{"id":2210,"edition":12,"categories":1,"features":0,"size":11719,"name":"The Encroaching Darkness","authors":[{"name":"Steven Lambert","url":"https://stevenklambert.com/","twitter":"StevenKLambert","login":"straker","gh":2433219}],"description":"<p>Earn the most points at the end of 16 rounds</p>\n<h2>How to Play</h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Each round you choose a Tile to place.</li>\n<li>Each Tile has a building (the image), a value (the number), and a shape.</li>\n<li>You cannot place a Tile if any part of its shape overlaps the <strong>Darkness</strong>, <strong>Forest</strong>, <strong>Mountain</strong>, or another building or shape.</li>\n<li>Press “R” to rotate the shape, or press the “Rotate Tile” button below the Tiles.</li>\n<li>When placing a Tile, if the total value of all buildings in the same row or column as the placed building is equal to or great than 13, the <strong>Darkness</strong> will grow.</li>\n<li>At the end of every round the <strong>Darkness</strong> will grow.</li>\n<li><em>Be aware</em> that <strong>Darkness</strong> can overtake other tiles and even your buildings (removing them from the board) unless you have a <strong>Light Tower</strong> nearby. A building that is covered by <strong>Darkness</strong> does not score points or contribute to points of other Tiles.</li>\n<li>On round 13 the <strong>Darkness</strong> will grow twice.</li>\n<li>For scoring purposes, nearby and adjacency is calculated <em>using the building square</em> (the image) and not the shape of the Tile.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Credits</h2>\n<p><a href=\"//deviantart.com/sanskarans/art/Horror-of-evil-774329072\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Thumbnail / cover image</a> made by <a href=\"//deviantart.com/sanskarans\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sanskarans</a> from DeviantArt.com</p>\n","source":"straker/js13k-2024","stars":0,"post":"https://stevenklambert.com/writing/encroaching-darkness-postmortem/","comments":[{"at":379106348,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"<p>The game is logical and very interesting to play! Especially when you figure out the rules so you can maximise the score from placing tiles. Managed to score 29 so far, but I believe can do more :D</p>\n<p>Took me sometime to figure out controls — click on the tiles to place them instead of dragging those. And missing reset button in the end.</p>\n<p>Congratulations on submission!</p>\n","games":["Spirit Hunter"]},{"at":379135439,"author":"Cody Ebberson","login":"codyebberson","gh":749094,"url":"https://cody.ebberson.com","twitter":"codyebberson","text":"<p>It took me about 3 games to figure out the basics.  Then I started paying more attention to the scoring system.  On my next 3 runs, my scores were 20, 22, and 30.  Nice feeling of agency and progress.  Lighthouses seem like the workhorses of the game.  Lakes, farms, and sawmills seem like the bread and butter.  Houses are great, but only if you get lucky and you can find a wide open area.  Churches seem the hardest to play?  But maybe that’s because I haven’t figured out how to tame the darkness.  Overall, really clever game, feels like something from a professional boardgame designer.  Nice job!</p>\n","games":["Phantomicus"]},{"at":379136882,"author":"João Lopes","login":"lopis","gh":2715751,"url":"www.jlopes.dev","text":"<p>Got 25 points. Not sure how good that is!</p>\n<p>This reminds me of a really fun pen-and-paper card game called Cartographers. The darkness seems to be really intense! I didn’t get anywhere near enough lighthouses to prevent it from expanding, so half the board was covered by it. I wasn’t even sure if they were preventing darkness from expanding at all?</p>\n<p>I dig the bare bones game aesthetics, reminds me old old web games.</p>\n","games":["Thirteen Terrible Stunts"]},{"typ":1,"at":379139469,"re":379136882,"author":"Steven Lambert","login":"straker","gh":2433219,"url":"https://stevenklambert.com/","twitter":"StevenKLambert","text":"<p>Nice! Cartographers was one of the games I took inspiration from. I’m also not sure what a good score is yet, but it seems that 20+ is pretty decent score. Hopefully everyone keeps letting me know what they got and that’ll give me a better sense of what a good score would be.</p>\n"},{"at":379155002,"author":"Alexey Kalmakov","login":"rndD","gh":850302,"text":"<p>I got 21 points after few games. But as other players here, it took me a while to get basics. It was very beneficial to play one game and see sequence of numbers calculations and highlight areas, it helped a lot to understand rules.</p>\n<p>I liked the daily seed idea. As I got, all players have the same map for a day, as a daily puzzle to solve.</p>\n<p>You probably already thought about it, but it would be very nice to have some additional info on hover, pre-calculation of how many points you will get before setting the tile. And the same action for lighthouses to show where darkness will not come in any scenario.</p>\n<p>Congratulations with a great entry, I see a lot of potentials here. A few animations here and there, a bit of sound FX, some additional info on hover and boom we have a daily puzzle game!</p>\n","games":["Data Warrior: 13kb limit"]},{"typ":2,"at":379261268,"author":"Michelle Duke","login":"mishmanners","gh":36594527,"url":"mishmanners.info","twitter":"MishManners","text":"<p>Why 16 rounds? Could have been 13 to lean more into the theme as a suggestion.</p>\n<p>Very cool image on the home page, but didn’t really related to the style of game play. Needs to have an “objective” at the start, not just “place titles” but what my goal in placing the tiles. Do I want more points or less points or lots of darkness or lots of mountains etc? How do I get more points? What is my goal? Found this all out AFTER scrolling down, have it in a game window, not just the whole browser.</p>\n<p>Once I figured all this out though, made a lot more sense! I would have it so it’s all in a game window, and have an intro scene that explains each thing as you scroll through the introduction, then have a “cheat sheet” on the side with how much each tile is worth - similar to the way they do this in Settlers of CATAN.</p>\n<p>The controls were a little tricky; I placed the first three tiles not where I wanted because to the click and drag function… Wasn’t clear whether can place tiles over, as the tile was read when it was on the board, red to me means “no go” not just the outline of the tile.</p>\n<p>The counting at the end of the rounds was really good - nice work on this aspect. Overall, cool concept, rather different, needs some music and sound effects (you have plenty of kBs to spare), and just tidy up a few aspects on the UI and it’d be so much more fun to play. Nice work on everything and congrats on a fun entry.</p>\n<p>Add a GitHub README 😛.</p>\n"},{"at":379293201,"author":"Benjamin Boyd Austin","login":"bbaustin","gh":18755168,"text":"<p>OK, this is pretty cool! Reminds me of Carcassonne a little bit!</p>\n<p>At first, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, and I got 12 points.\nOn my second playthrough, I started getting the hang of it and got 22 points.\nI’m definitely going to play again later to try and beat my high score– so yeah, this game has some great replay value, I think!</p>\n<hr>\n<p>One small thing I’d change: in order to see the “available tiles” and the game board in one screen, I had to zoom out the browser window (I’m playing on a laptop). So, I guess some other UI arrangement would be nice</p>\n","games":["PicoBuddy"]},{"at":379384538,"author":"Jasper Renow-Clarke","login":"picosonic","gh":26137750,"twitter":"femtosonic","text":"<p>I enjoyed playing your game. Lots of strategy in the placement of the tetris style pieces.</p>\n<p>The graphics looked good and the input interactions felt natural.</p>\n<p>I wasn’t sure if I did something wrong but I only got to play one round of the game which ended with it counting up my scores, then the game stopped without an option to retry or progress to a harder level.</p>\n","games":["rollermaze"]},{"at":379575112,"author":"Ryan Malm","login":"Rybar","gh":145812,"text":"<p>Interesting game, reminds me a little of Carcassonne!  I’ll have to come back and give this one a few more tries, got a measly 17 points my first try.</p>\n","games":["Six And Seven"]},{"at":379636611,"author":"Jonathan Vallet","login":"jonathan-vallet","gh":5329099,"text":"<p>I loved this game, excellent gameplay. Easy to learn, hard to manage :)\nReally cool to have rules/reminder on the side. I didn’t see the “rotate” feature on my first game, it’s cool to have it.\nit should have been cool to be able to place tiles by drag and drop in addition of 2 clicks</p>\n","games":["13 Steps to Escape"]},{"at":379753087,"author":"Logan Tempez","login":"LoganPB","gh":114475709,"twitter":"MamonakuStudio","text":"<p>Incredible game, very nice work.\nMaybe a tutorial could be great, I needed a first game to try before really understand how it worked.</p>\n<p>Displaying the rules near the game board is really great, it helps a lot.</p>\n<p>Really fun to play, nice work!</p>\n","games":["13th Restaurant Rush"]},{"at":380103785,"author":"Siorki","login":"Siorki","gh":2333431,"text":"<p>This would do well as a tabletop game, you should consider adapting the rules. The graphic style is already leaning in that direction.</p>\n<p>Placement is a bit complex and it takes several games to fully understand it and contain darkness. Got scores between 26 and 37 so far. A great idea.</p>\n<p>Is there a way at the  end to restart a new game without reloading the page&nbsp;?</p>\n","games":["2048 / 13"]},{"at":380189910,"author":"Christoph Schansky","login":"DerBenniBanni","gh":5499976,"text":"<p>Interesting gameplay-concept, this could be a real-life boardgame!</p>\n<p>It would be nice to see everything on one screen, and to have a little bit visual “magic” (effects)</p>\n<p>I played a few rounds, reaching 29 as best result.</p>\n","games":["Aargh! Triskaideka attacks!"]},{"at":380237570,"author":"Almar Suarez","login":"wololoa","gh":10622012,"twitter":"repunkgame","text":"<p>Interesting idea! A very cool way to quickly prototype a board game. That being said, the presentation needs a lot of work so it’s easy to just see at a glance what each type of tile does (I had to be constantly scrolling up and down which got in the way of me thinking where to place tiles).</p>\n","games":["DECK 13"]},{"at":380342434,"author":"Leo Kuo","login":"leokuo0724","gh":40346834,"url":"https://medium.com/@leokuo0724","twitter":"leokuo0724","text":"<p>Nice entry. Although there are many rules, the introductions provided are simple and clear, making it easy to understand.</p>\n<p>I love the concept of placing blocks—it reminds me of a board game! Adding a computer opponent could make it even more interesting, especially if it includes a mechanic for occupying tiles.</p>\n<p>I also like the score calculate animation. it’s simple and clear.</p>\n","games":["Templar's Final Stand"]},{"at":380352258,"author":"Eoin McGrath","login":"eoinmcg","gh":96340,"url":"http://eoinmcgrath.com","twitter":"eoinmcg","text":"<p>Took me a while to work out what was going on - I didn’t realise I had to scroll down to get the tiles at first.</p>\n<p>Interesting concept and certainly has a lot of potential!</p>\n","games":["Gecko Blaster"]},{"at":380419529,"author":"Mohammad Jawad","login":"mhmdjawad","gh":22205462,"url":"https://pdemia.com/","text":"<p>variation of tetris with fear of 13 or more, the page is so full of information I lost focus couple times not to complain about having information on how to play but would prefer something simpler</p>\n","games":["The 13 Invaders","Cookie Maze 3d","Maze Runner vs 13","Tower Defence Walking 13s"]}],"results":{"theme":{"rank":67,"min":1,"score":2.71,"max":4.2},"innovation":{"rank":28,"min":1,"score":3.32,"max":4.47},"gameplay":{"rank":46,"min":1,"score":3.29,"max":4.29},"graphics":{"rank":117,"min":1,"score":2.61,"max":4.76},"audio":{"rank":142,"min":1,"score":1.25,"max":4.34},"controls":{"rank":91,"min":1,"score":2.79,"max":4.24},"primary":{"rank":92,"min":6,"score":15.96,"max":24.47},"label":"Overall"}}