool, gives a dorfromantik vibe but more puzzley. Don't mean to make comparisons, just mean to show I like dorfromantik puzzles and I looooved your game. Carcassone is another good one that comes to mind. Gave a lot of similar vibes and that's a really good thing for me!

I think the village scoring feels very strategic. I kept asking myself do I want to save the multiplier for the rivers because they're worth the most points? But then again, it is hard to build a network of riveres without disrupting your other biomes. Think a mark of a good puzzler is that tradeoff you have to just think about.

Wasn't sure if this was intentional or a bug, but when I was building two biomes divided by a different one, and joined them together by overlapping pieces, they didn't score. Guess it could be a feature that it is only newly added tiles to the land mass that gives it points but I did expect the joining to produce a bigger number of points.

Are the number of tiles for each biome set? Was wondering about that because sometimes I felt like I got way more river tiles and so on. Not a bad thing just curious how the tile design went (:

Think something neat to add too would be a final scoring section with bonuses like island size done that overlaps could reduce the number of points for to discourage it more harshly.

But I did think it was good design having the overlap possible. Do I want to build a bigger biome at the cost of my other ones? Think that was a situation I found myself in. That kind of situation where you have to consider your move more makes for a really fun puzzle.

I also liked how low stress it was. Just see how many points you could get. I never hit 3000 :')

Think some nice player QOL stuff could be having the tile image just be the same as the biome image before you put it down. Think that would show the connections better and that took sometime to get used to. Also maybe just being really obvious that the next piece you are putting down is the village. Think that would also help with clearer scoring.

There wasn't much of an explanation to your game, but I felt what you had was enough and it was pretty easy as a player to figure out the rest.

Just small quality of life stuff, no big deal.

Overall I had a lot of fun! I spent the most time playing this game I think. It's so addicting trying to get a better score. My friend and I were competing a little to see who could get a better score :D

Nice work! I love the mechanics and design!

Took me a second to figure out how to play, but this is really clever and well made. I like how the island reshapes itself to fit whatever tile was just placed. There is definitely some strategy required in placing the tiles/villages to maximize score. Very nice!

I liked the tetris shaped island blocks, an in game tutorial would probably make a big difference but it's a cool puzzle game once it clicks.

Interesting concept, more feedback to the players about what exactly is going on would be better.

A little confusing to understand the scoring, but it's a cool idea. I had a lot of fun with it.