2014-05-24 - Tinytouchtales

Weekly Update #19

Hello!
This is Weekly Update #19. Arnold took a week off from KRAXLN to prepare the Matchagon 3.0 update.

Matchagon 3.0
We recently took a look at the Matchagon stats to see how our ca. 1 year old game is performing. The total download number so far is 48,341 for iOS. We had our peak in mid September 2013 where we got a small App Store featuring that brought in 42.000 downloads in 1 week. Just recently i revisited our own little tracking that shows, that still 300 people play Matchagon on a daily base, which is pretty cool. So we thought it would be nice to reward those hardcore fans with some free updates and take the chance to port the game from Stencyl to Unity. So here’s what is coming for 3.0.

Unified Game size & new Modes
In 2.0 the iPad and the iPhone versions are different in terms of the size of the game grid. On iPhone the game grid is 5×6 and on iPad its 6×6. This means that we need to have 2 different high scores, because the iPad version is slightly easier to play.
With 3.0 we unify the both versions again to 5×6 on both device sizes. Additionally we change the the old normal and hard modes to a new normal mode and a daily challenge mode. The new normal mode will have the blockers from Matchagon+ which can be removed by matching blocks next to them. The new daily challenge mode, in opposite to the normal game where you will have an endless stream of random blocks, will be a fixed set of finite blocks generated each day. This mode will have it’s own high score separated from game-center which will get wiped every 24 hours.
To access the daily mode you will need to spend 1 Diagon which is our new currency. Diagons can be earned through playing the normal mode and can also be bought with an in App-purchase.

New scoring design
In addition to the new modes, we took the chance to slightly improve the scoring design. In the old version scoring works like this:
Each Block has a fixed score value of 25 (Level 1), 75, (Level 2), 150 (Level 3). These score values are multiplied by the combo multiplier which increments by 1 each time you make a removal match (horizontal/diagonal). Vertical matches are not affected by this system.

In the new system, we redesigned the whole structure. Now each new block starts with a score of 1 (Level 1). If you match 3 Level 1 Blocks, the score of each block gets added and multiplied by the combo multiplier. This means that vertical matched now also count as combos and therefor combos get way more important because they influence the scoring directly. So as an example if 3 level 1 blocks get matched the new Level 2 block has a score of 3. If this match resulted from a combo it will be (1+1+1) × 2 = 6 or (1+1+1) × 3 = 9.
In opposite to the old version where blocks display their level, we know display the score value of each block. We updated the block graphic a little bit, to easier distinguish level 1 from level 2 blocks.

The second thing we changed is the way the scoring of removal matches (horizontal/diagonal) is handled. If a block gets removed the formula for the points this block will give is: score of block × level of block × combo multiplier. This means that a 3 point level 2 block automatically gives 6 points and these points can be doubled or tripled by combos. White level 3 blocks have the same scoring rules in addition to their ability to be matched with every other color. If you build up a match perfectly it can be possible to have a white block score: 27 × 3 × 3 (or even more) = 243 points.
The last thing we changed is the final scoring when a game is over. We took the design from Matchagon+ where each block automatically gets scored and giving you the points that were still on the board when the game ended.

Getting used to the new system might be strange when you update, but it has a lot of benefits and improves the gameplay in a big way, because now you have way more control over how much points you will get for each match.

We will upload the new update to Apple this weekend and will post again when you can download the new version. That’s it for this week, have a nice day!