Pop-A-Holic Beta Download

This game was originally written by a friend of mine who is helping me out with Glimmer Games. I agreed to shine it up a bit, add some GUI stuff, profiles, high scores, tutorials, menus, change a few graphics and a 3d character to replace the sprites and this is the result.
It's another variation on the "Match Three Items™" theme. The tutorial mode explains the game as well as I could, so go right for that.

It's likely to be a bit rough here and there and there are a few features missing. There's no level editor included in the beta either. I'm basically after performance problems and bugs, but other feedback is welcome of course. I've implemented a slightly unusual custom timing system too, so if anything goes cuckoo with that, let me know.

Puzzle games are sooooo not my thing ( playing or writing them ) so I've had a really hard time figuring out if this is a decent game or not. Hopefully the feedback will help me figure that out. I think the levels, particularly the early ones need some tweaking. I think some of the early levels ( 5-10 ) could do with being a bit faster. Other than that, I don't really know.

Controls : Left and Right cursors move the girl. Down cursor catches a balloon and Up cursor throws balloons in hand.

Download : http://www.glimmergames.com/downloads/pop_a_holic_beta1.exe

Screen:

i love this sort of stuff, and the 3d character very nice touch, i like the run anim, the fact you can collect more than one makes it more interesting,
controls nice, no problems, look forward to seeing the other characters/profiles

me thinks my kids will like this

I think it looks very polished -- not bad!

Couple of remarks:

1) After creating a profile, it's not very intuitive that you need to select it first before you can go into the graphics options and such. Especially since you can't just click on a profile to select it, but actually have to press the 'select' button at the bottom of the screen to activate your already high-lighted choice.

2) A full-screen mode is missing... The problem with windowed mode is that there tend to be a lot of other distractions around the edges of the window, or if you pick a large window it may not fit properly (taskbar, etc.)

3) The biggest issue with the gameplay itself appears to be speed -- while things are running very smooth, I find myself waiting for the main sprite to finally make her way over to where I want her to be, which takes some of the 'immersion' away. You may want to consider bumping up the movement speed a bit, or making it user customizable. (Personally I would prefer it if the sprite at the bottom of the screen would move at about twice the speed it currently does)

Thanks. That's good to hear.



Agreed. The profiles are irritating, but I'm not 100% sure what to do with them yet. The reason you have to use the select button is that clicking twice on the profile lets you edit the name ( someone is bound to misspell their name. )



You're right. Fullscreen is definitely required.



I think user customizable would just result in everyone picking the highest speed to make the game easier. I'll see if I can make it a bit faster though.