The Rip-offs & Making Our Original Game It’s been a weird and awesome couple of months. Our expectations for our tiny game were well, fairly tiny. Basically, we hoped it’d do better than Puzzlejuice. It did. By a lot. It’s still hard to address the world’s response with something beyond a wide-eyed daze but essentially we couldn’t be more thrilled. Duh. But there’s another side of that daze that we wish to talk about. The rip-offs. With Greg being part of the Ridiculous Fishing team, we’re not shy about calling a clone a clone, and believe us, there’s no shortage of straight-up clones out there, especially on Android. But it’s the not-really-clone sort of games, the rip-offs, that have popped up that have our feelings puzzled. We know how to deal with a clone, and likely, so do you. First, it started on iOS with a game called 1024 released 21 days after Threes (February 27th). It’s different, but not. The sliding is there, the doubling of cards, the merging, even the art is extremely similar. There are differences. New cards spawn all over the place. Swiping up, down, left or right moves the cards the full distance possible. There are “stones” in the grid that never move. This last feature was likely a choice the developer made based on the fact that the game was too easy. It's not very fun. Next, came 2048 about ten days later. A game system identical to 1024 with one tweak, it removed the stones. Since, the game has grown in popularity after a posting on Hacker News on March 10th. It’s freely available and open source, allows swipes so it can be played on the phone and has spawned many variants since, including our personal favorite: Numberwang 2048. It’s all in good fun, at least we’d like to think so, but try as our logical brains might, we still got the same “cloning feeling". Especially when people called Threes, a game we poured over for nearly a year and a half, a clone of 2048. Others rifled off that they thought 2048 was a better game than Threes. That all stung pretty bad. We know Threes is a better game, we spent over a year on it. And obviously, Threes is the reason 2048 exists. But why is Threes better? It’s better for us, for our goals. 2048 is a broken game. Something we noticed about this kind of system early on (that you'll see hidden in the emails below). We wanted players to be able to play Threes over many months, if not years. We both beat 2048 on our first tries. We’d wager most people that have been able to score a 768 or even a 384 in Threes would be able to do the same using the fabled “corner strategy”. You probably could too! Just try tapping “up” then “right” in alternating order until you can’t move. Then press left. You may not get to a 2048, but you might just see your highest score ever. When an automated script that alternates pressing up and right and left every hundreth time can beat the game, then well, that's broken. Is Threes a better game? We think so. To this day, only about 6 people in the world have ever seen a 6144 and nobody in the world has yet to “beat” Threes. But that’s what’s better to us as game designers. We worked really hard to create a simple game system with interesting complexity that you can play forever. You know, “simple to learn, impossible to master”. That old chess-nut… And it all happened so fast. Threes was cloned and beat to a different market within 6 days of release on iOS. 2048 isn’t that clone. But it’s sort of the Commander Keen to Super Mario Bros. situation. Imagine Tetris was released and then less than a month later (instead of years) Dr. Mario was released. Dr. Mario is a pretty great game by the way, so the comparison is a bit weird here. Hopefully you get the sentiment. This sort of fast turnaround creates a lot of confusion and while it’s exciting and somewhat inevitable, it doesn’t make the aftermath easier to deal with as original creators. Maybe not a lot of people know Alexey Pajitnov made Tetris, but of those that care about that kind of thing, it’s fairly obvious to everyone that Tetris came first. If you’re aware of Dr. Mario, you’re almost certainly aware that Tetris exists. The branching of all these ideas can happen so fast nowadays that it seems tiny games like Threes are destined to be lost in the underbrush of copycats, me-toos and iterators. This fast, speed-up of technological and creative advances is the lay of the land here. That’s life! That’s how we get to where we’re going. Standing on each others shoulders. We want to celebrate iteration on our ideas and ideas in general. It’s great. 2048 is a simpler, easier form of Threes that is worth investigation, but piling on top of us right when the majority of Threes players haven’t had time to understand all we’ve done with our game’s system and why we took 14 months to make it, well… that makes us sad. It’s complicated and hard to express these conflicting feelings but hopefully this is a start. We are so happy with Threes and how it has done and all the response. Seriously. And even writing this feels like we’re whining about some sour grapes that we have no business feeling sour about. Like it’s not ok to feel the way we do some of the time. But we do. We do believe imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but ideally the imitation happens after we’ve had time to descend slowly from the peak -- not the moment we plant the flag. It took awhile to climb this mountain, 14 months actually. So to “show our work”, we’re posting around 45,000 words that mark the trail we took. It’s not every text, skype call or even every email in our big 500+ email thread. But it’s the important stuff, and a lot of it was important to getting Threes out in the world. ~ Asher & Greg

The Threes Emails All told, we sent 570 emails in this email thread. The first 100 were sent from 12/2/13 to 6/20/13. Then things start to pick up more up until release. Asher sends out a prototype on 12/2/13 to a number of friends, including Greg. And then it begins.

Greg to Asher - 12/3/12 “what are all these 2s UGHHHHHHH” Play the prototype! [PC & Mac]

Greg to Asher - An hour later

Greg to Asher - Next afternoon ok so the atoms one is bs, don't even know why i'm showing you. the other one is based on additive colors. we'd do symbols with these as well or some kind of representation so it naturally doesn't screw with colorblind folks. so basically. you've got G = 255, then a R,B = 255. when you combine these with a screen blending mode, they = 255, 255, 255 or white...

Asher to Greg - A little later Awesome! I really like the tiles. Very solid and they definitely look merge-able. Really dig the 3Dness too. I can totally imagine the arrows and walls having the same amount of depth. Not too keen on the color scheme, to be honest. It feels a little abrasive and neon for my taste. Though if the game stays this simple we could make a bunch of color schemes and something like this could be an option. I'm still going back and forth with how abstract the game should be, but if we go abstract this is definitely a superb option. And I think I'm totally cool with their verticalness too. If we size it right, we could make it rotate appropriately on the iPad. Sick dude! I'll let you know if I have any other thoughts.

And that’s how it started. Within a day it would seem we were fairly close to the final product. If you look at that last screenshot and compare it to the final version of Threes you can probably make out the changes necessary to get from A to B. Of course, the game itself had arrows and walls at that time so Greg was skirting a lot of the complexity in favor of getting a general look-and-feel quickly. So what happened over the next 423 days? A lot… We’re not going to post everything, but we’ll go through all the key moments of development through our emails back and forth. For links to certain points, check the list of links with dates below:

“Holes” and Argyle Style

From Asher - 12/7/12 Ahaha I love that you represented fire/water with the burner/pot of water. Also note that I'm going to add "Holes" to the game as soon as I get a free second. You basically slide them into numbers to eat them and that's how you cash out points. I think it's going to be fun. I get what you're saying about the liquid stuff-- that seems like the most elegant metaphor for the relationship between the numbers. Buuut I dunno the idea of moving molecules or liquid or chemicals doesn't really grip me, y'know? I mean I love science, don't get me wrong, but it feels very... cold. Abstract. And if we're going abstract I would rather go full abstract like the tiles you made earlier because Excellent Graphic Design excites me much more than organic chemistry. So here's my lame marketing thoughts for the game: If we go full abstract with just numbers and graphic design then we have basically guaranteed the Drop7 audience. That's not a huge audience though and in doing so we will scare away... basically everyone else. But if we go full CutePandaTown on this game then we have the potential of attracting a much larger crowd, but then the Drop7 people might never even touch it. And the Drop7ers are probably our core. In a crazy way, I sort of want to do both! It's dumb idea though because it's basically double the design work. (But since you asked: I was thinking two websites, two trailers, but they both pointed at the same app. And then when you start the game the first thing that pops up is a question like, "Do you like Pandas?" which would determine how the game is skinned) ANYWAY: the gist is that the design we choose has to jump out and grip the audience in one way or another. And the only two ways I can think of right now are "Graphic Designy" or "Cute." I'll let you know if I think of any other ideas. Oh geeze I was going to write some more srs bzns stuff, but I'm super late for work now. More later!

From Greg alright i hear you. also: holes! cool. i think that the liquid/molecular shit is just... yea. why even both when abstract is easier to explain anyway. BUT i do pretty strongly believe this game should have one voice/look/feel/brand. related: for hundreds, about 5 months ago, i wanted to turn it all into blowfish so it'd attract a completely new audience, but as you progressed the graphics would start to glitch out, eventually completely revealing the core, original look and feel with red/grayscale. i still think it's awesome, because hardcore players would really get into it and casual players would never see it because they didn't get far enough. and then hardcore would kind of hear about "dude, i know it's blowfish but you gotta play it, it gets really weird and good and hard." i still kinda wish we did that, but it's ya know, ya gotta ship... anyway, as far as two styles, i also kinda think that's the easy way out a bit? like it's avoiding the problem. everyone plays solitaire and playing cards are abstract, at least their individual design. we can make abstract look accessible. like, i was just in the shower and then i was like ARGYLE! and then rushed out and made it. don't worry i'm not naked. but seriously, i think a pattern like this could kinda feel warm. it wouldn't have to be argyle. maybe it's fabric. maybe it's something else entirely. i added sort of a card frame for the numbers, maybe that's not necessary. i am really open to any kind of possibility, but for me i just think that the real challenge is getting this into people's hands and them "getting it" without much exposition. imagine if we didn't need ANY? that's probably impossible, but i just feel like characters bouncing around then combining leaves a lot of holes. like black bears can't combine with each other but they do combine with white bears and but pandas can combine with eachother? why can't i have a group of white bears? a group of black bears? and then combine them both to have a group of pandas as well? one idea would be sperm + egg = mitosis. then the cell divides as it gets combined with other cells (threes). obv, not marketable. but something out there that kinda makes sense. sperms don't wanna combine. neither would eggs. but cells might? like you multiply the number of divisions. i dunno. i think just in general we can have a "soft" look without being overly saccarin that also explains the game really well in a more abstract, fundamental way. unless we come up with the perfect visual metaphor that people can instantly relate to. i think it might exist out there, but i haven't found it yet.

From Asher At work so not verbose but: holy shit argyle is brilliant.

From Greg fuck yes. it was one of those shower ideas.

From Greg ok, phew. hereeeeee weeeee go mouth might be a bit wild. and then yea. some wall ideas. some arrow ideas. mostly happy with the basic one though. tired now. night nightttt

From Greg ok way better monster mouth idea, after seeing spacejam midnight showing

From Greg i gotta say, the holes are awesome, they make total sense. i DO really like the arrows, at first i didn't it's a high level skill to be able to push one out of the grid. the walls, i feel less able to work with, but yea. i GUESSSSSS the thing i'm trying to say is that "what if it was justs threes and holes?" the games would last longer for sure, but maybe that's kinda good? i dunno... also there's kind of a high level thinking with the holes as they are that if you get a huge number three going and then you try and baby your first hole, if it swallows another three, then... maybe it's start over time? it'd be cool to be able to recover from that. like you try and go to the last possible moment with getting that hole up to like a 20x+ and then you eat that 100+ three and BLAMO! high score. sooooo that kind of risk/reward dealio could elminate the need for something like walls that generally brings the game to a close. i think spikes are cooler, but i've just never been too sold on either. i think one thing that contributes to the spikes are better than walls, is that i feel like i have much more power to deal with them. now... when there are three or more, i'm fucked a bit. i know i can do stuff with walls by merging and stuff, that's good, but it feels like the same kind of action/thinking as spikes, but with less clarity.

From Asher Okay whew sorry for not responding sooner, but I've been trying to drown myself in the design and figure out what'll give this game legs. The holes feel mixed to me at the moment. They add a nice risk/reward element, but something about them is making the game feel like a grind for me. I dunno. I think there's needs to be something about the way you summon them or protect them. Right now they show up every 30 turns, which is arbitrary and unfun. Still working on it, but doing little things like changing the starting conditions of the game makes the whole thing feel way better and snappier on the whole. (Less "waste" moves.) Holes still might be the answer, but I don't know. Either way that monster is absolutely kick ass. I burst out laughing when I saw it. The eyes are fantastic. The monster makes me want to keep holes. Personally I really like the walls. Maybe it's just because I've played this game a 1000 times already, but the walls make me think differently and more about navigating around the board. And it's a nice sub-goal to swallow them from the side. The arrows, too....... oooh like maybe holes can wrap around the board like arrows. Gotta prototype that. I am super super super sold on the argyle thing. I search for "argyle" on google images and I just get all these warm feelings. Also Argyle is a fantastic word and I'm sure we'll figure out an amazing related name for the game. Also if we just cram all the different argyle layers into a single atlas it'll be super easy to switch them out for skin packs. Right now I'm thinking that skin-swapping will be simplest extrinsic reward. Like "Hey you made it to move 200 for the first time! Have this panda-styled pattern." And then we don't have to worry about powerups or anything. Hmmm do you think the default theme could be a little warmer? The black background feels a little oppressive to me. Oh man can you make it feel like a warm sweater I want to curl up in?

From Greg

New Version with a Hungry Monster

From Greg - 12/10/12 i just ate a 6000 point chunk of food. man. i just don't feel like it's work? i dunno... it makes me think so much more about my actions, planning moves ahead. and the pay off is soooooooo good. my monster was like at 30 or something? ate a 160+ some square. the game was like 3 minutes total. and you get sort of "threes vision" for the basics 1s and 2s and so it's all about perking up when shit gets real. like spelunky, maybe you get good enough where you auto-pilot and then... you see a shopkeep you just gotta kill. or you get to the black market. or whatever. i know it's extrinsic because it's points but it's really not. you've seen that 160+ square grow up. you grew it. you've seen that monster get hungrier and hungier. you made that happen. now it's time for it to eat. is feeding a starving snake a rat extrinsic? i don't want to belabor the point but i just feel like this game is super fun. maybe i'm not playing at high enough level? or i'm not playing it enough? i just, it doens't feel like a grind to me. it feels like The Game. annoyingly, Greg Wohlwend Play the Monster Prototype! [PC & Mac]

From Greg - A bit later... can't stop playin! one thing, and this might be a temp balance thing, but every time i get an arrow off, another one comes right back next move. it doesn't seem like it wraps but it does seem like it's always the next turn. like i had two arrows to start off and i'd almost always get them off one right after the other, and then, sure enough, there are my two friends comin' back to play. anyway, i wanna get those bastards outta my hair for a bit. i earned it! :)

From Greg - A little later... another thing real quick. there's a lot to be said for a way to explain this game in a sentence. puzzlejuice had it on the clever/marketing side "brain punch" but also the direct pitch "it's tetris, boggle and bejeweled". i have trouble explaining this game to people in a few sentences. i feel like the monster/hole solves that kind of a lot. "you torture a monster until he's as starving as you can get thne you feed him the biggest chunk of food you possibly can." it's not super brief or anything, but it's kinda more "special". having that "special" thing that people can latch onto and parrot is pretty key.

From Greg - Later still... broccoli cheese probably isn't a winner, but you get the idea. i have another idea that's slightly weirder but might be much more readable for displaying the food. also the colors of the cutting boards are pretty horrendous. so don't look at that?! :)

From Greg - Even later... ok, had to do the apple.

From Greg - 12/13 oh man... hmmmm so i just took a pretty fresh look at the old version, solid argyle. and it's kind of like... really strong i think. he's the argoyle, he only eats argyle and that all makes sense. solids are not edible, argyles are. the food is cool though, i mean i want that to work. anyway, just having second thoughts.

From Asher Yeah I hear you, dude. I was kind of thinking the same thing. It's super clear and metaphorically sound if we go the pure argyle route. And it's probably super tricky to get food looking appropriately delicious inside of the square limitations. And there's no good way I can think of to animate the foods coming together. I feel like argyle should be our Main Thing. We can get clever and stuff in certain skin packs, but sticking to these attractive patterns will be super strong and, almost as importantly, super fast. /thoughts

Walls and a New Schedule

From Greg - 12/14/12 so i had an idea last night for some interaction stuff that might communicate things better. basically, when you swipe, we've got this whole other interaction compared to just arrow keys. arrow keys are a binary sort of thing, whereas a swipe is a spectrum. it poses some real interaction problems. when you swipe, and don't release, can you undo? is that a way to test the waters? or is it just any swipe in any direction in the slightest locks you in? i feel like that would probably feel horrible, but then again... "undo" is sort of bizarre. generally, people don't understand there are walls on the opposite side of where you swipe. these would animate up (as you swipe) to reflect that. the whole idea of walls and non-walls and pulling and squeezing should feel pretty good with this. i think i might mock it up. ok, that's what i've got. the argoyle is still in flux. the arrows i don't hate.

From Greg updated argoyle and introducing poundstooth, a bit rough and from the hip but he's here.

From Asher Blah sorry for the radio silence. I'm sort of a little overwhelmed at the moment with a bunch of different projects and trying not to be a social shut-in. (Admittedly all of this is self-inflicted.) The current plan is to finish my current Ardunio project before I leave for Europe this week with the family. I'll bring my laptop with me, but I probably won't get much done while I'm there. I get back around new years and that's when I want to kick Threes production into high gear. Is it crazy to try to be feature-complete by the end of January? We don't have many features! In fact I'm going to list them all right here: Core Game Tutorial Menu Flow Music SFX Monster Animation Game Rotation (for the iPad/PC) Leaderboards Achievements Twitter Skin Packs IAP (Undos?) Puzzlejuice Cross-Promotion And then we can spend February fixing bugs and adding skins or whatever juice we can think of. Okay and now feedback stuff: I totally think we should add some preview hey-this-block-is-going-to-merge-and-this-block-isn't feedback to the swiping. But we shouldn't go through the whole rigamarole of totally merging and spawning the new blocks until they confirm the action. Mainly because the player shouldn't know where the block spawns before they take the action. (And if the player can find out by half-swiping, then the optimal tactic would be to half-swipe in every direction before taking a critical move, which doesn't sound fun) Super dig the blocks spawning in through those bars. It's way more elegant than sliding from off screen. And I like the idea that the monster can travel through them. I dunno about the walls popping up when you slide in that direction, though. It feels like visual noise that doesn't help much. And people seem to be able grasp the limits of the board. The boundaries are going to be challenged when we have the monster hopping around, of course, but that's why the wrapping is limited to hard mode. Still going back and forth on whether or not the non-argyle tiles should have numbers on them. It's more visually pure without them, of course, but I sort of like the mathy context that the numbers give. I'll keep thinking about it and it'll be easy to prototype both ways. Digging how the arrows match the argyle diamonds, but I'm worried about the fact that horizontal arrows and vertical arrows look different. Maybe if they were squished down into perfect diamonds (rotated squares, basically) it would look more unified? I'm a little concerned that the white line might be too subtle? Hmmm Digging the new Argoyle design. Love the dots in the mouth and the diamonds-as-eye-markings. I can totally picture him jumping out of that tile and being a complete monster. Have you thought about how it'll look when the monsters eat the tiles? I haven't been able to wrap my head around it yet. Maybe they just turn into crumbs/dust and the monster chomps appropriately. Poundstooth looks bad ass! I love his teeth! Something to keep in mind, though, is that I was hoping we would animate the monster to be alive and have reactions to the player's moves and sort of eye the closest juiciest nest-egg. (Also I'm excited to record some growls for the sound effects.) We can totally support different monsters, but we're going to have to animate them all uniquely and we absolutely shouldn't have a different monster for every skin pack. And then the players can have fun with mix n' matching monsters and argyle types. Okay I think that's everything. Sorry again that there probably won't be another playable this month D: January's going to be the month of rock, though. You've been killing it all this week, though!

From Greg haha argoyle socks would be so fucking cool dude. i can have the toe part be the monster head/mouth and then the argyle goes up the calf like a normal sock. ps. puzzlejuice skin = awesome. also, i still dig the purple/green/white colors from that original mockup, i kinda feel that's what the drop7/puzzle hardcore folks will get into. so between pj (maybe that's a secret unlockable after a certain point) argyle, houndstooth, solid purp/green/white... we can also do plaid, paisley and pin stripes. that's 7 total. 6 mains and 1 secret pj? maybe we give them 3 options (masculine like solid or pin stripe, feminine like paisley, then argyle) and then the other 3 are unlockable through progression through the game, earned or hell, IAPed, secret pj is unlocked in some other secret manner. ok onto the game game email: schedule: check, check. looks good. feature complete sounds perfectly reasonable knowing how we work together. i am currently having a lot of fun working on it, so i just work on it because i feel like it. i've got other stuff too. i think 4 projects total right now. RF, lasers, effing hail and threes. i'm gonna pull onto effing hail this week and get that to a point wehre we're hopefully feature complete. but three i kinda end up doing when i can't sleep because i'm thinking about threes or whatever. it's just really fun to work on for me. merge preview: great idea. yea i think a preview is definitely the way to do it. it'll feel good without giving away the juicy bit of which card is gonna come out and where. block/barrier spawning: i dunno, i really feel like this is something people don't get. i think if it's attached to the "merge preview" especially if it's tied to distance from pull/touch then they'll get it almost immediately. it's a faded kinda bg element so it's not in your face after you've "gotten" that the barrier comes up, otherwise without something like this hmm... though maybe the slot popping up explains it enough. arrows: yea i feel like the arrows need an "Idea" that we just haven't come to yet. similar to how the monsters came out. they are different beings in this world and making them an arrow card thing feels weak. i think a more bold shape would help, for sure. but i also just feel like the problem is deeper. monster animation: i have, and i'm pretty pumped to get that down into a .swf. there's a lot of ways to go. i do think this could (and maybe should?) be the most involved piece of programming/animation/polish we'll do in the game. it should bring people pure joy. We can totally support different monsters, but we're going to have to animate them all uniquely and we absolutely shouldn't have a different monster for every skin pack. And then the players can have fun with mix n' matching monsters and argyle types. shouldn't = should here, right? or am I missing something. so you're saying different monsters, but not tied to the pattern types? ps. regarding "no playable sorries": dude don't worry at all. there's still so much for me to chew on and i know you've got tons going on. don't worry another hair over any of that. later gator! pppppps. have fun in europe. that rocks.

Hundreds Launches

Over the next couple of weeks, Greg goes off to work on the launch for Hundreds as well as to their respective families for the Holidays.

From Asher - 1/3/12 Dudersssssss Congratufrickenlations on the amazing Hundreds launch!! As far as I can tell from lurking on Twitter and the toucharcade forums and your freaking FRONT PAGE APP STORE FEATURE you are in amazing shape and probably don't need to work on Threes any more because you'll be busy rolling around in a satisfied daze for the next few years. Totally 100% deserved. Loving the game so far but geeze all that amazing polish makes me melt. The seamless screenshots, the 60 fps, the super clear death screen. Also I've been screenshotting the codes when they pop up so hopefully I'll be able to figure those out at some point. I've been cracking down on making Threes work in futile for the past few days and I'm just about done porting it over. The rest of this email is my plan of attack so DO NOT READ until you want to start working on something unhundreds. ----- First a clarification about the monster thing: what I was thinking is that if the monsters are different shapes for every pattern (like argoyle and poundstooth are) then they'll all need their own set of animations, which sounds like a lot of work. The possible solutions are A) We have a single monster shape/template that we use for every pattern B) Most of the patterns use the same shaped monster, but some will have a special monster (like houndstooth) C) We have 1-3 monsters that can be mixed+matched with the different patterns I'm open to any of those. Okay so Futile is a rough new engine and it shows. It's super clean and efficient and pixel-perfect which is great, but Rix is just one dude. For instance: I spent all last night figuring out how to fix the fact that text didn't center properly. This has slowed down the porting process in an annoying way. It's just about done, though. In order to focus my energy and make sure I don't dive any further into the add-features-to-an-engine-that-isn't-mine rabbit hole, I've laid out a rough plan of attack. It's tight and going to be tricky, but I think it might actually be doable: January 3-10: Complete Game Flow + Analytics January 10-17: iOS + Start Art integration January 17-24: Revise Game Design + Tutorial + More art integration January 24-31: Technical stuff (patterns, game center, IAP, twitter,etc) This week I want to complete the entire game flow, which means getting all of the menus working and out of the way. Without a visual editor, creating menus is a pain in my rear. It'll be easy to modify them, but the setup is such a hassle. On top of that, it'll be nice to have a skeleton of a working game that we fill in with metaphorical muscle and flesh. Also I want to get analytics in there because I'm curious what our playtesters are up to. Next week I want to get it on phones and drop some art in there. Also I know the core game is not totally done and will feel different once we get it mobile, so I've accounted for time to shift the game design around a bit. Brief srs bzns interlude: We never wrapped up the exact deal (my bad) so I just want to get it out of the way. If you want to stay hands off like in PJ then that's totally cool. 60/30/10, then? Finally I've written out the total menu flow. It's about 10 screens all together. Not bad! You'll probably recognize a few of them from Puzzlejuice: +Splash Screen +Main Menu -Simple Monster / Resume Game -Clever Monster / End Game -Patterns -Scores -More +Confirm End Game -Yea -Nea +More -About -Tutorial -Sound y/n -Music y/n -Puzzlejuice +Game -Core Game -Main Menu Button +New High Score! -Name field -Proceed +Recap -Go Again -Stats (Score+Moves+Biggest bite) -Tweet -Main Menu +Tweet Screen -Tweet Score -Tweet Biggest Bite -Log Out -Back to recap +Patterns -Scrolling Marketplace -Instructions How to Unlock -Apply button -Buy button -Main Menu +Scores -Simple Monster scores -Clever Monster scores -Gamecenter +Puzzlejuice -Goes straight to the App Store, maybe? +About -Working links to our websites -Working links to our twitters Okay that's the news from Lake Woebegone. Enjoy release week, buddyyyy!

From Greg thanks dude! it's been a bit unreal. i have threes open right now actually (the ai file) so i wanna work on it. things are waylaying me left and right but i think working on stuff is going to be good for me. so. 1 thing. and this ties into the srs bsns. basically, i want to do what's going to make the best video game. if me doing the integration makes for a better video game because you spend less time monkeying with that shit and more time polishing or designing or coding cool stuff we'd otherwise have no time for, then i htink we should do that. i'm familiar with unity and a plethora of other 2d game tools, so i think i'll be alright. heck for gballs i did some c++. mike set it up for me as a skeleton but i did the rest and it was nice because instead of me saying the text box was off 3px, i just did it. so yea, i get the feeling that'd be a big help and maybe we turn out something super slick because of that? as far as teh schedule, i've gotta say that it does feel like we're jumping into integration for me a bit fast. i wanna make sure that the menu mockups are tight and we allot enough time for that. however, that shouldn't be too much trouble if i'm doing integration, i can pop in a bit later and you can work with placeholder stuff hopefully until i'm ready to operate. a few thoughts to bounce around, anyway let me know whatcha think. :) oh yea duh. monster stuff. i'm gonna lean towards what's less work for sure. it seems like doing one monster type to start and treating it like a skin is best. if we do want to expand, we can always do that later. (at least i think we should be able to, right?) mght be good to keep that in mind in case this puppy warrants an expansion/update kinda thing. ok rad :) i'm going to try and work on some menu stuff and flesh that out ASAP.

From Asher Duuude if you're down the help with integration then I'm all for it!! It'll lighten my load and let me focus more on design and it'll make the game prettier and it'll keep me sane and it's just good for the entire world basically. Awesome! I can spend time next week hooking you up with the code and showing you how it works :D I guess I should set up some sort of source control now. (Usually source-controlling Unity is a pain, but Futile is all text files. Handy!) Clearly 50/40/10 is the way to go. The schedule: Next week I was just hoping to take the assets you've already made and dropping them in just so we could get a better feel for the game, but we can totally push back everything else. WHABAM.

From Greg rad rad rad! sounds great! so waking up this morning, shit done blew up and i'm having trouble focusinggggggggggg. hopefully i can calm down soon though but yea. hundos be hundoing

From Asher Dude no worries at all. Bask in it! Ride the explosion!

From Asher Dude no worries at all. Bask in it! Ride the explosion!

From Greg allllright! so hundreds housekeepin is definitely gonna be A Thing. but here's my schedule... basically, ridiculous fishing is cancelled if it's not done by the end of january. i'm flyign to NY next week to finish it next to zach. this week i'm going to try and get you setup with a ton of UI and everything else so next week you can roll on it without too much trouble. ok so that's my plan! here's to this week! :)

Greg Leaves for NY to Finish Ridiculous Fishing

From Greg 1/10/13 also, did we ever discuss how ballscrazy you meeting johnny in line for coffee because you had hundreds on your phone?! because thats banananannanananannanas and i still cant get over it. we probably discussed in this very thread but the iphone is annoying anyway. yes. that is all here's a splash, my favorite so far: http://cl.ly/image/0w1E0G1V1T2T however i'm not sure it's Right. other ideas i have for the splash: an argoyle sitting to the right of a "3" card eyeing it. when the game goes live, he starts to slobber and then you swipe to eat it. two argoyles, similar to the style of the screenshot linked above. called "The Argoyles" like a family portrait, one mrs. one mr. two argoyles and one card in the middle. one is the "clever" argoyle. the other is the "simple" argoyle. depending on which way you swipe chooses the clever/smart game mode. i think those are all kinda... well... clever. especially the last one. however! i'm worried how immediately useable that'll be. i'm kinda big on that now, especially since gasketball and now seeing how hundreds is working. i want people to have 0 friction getting into the game. so this is me sort of exploring the Big Idea of the ui and how it'll all be setup. another idea in general that i think would be super cool for transitions: step 1: http://cl.ly/image/173h2l341F3m step 2: http://cl.ly/image/2A171u1s0E0F step 3: http://cl.ly/image/3q0v1t1k2b1q step 4 - 6: open the mouth into new thing. maybe on step 3 we can afford a bit of a pause for loading times, or some sort of idle animation... yea, anyway... here's another quick idea for general ui inside the mouth: http://cl.ly/image/1y200s021n3b this one is incredibly rough, but the general composition isn't horrible. it's a little basic though, ui wise and lacks decent hierarchy. not that exploration wouldn't be fruitful though. anyway, let me know whatcha think and if you have any wild ideas of your own, lay 'em on me!

From Asher Ahhh shoot sorry sorry for being quiet so long. It's been kind of hectic. I made a resolution to stop turning down social engagements and that got kind of out hand this week. And then it was hard to just get started on work again. Totally my bad for not at least shooting out a status update. BUT I'M BACK. And I've just about got the entire game flow working. (With a lot of placeholder menus, of course, but the whole skeleton should be done by tonight.) Thoughts about things: 1) Good luck in NY! I want RF to exist, so god speed to you fellas. Moving forward into next week, I can definitely take+use the assets you've made already and pop them into the game. Obviously we'll be revising, but I think it's important to replace the current "hole" with an actual monster before I start sending out the game to new testers. 2) WTF Johnny Love. I've mentioned to you that I've watched the 4/4ths trailer one thousand times, right? Meeting Johnny totally kicked me in the pants. I found it hard to express to him how much that thing influenced me. He just sort of nodded and smiled. Also I wasn't actually playing Hundreds at the time! I was reading the Gamasutra article on my phone and he saw a screenshot. I haven't tried hundos on the phone but does it... does it work at all? More Hundreds stuff: I was explaining to my friend over skype that it was full of cryptography and she got absurdly excited and started scribbling in a notepad trying to figure one out while I held the iPad up to my webcam. Then I accidentally touched the text and it EXPLODED INTO THE DECRYPTION INTERFACE and both of our brains melted. Pure joy. 3) DAT UI. Ahhh I absolutely love the look/love that the interface is getting!! The vignetting makes it feel warm and cozy (like argyle) so I am totally pro all of that. The splash screen looks great, but actually hopefully might not be necessary! If this game is as small+sleek as I hope it is, we could theoretically have ~1 second loading times! That might just be a wish/prayer, though. The monster transition is excellent and clean and totally viable. I was thinking though... I notice the drop shadow between the main interface and the lower argyle backdrop. I can't help but wonder what's under there. It might be a sleek way to load the game or other menus if the teal background just slid straight up and revealed all the argyle underneath. We could put the options menu in there and maybe some between game loading-jokes? And then the teal just slides back down when the game is loaded. This MAY look strange if the game loads fast enough, though. Hmmm. Still trying to wrap my head around how to get sliding into the main menu. I'm super happy we did it with Puzzlejuice. I think it might actually be more clear if we reverse the way you have it set up in that last mockup, where we have an argyle on either side of the monster like so: The obvious downsides to this approach is that we lose the idea of two monsters who have different amounts of intelligence (I realized the simple monster was like a cockney peasant only as I was editing this mockup) This saddens me because I was growing on the idea of an argoyle family. The upside is that this clearly mimics the mechanics of the game where there's one monster who has a choice of argyles to eat. The downside is that once the monster eats the selected game mode, the OPPOSITE game mode is left behind, which might make it look like that's the one you selected >_< This is tricky. We should keep thinking about it. I think in Round One of art integration they're just going to be buttons. Thanks again dude for pumping out all of these kickass ideas! Seeing these definitely reinvigorated my desire to work on the game. Speaking of... OFF I GO.

Excitement Fades and Time Passes

From Greg - 1/21/13 yooooo so that new mode is really cool. it's got a sort of "thinking mans" kinda thing going on. is it just to kinda test it out? i still think the previous version was super rad and had more "cleaning up" and success in it, i also liked that it had one very direct lose condition. with this mode it's interesting that the lose condition is tied to scoring a high score, but i still miss the previous argoyle version. sorry for the quick driveby, deep in da fishin' zone. :)

From Asher Yeah I was just testing it out. I was trying to figure out how to deal with that sense of "oh no I have to keep playing and build up the monster again" after I got a gigantic bite. But Zach emailed me a good idea for the monster and I'm going to try it out tonight. KEEP ON FISHIN :D

From Asher Built sent! No idea if it's fun. Too tired to know much of anything. Alas I see no icon. Try again?

At this point, Greg is just finishing up a huge crunch on Ridiculous Fishing and living with Zach Gage at his New York City apartment . A couple months have passed since the initial 0-60 excitement of the first few prototypes and the game seems to be stagnating. Emails and builds pass slowly as Zach and Greg burn themselves out on 14 hour days to finish Ridiculous Fishing. It won't be until mid February that they talk seriously about things...

Asher is Dissatisfied with Threes

From Asher - 2/17/13 Here's the thing I wrote last night ------- Okay I've been hinting at this, but I've spent some time thinking about it (and I spent a lot of time yesterday playing the damn thing) so I'll just come out and say it: Threes, in its current state, is not worth releasing. And by current state, I mean the actual game part. I know there's a lot of menu/UI polish ahead of us, but I don't think any of that will fix the core problem. I've been trying to think of a nice succinct way of putting it, but the problem is worth more than one sentence. Okay here we go. The game is fun to learn because the rules are new and quirky and interesting. Learning how to manipulate the field is an interesting challenge, but eventually you figure it out. After that, the game is fun moment-to-moment. Each move is relatively low impact and the game is turn based, which means the player gets to pick how fast they plays based entirely on their current mental state. Because of this, the player is very likely to go into the flow state (that "cleaning your room" feeling), which is legitimately super great. The problem is that everything interesting about the game ends there. The moment you've A) learned the game and B) played with the game for a while-- there is nothing left to achieve. The game ends, I lose my flow state, and then I have no desire to continue. My personal skill at the game has plateaued, and with nothing driving me to keep playing I see no reason to try to improve my score. Just writing this has given me some ideas how to fix the game-- but I'm not 100% sure of any of them. I'm going to keep putzing around with the design, but I just wanted to let you know where my head is at right now. Also if you have any ideas please shower me with them :D ---- I didn't send the email because the contents seemed kind of heavy and I don't trust myself to make such weighty statements so late at night. I tried implementing one of my ideas last night (namely that the playing field expands every time you get an arrow off the board) but it turned out to be a bigger technical challenge than I could manage at 2AM. Gonna keep trying for it throughout the week.

It was a real blow, and shortly before, Asher flew to Chicago for a weekend where we both poked at things a bit, but we both sort of felt this crushing weight about the reality of the game. We both sort of knew it, Asher moreso than Greg. The excitement and drive wasn't there anymore and something was missing. So after Chicago and this email that was the wake-up call, we decided to table the game indefinitely. It sucked, until a month later when Greg throws a question in the ring...

One Last Effort Before the Hiatus; Stone Prototype

From Greg - 3/8/13 should we just kill the monster? i am sorta on the case again and im just wondering if reducing things to their base elements (with the arrow -> three board clear thing) might give us more clarity... the win/loss case of clearing the board/filling it makes so much sense maybe its the monster that is confusing us from going forward. on that note, what if it's combining odds/evens, so there is much more variety, a la drop7. hmmm no, it's 2am ok goodnight The e-mail is coming from inside the iPad!

From Asher I've been trying to wrap my head around this... My current hunch is that the monster is good because it gives the game a focal point. I think that one of my original goals (having every move effect the entire board) is actually more of a detriment than anything-- it's clouding the impact of each swipe and making it seem like your decisions are random and non-meaningful. I've been meaning to prototype the idea of moving ONLY the monster all week, but this illness has been putting a cramp in my brainstyle. I'm feeling better, so I'm going to try it when I have a free moment this weekend. Also I think your idea of stopping the monster from getting too hungry might be super perfect. He's constantly building up and demands more and more satisfying food every time, maybe? ideas idea ideas

From Greg aw shitty, forgot you were sick. yea dude take your time. i guess the thinking behind stripping things back down is that we have a better zero point to go from for thinking about ideas that we could throw into the system. i dunno. might shake things up. i htink the monster is good too, it's definitely good thematically and also, like you said, sort of as a focal point game wise. but yea. maybe we'll learn more about the game with something more basic and then bring the monster back in more confidently.

From Asher Development stufff: Okay okay so I spent all day redoing the game (again) and I ended up with a thing. The game has been temporarily visually downgraded (like the tiles don't actually move anymore) because I wanted to strip away Futile and make the logic much cleaner/reworkable. (Totally glad to be done with Futile. The game uses more draw calls, but I working with the editor is sooo much better for my workflow than fiddling with text files.) The game's definitely confusing without the slidey transitions, but fortunately it should be pretty straightforward to add the animations back in when I have a second. Game design stufff: Anyway, the game is WEIRD NOW. The arrow keys now only move the monster, not the whole board. He pushes the blocks around like no one's business. The monster will wrap around the board, but blocks will not. The catch is that he's ALWAYS HUNGRY and will eat a 3 if he touches it. But when he does, it spawns THREE blocks to random spots on the board. The most effective way to fight the rising tide is to merge several 3s together, which is a lot trickier than before because the monster will eat any 3s he touches. When all the board is filled up, you lose. Score stufffff: Your score is the number on the monster. Every time he eats, your score is increased by the block-you-ate squared. Because of this my average score is ~300, but my top score is 4,242, from when I ate a 64 block. Here it is!!! http://asherv.com/Personal/Threes10032013.zip I have no idea about how to feel about it. I almost didn't talk to anyone today, so my brain is kind of untrustworthy. okay dead sleeping now.

From Greg man, this is DIFFERENT! ok cool. i've played about 10 rounds so far, still picking at it. sort of a streaming consciousness thing: hmmm. i want to be able to push things and have them wrap (like i can by wrapping with the monster and pushing things)

you did a nice job with the graphics for the proto! :)

i really feel constrained, really wanna wrap. i know what i need to do to

optimize, i just don't have the power to do it, to clean up

i know that wrapping might make things considerably easier, but maybe worth a shot?

the random spawning feels unfair, or maybe more like just swimming upstream?

maybe that's fine though if i had more ability to deal with the current.

what's your high score?

man, ok i think i turned a corner or am having a good run. most of it centers around wrapping the monster into where a 2 or 1 is and pushing it out in the middle.

ugh i hate it when a ton of threes spawn. i kinda hate 3s. right?

is this a good score: http://cl.ly/image/0008302D0P0C

ok, hmmm. things are looking up. http://cl.ly/image/3p060A0w3h2a

ok, best score: http://cl.ly/image/1m0E1t0a0T0W this one was a real match. phew. man. this one is a real brain turner. it's good. but i lost that feeling of cleaning up or at least the feeling of being in control of things. it's much more, eat -> arrange as best you can -> admit there's nothing left to do -> eat (and sometimes it's for a lot of points). i don't think that's bad, but i do wonder if you added wrap-pushing, if the game might be accessible, or at least easier, maybe too easy. i dunno.

From Greg ok, this felt pretty good (opening round) http://cl.ly/image/0N420W2t3H3H haha, damnit: http://cl.ly/image/0N420W2t3H3H now i am TOO good! maybe i needed to unlearn some things? hmmmm yea maybe that was it. i was too into thinking of 3s as the gold and not enough into thinking of them as.... lava? or lava that later becomes food? haha holy fuck dude. this game

From Greg i'm on afuckin route!!!! http://cl.ly/image/2J1N3I0C3p3e so the game is a bit too easy as it stands, but that's a great sign in my opinion. much easier to make something more difficult by adding fun new things than the other way around. yea man. so hey. i'm so charged up it's hard for me to sit in my seat. i'm pacing.

From Greg accidentally ate my big boy: http://cl.ly/image/0n0v1P0Y1V2p maaaan. felt like i might of been able to go on forever. c'mon vollmer gimme a challlllaaaaneengnenge!!! :)

From Greg i kept up with that one, kinda got reckless to see how well i could manage things once they got stickier, didn't do too terribly: http://cl.ly/image/391T2o2q1N0U

All of these emails were sent in the same night as Greg played the initial prototype. He’s excitable, but soon after, the excitement fades and they feel that familiar feeling of malaise about the design.

From Greg so hey. zach is upset we're considering moving on. whadya think about getting him on the TF? he's fighting for the clever monster and all that jazz, like rolling back to what we had.

From Asher Okay so I spent the entirety of last night making the grid system super robust and able to support all kinds of logic. I can make the game be monster-moves-only or whole-grid-moves with the flip of a boolean. Also I can make specific types of tiles wrappable or immobile or mergeable or whathaveyou. The plan is that I'm going to spend tonight whipping out a ton of different prototypes. I'm taking the spaghetti v. wall approach. If anything catches my eye I'll focus in, but if not then expect a bunch of different versions to appear late tonight. I've got some ideas (like making everything wrappable except for some immobile rocks), but mostly it's going to be flipping booleans and switches until something jumps out at me. If you've got thoughts please lay 'em on me and I'll try it out :D I can throw Zach on the TF, but it's just going to be the old version for a while. I'll do that tonight.

From Asher Okay so I made one prototype. As usual, I have no idea if it's fun. Which worries me. At this point I think it might mean it's just not fun. It's certainly... an activity. Okay no monster this time. The lack of swiping is extra confusing in this one because EVERY NUMBER WRAPS! They can only be stopped by the immovable stones on the screen. The goal is to kill the stones by merging numbers next to them (ala Drop7). When you kill the stones you get to move on to the next screen. asherv.com/Personal/ThreesStones.zip I think what I learned most from this is that I really like making things squish and bounce en mass. I dunno. Gonna try again tomorrow.

The next day, Ridiculous Fishing is released and we don’t email (though we do text/twitter from time to time) for a whole three months about Threes. Also, during GDC 2013 Asher and Greg hang out a fair bit. At one point, Asher, Greg, Zach Gage, Mike Boxleiter, Max Temkin and other indies have a heart to heart with Asher about his growing desire to go independent full time. A bit later, he makes that tough decision and quits his job at That Game Company. All of these things plus a growing sense of "can this really work?" set in, where we're unsure where things are going with Threes.

Asher Sends A Flurry of Prototypes

From Asher - 6/13/13 Okay suddenly Threes again!! It's only been what, three months? This is the non-animated version, so it's gonna take some brainpower to understand/remember what's happening. The rules: You have a limited amount of moves, which is the number on the bottom. You get +3 moves every time you eat a 3. It caps at 10. You cannot eat any numbers greater than three. Your score is the highest number on the board. My high score is 209. gogogo: http://asherv.com/Personal/Threes13092013.zip

From Asher Okay better version ho! This one feels like a good sweetspot. I think I might have successfully eliminated putzing around, which has been my biggest problem with Threes since forever. Basically: If you're actively playing the game, your score is actively going up. And it goes up until you lose. CHANGES: If you feed the monster when it's capped at 10, the monster gets "OVERFED" and it lowers your score tiles by 3. I added arrows back! They do the INSTA-THREE thing, which is actually super helpful in this version. Here it is: http://asherv.com/Personal/ThreesOverfed.zip Next I'm going to bring animations/iOS support back.

From Asher My high score is 96 in this version. But I feel like I'm improving :D

From Asher 120 :D :D Okay so further reflection shows that the "Overfed" thing is way too convoluted. I just made it so you can't eat anything when you're maxed at 10 and it has the same effect on the game. Gotta run, so no time to upload a revision today D: Okay so further reflection shows that the "Overfed" thing is way too convoluted. I just made it so you can't eat anything when you're maxed at 10 and it has the same effect on the game. Gotta run, so no time to upload a revision today D: Agh sorry for flood your email. Just suddenly excited for this game again!!

From Asher ah ok, well i'll play this one for now. gimme dat new one when ya get up! :) the heartbreak: http://cl.ly/image/0S2F0B2b1I3p this time i just focused on eating healthy. you know. well fed. above 5. then i got greedy... maybe a little cocky. insta-threes will go to your head: http://cl.ly/image/0Q1u131E2t2N put you on blast: http://cl.ly/image/0J2q0e203g1C alriiiiiiiiiighty! i been workin on this. http://cl.ly/image/3L0T2F2r0o2V just cuz i can't not.

Asher Finds Threes

From Asher - 6/20/13 Okay okay more thoughts: I think I would be pretty happy with the basic colors->simple argyle->complex argyle ramp. We've got this abstract thing to fall back on in case our other ideas don't work out. Buuuuuuuuuuuut I really still love the idea of the Argoyle. In addition to it being a fantastic pun, it's basically a brand new creature that we created and that's pretty exciting. So What if you're just combining/upgrading Argoyles? Basically Argoyles are these creatures that roam around looking for other argoyles-- and then when they find the right one, they merge into a bigger better Argoyle. (Sort of like a Pokemon evolution) Maybe they also get smarter and instead of just grunting they start talking? Of course that would just be background lore for the game, which could look like it does now.) Just cards you slide around with eyeballs and mouths on them.) But it means we could do things like have a bestiary of all the types of Argoyles you could create/find, Ridiculous Fishing style. I dunno, just spitballing. -Asher PS: Picture some fanart of two Argoyles high-fiving, but their hands are overlapping/merging into a new pattern.

From Asher - 6/20/13 HRrrrghg http://cl.ly/image/0v2o0o3s162U 192, a 96, two 48s.... -Asher

This is the first email that shows the final “doubling” mechanic that makes Threes, Threes and it took about 7 months to reach. But it’s not immediately obvious to either of us, especially Greg. After some texting back and forth, Greg sends an email…

From Greg yea i mean i think the monster thing in general makes sense because eating is a little cooler than simply merging things, but also, it just feels like a really solid and unique IP. it gets me excited to work on it. i have to say, and i dunno. i am not super convinced that merge is better than monster. i don't want to be a wrench here and stymie your enthusiasm either. please know that i think merge is a really cool game, but i think it's missing... weirdness. this could be my own shit and this is often a messy business of extrapolating/isolating initial impressions and etc. etc. but i'm going to try to expose how i feel about it. bear with me. -- # -- Greg's Case for Monster Mode it has a unique feeling I think the feeling of monster mode is more visceral and maybe... personal. my focus is on the monster, which is an interesting thing because it's not necessarily advantageous to do so. if an arrow is out there, it can prove beneficial to focus on that, if there's a couple of large numberscore cards to be merged, focus should be there. if the monster is hungry, at a 5, then focus needs to be a 2/1 combos if there are no 3s around. there's the right amount of stuff to take in with this game. there's also a lot of tension because your monster can die of hunger, it's a balloon that needs to be popped up into the air all the time. it's not just a "if the board fills, you're dead" type situation. so because of this, you have these narrow-miss sorts of drama that are really rewarding. when i'm at 4 and i manage a 2/1 merge -> eat with the perfect set of moves, man that feels good. and i'm not even that much better off, i'm at a 4 again, but maybe there's a nearby 3 now due to the sliding and I can get back on my feet. that sort of granularity to the win/loss risk/reward makes for cool mini-moments, it even creates possibility for story. the arrows these are such a cool addition to the game and it's another case of what i just outlined previously. it allows for a less zero-sum game which means more joy. where the monster's hunger is escape from tragedy, an arrow off the board is overcoming hardship. the fun comes sooner i think as i play merge mode, i initially was into it but as i continue, i find myself turning my brain off a bit until i get to around 96/192. that's sort of where i'm at now with my development of play and i think it's mostly a ceiling thing. the game slows down a lot, and it's fairly challenging during that time, then things slow way way down and by then it's a bit too late. with monster, i feel like i can really maneuver, maybe too easily, perhaps should add an element that boosts difficulty in some way either with a module or change in algo. but my main point with merge mode is that its such a zero sum thing, even though i'm working towards the same goal of gaining points, there are less joys, pains and drama in the early parts of the game. in a game like this where you're probably going to play a lot of rounds i think it's kinda important to have more highs and lows without ending that particular thread. it feels like my fault i have all the tools to dispose of arrows, merge 3s and other white cards, feed my monster and so on. when i lose in monster mode it's because i took too many risks, got greedy or what-have-you. in merge mode, and this could be my novice ways, but it seems to be i lose due to the system. it overwhelms me, and while i fully know intellectually that it's my fault, it doesn't really feel that way. i have this crowd of diamonds that are dispersed in an unfavorable way (due to my actions, of course) and by then it's too late to do anything about. i feel more helpless and ill-equipped than i do like i made the wrong choices. maybe it's because those choices are back about 20 moves, maybe 10, or maybe it's due to the simple and elegant system. but the feeling is the same nonetheless. the actual ceiling is there one in merge mode? given that there's only so many grid spaces, it stands to reason that maybe you'd only be able to grow your biggest card to x amount. maybe that's something crazy high like 1536, but damn. i don't know. perhaps there's a way to isolate your merges so you are only growing one other half of an egg at a time so it perfectly intersects but isn't that also a bit of a problem? there's just something that feels more like it's a rubick's cube. not too solid on this point but interested in discussion. there's nothing else like it this isn't my strongest point, because it's somewhat arbitrary, but i do think it's important. not only is there financial incentive for doing this but alongside that we get to do exactly what it was we want to do, explore an unexplored realm that makes sense to itself and only itself, and for some reason that really resonates. being different and weird and a little off-kilter is (one of the reasons) why hundreds did so well, and i think that can be said for a lot indie games these days. hundreds was a really eye-opening experience for me. i did exactly what i wanted with the prototype and threw caution to the wind on EVERYTHING as far as visual design of the iOS version and i was rewarded not only creatively but especially by The Market. that's no metric to design games by (the market) but i think it maaaay be coloring things a bit here, i dunno. what i'm saying is that the boldness and weirdness of an idea is a huge advantage for us, we should meet it with excitement and not trepidation. if that's something that holds even a faint anxiety in your mind, cast it away, it's fear fucking with you. ok so that's most of what i am feeling about monster mode. i'm just a guy. i don't know if i know better. -- # -- one test that i wish we could do is give monster to zach, then erase his brain, then give him merge. maybe we can do this by giving zach monster, and adam merge. then give them the opposite after they've played their respective modes and see what their thoughts are. i dunno. problem is that zach has preconceived notions from old threes too... so hmmm.

From Asher I can't possibly deny that "eating" is like a million times better than whatever the hell "merging" is. You're totally right about that. Also first lemme say thanks for bringing all this up. Obviously super necessary, but also incredibly helpful to nail down all these points. I feel like the core thing you keep touching on is that merge mode is kind of... soulless. And I can't disagree. In it's current state there are no creatures or special-case powers or events that change the landscape or anything like that. Numbers beget more numbers beget more numbers. I'm torn because I actually like that it's so clean and pure. It's incredibly gratifying to have a system with such simple rules that you can play over and over again and constantly get better at. It's the reason I've been playing Drop7 for years without stop-- this game feels like it has a similar skill curve and that's incredibly exciting to me. But of course Drop7 is by no means for everybody. In fact I have never successfully convinced any of my friends to start playing it because it's so... ugly and dry and drab and hardcore. And that's a huge problem. It's not at all what I want for Threes. If we could nail the "foreverplay" of Drop7 while keeping it intensely accessible, we would be absolutely golden. No question that MergeMode is too hard in its raw form. There's nothing that eases-in the player. Nothing that soothes the pain of dealing with cold hard steel game rules. Definitely a problem. I was going to try to deal with that today, actually, by trying out a slightly different mode with a bigger grid. May or may not work. Play-againness But despite it's dryness and growing pains... every time I hand Merge to someone, they get it and they always start the game again immediately after they lose. That's a clear sign to me that they're learning from their mistakes and they see how they can change their strategy and do better. The playing/learning/insight/growing loop is a good indication of foreverplay. The same can't be said for Monster, unfortunately. I've seen a lot of one-time Monster play throughs where people get really far (because they immediately understand the feed-the-beast strategy) and then have zero interest in playing again after they lose. It's because A) the game lasts too long and they're exhausted and B) there's no clear way to improve or change strategy. Just feed the monster. Changing field: MonsterMode has this quirk where the gameplay doesn't change over time. The board could look the same on the 200th turn as it does on the first turn. That's one of the cool things about the mechanic, but also one of the exhausting things. It's basically a war of attrition if nothing ever changes. The playing field in Merge evolves and changes and sticks around and makes the early-game feel way different than the late-game. I really really like the evolution of play. I think that's what keeps the game interesting. The lack of evolution is one of the many things that's bugged me about Threes. The board gives off the illusion of changing, but then four smart swipes later and it's totally clear again and it's basically like you're starting over again. get-to-the-fun-sooner: So in MergeMode it's actually super important how you arrange your board early on and keep as much as the board as free for as long as possible in order to make room for the bigger numbers to grow. BUT I WILL GLADLY ACKNOWLEDGE that "super important" and "fun" are not at all the same thing. This is actually probably the clearest point that shows how different the two modes are. If there's a way to make super-important (read: strategic) decisions inherently fun then that would solve a lot of problems. Score Ceiling: So like I said in MonsterMode it's totally possible to get a late-game board to an early-game state. That means there's no score ceiling, but it also means that once you get good enough your score won't be a function of skill, it will be a function of time and patience. Here's the thing: that's also true with Puzzlejuice and Ridiculous Fishing. If you were agile enough to master either of those games-- you could get a crazy high score if you just played forever. The score curve in MergeMode is much much less linear. In fact I bet it looks much more logarithmic. This means that beginners' scores are going to rocket up pretty fast, but masters' scores are going to be pretty close to each other-- hopefully eeking out one another when they figure out a new strategy or have a particularly good run. RF and PJ were successful and they had a linear scoring model-- but they were also realtime games, where the stress/fun came from pushing your physical limits. Threes doesn't have that element. Okay sadly I have things to do today D: I have to get lunch and get ready for obligations. I'll finish this email later in the day. But I think these thoughts might be coherent enough to send off and for you to chew over and respond if you have any follow up follow up thoughts. Next up: summations and solutions

From Greg Right on. While writing this, I definitely saw the other angle of a lot of my points, specifically in the purity and elegance of the game system. I think the right answer is probably the hard one. Finding a tiny spot where we can have both a fun and inviting metaphor on top of a elegant and largely minimal puzzle game... So as I type this. I am returning to an idea I had during Hundreds. Clearly there are some parallels here. Both games are very simple and contained, merge mode even more so, and for now, the graphics are both very minimal and utilitarian. So the idea and you may have heard this: But basically, hundreds was going to start out with blowfish or something similarly nice metaphor wise and feature pretty saccarin graphics, maybe ala gasketball a bit. Light, fun, playful. You get the gist. So you get going in Hundos and you're maybe at level 15 or something and you notice something out of the corner of your eye. There's a visual abberation, you think it's a bug at first. Then levels continue and you notice it again, but it sticks around this time. The "blowfish" is missing a big piece of itself and it's just a plain circle. This continues and breaks down and eventually towardsthe end you're just left with the raw graphics. That could work here. as you progress, things break down in some way or mutate. Maybe not though, i mean this is a contained game so breaking down the graphics in hundreds would sort of have a bit of a narrative arc over the course of the 100 levels. Still, there might be something to this idea that we can play up. maybe we use that "ceiling" idea in order to grant people new things in the game. like you pass 192 and you earn... something. the game changes. i guess that's ala Stickets, but it could be more than just color changes... I dunno... I had mike test it with me, i think i'm going to dive back in and take a fresh look at things. would the game be way too easy if instead of 2s and 1s, it was just a basic thing that had to be combined with itself. that would seal up the anomaly that is 2 + 1 = 3 whereas everything else is x + x = y or (2x).

And not much later, Greg comes around to “merge”

From Greg proton(1) + neutron(2) = atom(3) atom(3) + atom(3) = molecule(6) molecule(6) + molecule(6) = mole(12) mole(12) + mole(12) = meteorite(24) meteorite(24) + meteorite(24) = meteor(48) meteor(48) + meteor(48) = planet(96) planet(96) + planet(96) = solar system(192) solar system(192) + solar system(192) = galaxy(384) galaxy(384) + galaxy(384) = universe(768) universe(768) + universe(768) = multiverse(1536) multiverse(1536) + multiverse(1536) = ultima(3072) ultima(3072) + ultima(3072) = asher(6144) and the bg would change to reflect what level of inner/outerspace you were in etc. since "asher" probably isn't viable we could drill further into quarks or something but yea...

And some name ideas...

From Greg cosmeld cosmix. welp: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmix ok, explored a bit. no pressure just kinda working things through. gotta jet to a movie.

And this starts the journey of coming up with an appropriate theme. A huge bottomless pit of things-that-can-be-doubled… But it doesn’t mean that Asher (or us as a whole) are convinced that “MergeMode” or what anyone would call “Threes” today, is the right answer.

From Asher Ahaha sick dude, that's awesome!! I am, deep in my heart, a space aficionado (hence spacetronaut) so this pleases me on many levels. Though good luck figuring out the icon for "Ultima." I think we could actually stop letting things combine at that point-- and the game would be about maximizing how many Ultimas you could get on the screen. (Though I don't know how many are actually possible... I bet I could figure out some math for how much space you need to build each number) Hmmm so I'm going to keep poking around with different modes today because-- while I'm kind of in love with MergeMode it can't stand on its own for all of the reasons I went through yesterday. In fact lemme just recap those reasons: MergeMode + It's too dry and mathy and puzzley + It's too easy to hit a skill wall and give up + There's no surprises (powerups etc) Sooo as much as I love space and all space-related pieces of our existence: my main concern is that the science theme doesn't actually help the first point-- that the game is too dry. I think that there's probably a way to do science right/exciting, but it's going to be a long hard fight to do so. I think a lot of the joy in our game will come from every time you upgrade a tile to a new level you haven't seen before it has to be super exciting/pleasing/surprising. Okay I'm gonna be totally honest (and probably not surprising) when I say that I still love the idea of the Argoyles. Or at least some kind of animals/monsters. And it's mostly for one very specific feature that I think might help alleviate a lot of our problems: The Bestiary. Having a list of all the creatures you can collect in the game just sounds incredibly pleasing to me. Also a good way to show off. Also just a fun thing to browse. Also I was thinking if I ever figured out a multiplayer mode that this would be a way to unlock new avatars. ALSO it will help us/the users keep track of all the possible combinations. The mode I'm going to try to make today is instead of just the two colors A&B being on the board, there will be A&B&C. This will lead to more interesting puzzles AND you can now make creatures of type AB, BC, or AC. At least that's the theory. Okay thems my thoughts.

A Little Encouragement

From Asher - 6/27/13 Sent Threes to my friend a week ago and she's sent the attached message out of the blue. The core mergemode is pretty solid and all this genetics stuff is complicating things :0 Backtracking. I think I might just go back to the arrows and that will be our powerup. Hope camping is grrrrrreat!

From Asher Okay more and more backtracking. Ignore all this if you had some wilderness-based revelation about how to make Argoyle evolution idea work and be cohesive. I've been wracking my brain about how to grow the playspace of the game with the idea of creatures/argoyles in mind. Genetics, food, powerups, arrows... None of it's working. All of it serves to make the game less fun and more of an interactive burden. And honestly what the game needs right now isn't more complexities-- it needs a ramp-up to ease in new players. That's definitely going to be my focus next week. On a slightly related note: I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around what the evolving argoyle looks like and I don't think the problem is going to go away. Figuring out how to make this game about fantasy creatures AND fantasy merge logic seems like it will be nothing but an uphill battle for us. The space idea has grown on me. I think we should do it. I was resistant to it at first because It felt really dry and distant and I didn't spend much time imagining the motion of it. But today I was laying on the floor listening to RadioLab. (Have you heard RadioLab? They have the most beautiful sound design. It makes This American Life's music usage seem rote/trite by comparison.) Anyway, I closed my eyes and listened to their sound effects and I can totally picture the satisfying _bong_ of merging your two largest tiles and watching the playing field ripple as the background zooms out to an appropriate level. Everything will be a little softer/squishier. We can spend time polishing every tile type and animation. The gentle shake of the protons, the wild randomness of an atom's electron, the rotation of the solar system. If we have time and feel ambitious, I was thinking we could put in little flavoring... Like when you build a planet there's a small chance that it will launch a tiny rocket that will fly around the playing field (and maybe land on a asteroid. Plant a flag, why not) This is a much... quieter and more contained game than the one with the bestiary and skin-shop. But I think that's what the game wants to be. It wants to be a little zen. Anyway current thoughts. Lemme know how this all feels to you.

From Asher (Sorry for the deluge of emails... Still thinking this through. Theming/dramatic-elements have never been my strong suit, so thanks for working through this with me) I just wanted to do a sanity check on the space idea before we plunge in: + Threes is a small, compact game that I have yet to figure out how to expand into anything larger. I feel like we should be inclinded to be upfront about that fact so that players don't decry the lack of content. (Example pitch: Threes is a tiny game that you can play forever.) + I know we should ignore markets and stuff and just follow our hearts, but I feel like this is a pretty straightforward fact: a tiny game about attractive creatures will attract a broader audience than a tiny game about space. (If you disagree please try to convince me otherwise.) + But whatever, right? It's not, in any way, a bad thing to target a smaller, more passionate audience. That's fine (if not preferable) but I do believe that, for the sake of our mental health, the amount of time that we pore into a project should be proportional to the amount we expect to get out of it. (Whether that be money or personal growth or what have you.) If we move forward with the space idea, we should proceed with a "let's knock this out real quick" mentality. If we do the creature thing or something similar, we should be ready/willing to handle support features like the bestiary, skin packs, etc. + I guess down to brass tacks: I expect a creature-based game could have success comparable to Puzzlejuice. A space game would have less. But that's totally fine if we knock out the game way quicker. Heads up: I might have just talked myself into doing the space game as fast as possible. (1-2 months?) That sounds pretty fun/reasonable, actually. + Actual practical concern: Okay how the heck are we gonna fit the multiverse onto a single tile.

From Greg words from the barstool: i personally think argoyle hits this special point of uniqueness that also is simple and has sort of "my style". the more games i make the more i think going full in with that is The Way To Go. sum: i'm not super sold on space. i think argoyle is much more in the wheelhouse and to go even further, i think your "a tiny game you can play forever" is soooo good. it could be about... tiny things. orrrr tiny monsters. orrrr just a tiny game. theming games is what i do, i approach it like a design problem and while at times it is slow or seems like we wont find it, we somehow always do. i think your inclination to start back in on adding mechanics and so on to play within the game system will afford you some space to breathe creatively on this. we'll get it, we always do. greg "three beers in" wohlwend This e-mail is coming from inside the iPhone!

From Asher <3 best email ever

So with things still sort of vague if we’re going with monster or not, we continue on to find a theme for this little game.

Finding Soul in the Numbers

From Asher - 6/30/13 Okay my girlfriend came up with a lot of good ideas. I am transmitting said ideas. Color A + Color B = Colored Toe (3) Colored Toe + Colored Toe = Polka Dot (6) Polka Dot + Polka Dot = Stripes (12) Stripes + Stripes = Checkered (24) Checkered + Checkered = Plaid (48) Plaid + Plaid = Argyle (92) ... dunno how to continue. Lacework maybe? IDEAS TO CONVEY MONSTER PROGRESSION: Increasing number of teeth. Increasing size/sharpness of teeth. (From zero teeth to shark-like) Shrinking pupil size. (From giant baby pupils to piercing adult eyes) Accessories for the higher levels (IE: Hats, crowns, scepters) Also we can signify which monster is the largest super simply: He leaves his mouth open. When you merge your two largest monsters and move to the next highest level: The new giant monster roars and all the other monsters look briefly scared. Instead of selling pattern packs (obscene amount of work) we can just sell/reward color packs.

From Greg so here. color + color = colored toe toe + toe = polka dot dot + dot = stripe stripe + stripe = checkered checkered + checkered = herringbone herringbone + herringbone = plaid (96) plaid + plaid = houndstooth (192) houndstooth + houndstooth = argyle (384) argyle + argyle = Ise-katagami (768) Ise-katagami + Ise-katagami = paisley (1536) paisley + paisley = ???? we could add more boring stuff too in the early stages if we don't wanna go into the weird paisley/ise-katagami stuff since that's less recognizable as a textile. paisley is though, but yea. there's like "denim" and etc. etc. or more fabric based stuff. here's a dealio. kinda keeping the colors consistent for the patterns for now.

From Asher Awesome!! Looks good. It's pretty clear which pattern transitions into which. Maybe the lower ranking patterns could have more whitespace? Like spacing out the dots and stripes, for example. One thing to keep in mind is that this game gets really confusing really fast. It might help if each tile passes the "squint test" where you can tell them apart even when you blur your vision. (I don't imagine that we'll be able to keep that up for the more advanced patterns, but there's going to be a lot more of these lower ranking tiles on the board at a time.) Also love the new arrows. <3 Maybe maybe we'll get to use them.

From Greg the thing i think is that we need to differentiate genus and species. genus = purple, green, white, orange (arrow) species = dot, polka, stripe, etc. etc. so that's sorta the thinking there for now, keeping the patterns mostly the same color and etc. we can do special things but i think if they are all very unique, we'll have a mess on our hands. so when i take something like the "high", 192, and make it a special color, it gets a little lost amongst its brethren. (see attached). maybe this is ok as an aberration, but you can imagine if each of those were a different color. so that's just color though, so i'm worried that if we go hard on difference then we'll still have that same mess problem. trading potential color uniformity issues for form uniformity issues. anyway, i'm gonna keep runnin' with this and also some other ideas, incorporating more monster stuff etc. just finalized the rf update with zach earlier this afternoon and he's excited to try the new version out. i told him we'd probably wanna wait a bit, but maybe not. thoughts?

From Asher This all sounds good. I think we'll get a lot of milage out of the monsters and their expressions and the like. (IE: the highest monster on the board has its mouth open, so we don't have to mess with colors or anything.) Also hoping to finish up the Indiecade build today/tomorrow. That should be very sendable to people.

From Greg ok, i think the best one is "3" but i think this is gonna be good in general. could do a special color scheme for the top one, like the highestnumber, got argoyle with his mouth open.

From Asher Ahahaha the Daft Punk 12 made me laugh. I really really like seeing the board full of monsters. It'll be fun to see them all animated and reacting to each other. If they stay this unique then each will need their own set of animations, but that's totally okay. I'm not sure the creepy thing is sitting well with me. I really like how unique each of them are, but their sickliness is not exactly inviting me in to touch them. Is that just because they're super pale? Or it might be all the little details (the freckles, the mouth/eye lines). Also concerned about the harshness of the color scheme in general. Just rambling here, but remember how we kept striving for "candy" in Puzzlejuice? Candy seems less essential here, because the game isn't asking to be poked. It's asking to be... slid? I made the tutorial and was trying to find a writing style that was quick/punchy like puzzlejuice, but less agressive and bro-ish because the gameplay is none of those. So I tried to narrow in on the "tiny" theme and ended up using words like "charming" and "splendid" sort of like a diminutive tea party or some nonsense. But it fits in a really satisfying way. Merging two tiles is "delightful." And it makes the game feel really... warm. So yeah I think warmness is something to aspire for. If only to balance out the harshness of the rules and gameplay mechanics. Build coming ASAP. Eta: hours.

From Greg - 7/4/13 http://cl.ly/image/3U200D0u1y1p so i'm just iterating, trying some pattern stuff. i think at this point i'm ready to sort of throw away the _observable_ pattern progression and just sort of use it as a creative constraint within my own process instead of making it something the player notices. we could still call them The Argoyles, though. but yea, anyway, here's some new guys attached. i still like the daft punk guy, removed the multiple eye/freckle guys. i like 24 but he's a bit simple, maybe he's a better 3, or 6. some iterations: http://cl.ly/image/1K0f3L2m143E in this attached mockup i think the argyle is the weakest, or at least the most unlike the others, also haven't worked on it any further since the first go 'round.

From Asher Oh man these are definitely getting better. I would try to hold off on killing the observable pattern thing, though-- I think I much prefer the guys on the top. Especially Polka Dot. Though that might be because he looks the least alien of the bunch. Maybe because he just looks the least... albino? I think maybe the next step should be trying to figure out how to clarify the progression... IE: a 3 turns into a 6 turns into a 12. Right now it's not immediately apparent which guy turns into which except by looking at the number at the corner. If there was a feature(s) that sort of clearly advanced from one to the next, I think that might help a lot. (An obvious example would be horns-- the horns on a 12 would be longer than a 6, longer than a 3.) An alternative way of handling continuity would be that the guys stay fairly similar, but only their features/skin-pattern change. Can't wait to start prettying up the game itself :D The core is actually basically done at this point, it feels like. The frequency people play is just cementing in my mind how complete the game already is. And it's satisfying the goal of make a compelling, super-mobile game: play sessions are frequent and range from 30 seconds to fifteen minutes. And already there are some people have played the current version more than I have! http://cl.ly/image/452x3o071k3W (Anonymous user #1 is Zach, who seems to be playing every day :D)

From Greg so here's a bit of a stream of consciousness. max brought up "why don't you make the monsters actual guys" and all this stuff instead of cards and so i've been turning that over in my head. some of it is a rationalization because i'm much more at home with kicking ass on a 2D sprite than i am a iso-ed sorta sprite and so on. not that i can't pull that off, it's just more illustrative and etc. but i think there actually is good reason for going with cards and solid forms. we get a kind of solidity to the cards and people can get right away what happens when they merge. i think it also kinda reads more as the game that it actually is instead of a draping over it. hmmm. intermission: http://cl.ly/image/1d2H2P2J1N0p tried this for "progression" idea. not working. moving on. hmmmm, i started in on the horns annnnnd: http://cl.ly/image/2S1K1i2A0s2q could be a problem with everything next to eachother etc. also, doin' some open mouth animation stills and so on: http://cl.ly/image/0s0g1Y3Y0G1l 24 would probably work a lot better with a straight-forward face and all that. stacking as progression: http://cl.ly/image/0G2x0n18261w stacking ss: http://cl.ly/image/2L1b090R2V0B issue with stacking is that it's gonna gooooo toooo high. but maybe color changes. anyway...

From Asher D'aww he's so happy to be here. I was thinking about Max was saying too, but I think you and I ended up on the same page. The cards are really good for a lot of reasons and you hit the nail on the head that the most important one is usability. It's clear that the cards block each other because they're all the same size. Also this lets us focus on their facial features and give them personality, which I'm all for. Ahaha the horns make the dudes look like they're shrugging ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Potential flaw with the stacking idea (and the reason I never switched over the numbers from 3->6->12 to 1->2->3) is that when you merge two dudes-- you want them to double. That means that you'll want a 1-stack to turn into a 2-stack to turn into a 4-stack... And that will get out of control absurdly fast. Okay honest opinion/question: I really do miss the way the guys used to look. It might be the colors or the patterns, but I think it's really about how non-alien they feel. They look like creatures that I would actually, y'know, enjoy spending time with. So I'm just curious what the reasoning is for moving away from the old look and into the new look? Knowing the reasons will probably help me provide more constructive feedback instead of just knee-jerk wanting to tell you to go back in time.

From Greg here's what we've got so far: http://cl.ly/image/1J2f3q341a0S 5 is a bit doofy/half-baked is 9 enough? don't have to put the #9 on there because... final 'goyle? ok runnin' to dinner bbl

From Asher Yessss something about this feels way better. Maybe it's just seeing them lined up like that. Down the line: 1 is adorable. Not a huge fan of the drool. I'm worried how much the one eye sets it apart from the others... like it's clearly a _different_ monster than the rest. I like how optimistic he looks. 2's big rectangle tooth is great. I don't think I like features getting cut off by the side of the cards. This includes the eyes and the mouth. Yess I really really like 3. Raccoon eyes are delightful. Probably my favorite of the new bunch. 4's glasses grew on me real fast. Clearly this is the awkward teenage stage <3 Tongue's not doing it for me. 5 is a goof. I think his weird/different pupils are what's making him so awkward. Again not a huge fan of the clipped mouth, because it's hard for my brain to process. value = 3*(2^(rank-1)) rank = 1: value = 3 rank = 3: value = 12 rank = 8: value = 384 So the current Largest Monster is 384, which is equivalent to 8. I think an 9 appearing is right around the corner... Total speculation, but I imagine if we released this into the wild we would see a 10 after less than a month. I think if we want to live up the claim of being a "game that you can play forever" we should be prepared for people (somehow my god) reaching 12. I bet it would take a year. We could design 12 monsters (the last 3 of which would be seen by hardly anyone [which is kind of cool actually]) and then stop allowing the tiles to merge. (At which point it would be about seeing how many 12s you could get onto the screen.) Or we could design 9 and then just add a simple effect to monsters after that. Like a bronze/silver/gold border...

From Greg i'll shoot for 12 but then again, we'll have to see. i think regardless, we should plan for something more data driven at the top end. anyway, playing with huggy hands and a last-minute crown.

To the Drawing Board and Back

A little over a month goes by and the thread is quiet. We’re at a bit of a standstill with the game’s theme and it’s not working with testers. They miss the numbers but we’re being stubborn and want to deliver a game with more personality than just numbers.

From Greg - 8/14/13 mitosis? http://cl.ly/image/0M171j1a0P3v ugh, i just keep looking at those little guys above and like them best... keep looking…

From Greg - 8/15/13 ok. the game just has to use these monsters. it's too good on too many levels. we'll call it argoyle. and you'll evolve your King Argoyle and that'll be the one you show your friends. "look, i got the Fabrique Frightener" or whatever the level 8 one will be called. so it should just be that you evolve them and they all look sort of cut from the same cloth as opposed to separate species. here's the general idea: http://cl.ly/image/3m1k1c1K170w the thing about this is that early on it's easy to see how you're "building the argoyle" by adding an eyeball, a mouth, then two eyes etc. the animation can nod to that. so then the argoyles just keep looking cooler and more decked out as you play and if you're up to level 6 or 7, then you're probably pretty decent at the game and understand how things work. you can see what i'm doing with the pattern as well. i just can't get into anything near as much as this path and i think focusing on a progression of "facial features" and also evolution of ONE argoyle as opposed to multiple characters makes a ton of sense.

From Greg here's things a bit further along: http://cl.ly/image/0W0U2U1H0537 i think 8 and 9 eyes are a bit weak, might need to change 10 so the evolution makes sense.

From Greg http://cl.ly/image/0R0X0I1r032A

From Greg eyeballs as numbers? http://cl.ly/image/080X2o2R1v1m

Greg is fairly frustrated at this point. We’re about 9 months into development and the game’s art has grown more complex, requiring a fair amount of custom animation. But the fact remains that people can’t differentiate between different monsters being less or more powerful than their counterparts.

From Asher Oh sick dude I just saw this progression: http://cl.ly/image/0R0X0I1r032A and it's fantastic!! The last few monsters, especially. The ever-biggening mouth is super clear and pleasing. I think 3+4 might be a little too derpy for my tastes-- but everything after that is gold. I'm going to try to get familiar with Uni2D this week. I think it might be our animation solution and should be pretty good at making the monsters feel flexible+alive. (I hope!) Do you think I can get the .ai to start cranking on how they would look in-game?

We're nowhere near the final look of Threes as we all know it today, but we're closer and keep circling back to these monsters or characters on cards. We will eventually head to PAX with this last type of setup in our pockets to show to people. But first we have other bits of the game to consider...

Tutorial Thoughts and UI

From Greg - 8/21/13 so my girlfriend played the game for the first time, not a gamer In The Least and had real trouble with the tutorial. mainly the concept up front about the sliding and that they all moved together. she wanted to put things in place directly, rather than the round-a-bout way of sliding around. so we should either explain that more clearly, maybe add another step or something? it could be something unintuitive. i DO think that my barrier things that pop up when you slide will help a lot on this front, but also it might be something that's easier taught with more cards on the playing field since with one or even four evenly spaced cards the concept is a little more hidden maybe? ok... also, maybe it's premium but there's an IAP for undos... honestly the game has some kind of "doh!" moments where it's clear you made the wrong choice. sometimes that's due to randomness but others it's just the wrong move and an undo would be useful. maybe undos could even be earned throughout the course of a game for spectacular things so it's not pure IAP. i dunno. so to continue, she dropped the game and was frustrated and then i took a moment and walked her through it in the game proper and she caught on with the sliding mechanic etc. after that she got a 250, then a 400 something then she got a 192 1500 something. so yea. she's into it. haha. so that's awesome. :) :) :)

From Greg some title stuff. i was thinking about them as a family, silhouette frames on the wall... http://cl.ly/image/0F1g2N3l1B3z now the actual silhouettes won't actually be as recognizable as a sort of iconification of them: http://cl.ly/image/0y0A2Y3A3Y0k so this one could be the interface for the title screen. you swipe to start a new match, to get to the "next" one on the right. and then you swipe to view all the previous guys... these could be animated too. did a white bg one, sort of like a book cover: http://cl.ly/image/11070F2o2V3I more of a wallpaper feel in the bg etc.

From Greg ok here are the silhouettes. a bit bizarre, but kinda goofy/funny. i could go less card based on these, a lot of options really, anyway... (these are in dropbox, so easy testing on your phone too) just wanted to get those out. i've got a movie here in a half hour so i'm gonna jet but i also addressed the cleft lip thing: http://cl.ly/image/0z3u3V1Y3D2k i also sort of did a sanity check on some of the characters overall. here's what i came up with. current designs (doesn't include the edits) http://cl.ly/image/0C1M1G1a1C2F here's without the patterns: http://cl.ly/image/2O2S1Y0j3y1Q numeric badges: http://cl.ly/image/1T0g1E1O3H2V progress focused: http://cl.ly/image/3W473f373314 (only up to 7) i worked most on teh progress focused designs. working with eyes and thinking about tarantulas. they're much scarier and weirder in that level of the progression and i don't think we can cram like 8 or 9 eyes in one of these guys especially with those sized mouths. i think the mouths are really cool and like you said. it's much more important to differentiate at the lower end of the specturm as those will be much more common through the entirety of a session. so yea. i still like where we are with the character design, i do like the edits enough to solidify them, and i went with round teeth on that one guy to further differentiate. okkkk, i think that's it! oh. one thing about the uni2d thing. i think we'll probably wanna do the eye movement programatically, right? like have it rotate a sprite based on where it's looking etc. if it has a pair. there may be more things like that where we need to separate out animations and layer them in an intelligent way to get the best bang for our buck. i'm all for diving in on uni2d but a lot of these guys are gonna be best animated in flash, especially vector mouth smiles and stuff like that. at least, that's where i'm gonna start with stuff and see what happens, similar to that mockup but more focused on pushing the edges and getting a read on all what needs to be animated and how. ok byyeeeeee

From Greg i did a setup with some different expressions (attached) and the edited mouths, new progress-based guys. i also added them to the ASSETSCS5 file: http://cl.ly/image/0I0N1Y3u0T0Y i'm mostly sensitive to the delineation between different cards, especially early like you mentioned. i think just getting these guys in there for a test, especially with other people (even veteran threes players) and see if they have trouble telling them apart, will tell us a lot. for now i'm gonna kinda hold off on the ui stuff. though i do have this latest idea for a swiping menu system. you load up the game and you see a wall of unfilled argoyle portraits. you swipe down and look at the argyle carpeting (high scores) swipe up goes back to the wall/main menu. swipe up again and you look at teh ceiling with some argyle crown molding/architecture and see "play puzzlejuice", back down to the wall. now swipe rightward (move thumb west to see further east) to play the game (looking for next argoyle). swipe left to look back at the first portrait (the tutorial). on first load of the game, the player is presen