Acorn Assault

[HighTaleStudios]

My team finished our Ouya Create game jam prototype on Tuesday and I posted a link to our APK in our thread in the Under Development section, but I figure that it would be best to post it here for people looking for actual APKs to test.

Acorn Assault is a turn-based match-three battle game. Imagine Triple Town and Pokemon Battles being blended into a fine game purée. Each player has a turn and you can place down your randomly given tiles. If you place a tile to create three or more matching tiles being adjacent to each other, they will merge to form a stronger piece. When out of moves, your pieces will attack (or sit there to defend) and then it is your opponent's turn. The first person to destroy the opponent's base of acorn crates wins. It's best played against a friend and it is currently coded to work with only one shared controller. Give it a shot and tell us what you think!

Click to download Acorn Assault version 1.0.1
or
Click here to download the APK that we submitted to the game jam.

Note: It was late at night when we tried to get the final touches on the build and we forgot to set our graphic for the icon to something that is appropriate. Right now it is a low-resolution picture of an orange hard hat. The name Gridiron may also appear as the app's name. Both were placeholders and with our lack of sleep, we forgot to set them.

And here is a trailer for the game...

[Fragmads]

Hi i tested your game, and it ran nicely on my OUYA.
The major issue i got was to move the cursor, for some reason it needed precise Joystick movement, and sometimes i just ended up smashing the damn thing until it move.
A first tweak will be to allow the cursor to move with the d-pad i guess.

Good Job anyway.

I intend to use Acorn Assault as a demo apk for a small conventions where i will hold a stand, and show the OUYA to people this Week end, in Marseille (France).
If you are opposed to this (well first don't post it in a public forum ) let me know. I will let you hear from any (constructive) feedback i got.

[HighTaleStudios]

Thanks!

I may have just been accustomed to moving the cursor with the control stick, but it's good to know it didn't work for everyone. I did want to use the D-pad for movement also, but I was having difficulties implementing it properly. Rest assured, in the full version of this game, the d-pad will be utilized!

And please show off the game! We are excited that you want to show it off! If you keep an eye on this thread, we may post a new APK before the end of the week with a proper launcher graphic, fixed app name, and possibly even an update to utilize the D-Pad (time permitting).

We look forward to any and all feedback you can give us!

[HighTaleStudios]

We updated the APK and have a hand full of changes from the last one posted. You can now use the d-pad to move the cursor! I got that all straitened out. Also, the bundle identifier changed to match the game. If you had the old version installed, it will not be overridden when you install this new APK. Feel free to delete the old one. Anyway, the link to the new APK is below along with a full list of changes!

Click to download Acorn Assault version 1.0.1

Change Log:
Bundle Identifier changed to be named after Acorn Assault
App name changed to Acorn Assault (formerly was Gridiron)
App icon changed to be something more appropriate even though it is still blurry right now
You can now use the D-Pad to move the cursor on the screen!
The AI used when playing the computer is more difficult (hopefully)
We snuck our logo in the HUD since we didn't have it visible anywhere in the game

What do you want to see in version 1.0.2?

[Jack_Mcslay]

There needs to be a physical board game version of this XD.

I also think this game would be great to be controlled with the touchpad

[HighTaleStudios]

Haha. Funny you should mention that because that was one of the motivating factors of designing this game. We wanted to make something that has the same kind of simplicity but rich emergent gameplay of a board game. I feel like we were able to accomplish that.

And how do you envision being able to control the game with the touchpad? Moving the cursor over the tiles and tapping to place it much like a mouse? Swiping the pad to move the cursor? Or something completely different?

[Jack_Mcslay]

Moving a cursor, really - preferably locked to the board than free to move around the screen.

It just feels natural to try to manage a board using a cursor, it could confuse players if otherwise

[HighTaleStudios]

I will play with the idea. What I am thinking right now is moving your finger on the touchpad would move the yellow cursor around instead of the mouse cursor. The yellow cursor is the thing controlled by the left control stick and d-pad right now. Then when you tap the touchpad, it will do the same as pressing the O button.

Good suggestion. Keep them coming if any of you have any more suggestions.

[Fragmads]

So here are my feedback, sorry to made you wait a little bit :
We had some great game, people understood really fast and enjoyed playing for most of them. One player that claimed to be a strategy game fan actually raised much interest. One of my friend in staff kept trying to challenge me.
The randomness in the game doesn't seem to be a real balance issue, and most people asked for revenge if defeated, which is a great sign !

Ouya itself got a lot of positive feedbacks.

I used version 1.0.1, the stick thing I pointed out was a bit better, but all OUYA game seems to have trouble with R-Stick (at least on dev controller). The D-Pad definitively helped.

[Jack_Mcslay]

One thing that annoyed me is how the games turns small squirrels into large squirrels automatically. Dunno if it's intended for balance to reduce the ammount of squirrels, but it kills some of the stategy in some formations because it's hard to prodict where the big squirrel will appear