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  • Tetrabots : a new minimalistic puzzle game as a tribute to Bowxorld

Hello everyone 🙂

I have just ended Hop! 2D, my previous project with Godot 3.x and I'm currently starting a smaller one to get familiar with Godot 4. Its name is TetraBots and it will be a top-down puzzle game.

Deliberately minimalistic-looking, Tetrabots looks a lot like Boxworld and Sokoban but its main mechanics are a bit different. Each level contains a group of robot you have to lead to their recharge areas. The main challenge is that you can only order them to go the same way, and each robot will stop only if he bumps into a wall or another robot. Each robot will follow a straight line and you have to manage how to make each of them reach its goal.

The game is not available yet as I have only validated the main controls, UI and first levels but it goes on well. Unlike Hop! 2D, I won't spend years on it (my goal is to get a first functional game in a few months) but my goal is to switch to Godot 4 and get more comfortable with it before attempting 3D games.

Tetrabots will feature at least 50 levels, a progression save system, a level selector and all the functions I already used in Hop! 2D. You can play it with keyboard or mouse, it will be released for Windows, Linux and macOS and I also intend to export an Android version as its UI was designed to be played on cell phones as well. Here are some other screenshots.

Hello again !

I finally sped up the development of Tetrabots and you can download its first beta if you want to try it

Tetrabots beta 2 for Windows / Linux / macOS

20 levels are playable but, of course, there will be more in future releases !

I intend to update the game once a month but I don't want to spend more than 6 months on it as I have a much bigger project I long to start with Godot.

    Asthalis I love it, I find grid based puzzles very interesting and good to learn a language. Is it open source? any chance we can have a look at the source code?

    Thanks for sharing!

        glitchapp
        Thanks a lot for your messages 🙂

        Unfortunately, I have no way to test linux versions as I don't have Linux installed on my PC and no particular experience of Linux too, I just used the default Linux export option of Godot. But that's good to know of this bug. Once the game will get official, I will also create another version to play it online.

        As a playable beta, Tetrabots is not complete yet (especially, the number of its level is still limited but will grow overtime). I look forward to making it a free game (as Hop! 2D, my previous project you can read about in another thread of project section), not really an open source one (I mean I don't expect someone to modify it) but I have absolutely no problem with sharing parts or even the whole code of it if you're interested.

        I switched to Godot 4.1 (I previously used Godot 3.5 for Hop! 2D) for this project so quite a few things have changed in code and this was the main purpose for me to start a simpler project than Hop! 2D to get used to all changes before starting a more ambitious one (Hop! 3D). A kind of "transition project", in a way. So feel free to ask me details about the game if you want to, I'm totally OK with it.

            Asthalis I'm not the one who reported the error and I tested the game on linux mint and it works perfectly fine (at least to me). The crash report was posted by @"GodotBeginnerRich".

            Good to know, I'm interested on grid games because they are easier to debug and develop since the possible situations are limited and that make them a good starting point when learning a language, but I understand you may want to sell it or anything. Whatever you decide is fine and if you make it free in the future I would be interested in the source code just to learn.

            Thanks for sharing and have a great day!

                glitchapp
                Thanks.
                Just tell me if you want to download the current project to have a look, no problem for me.

                  4 days later

                  A few news between 2 beta versions...

                  I fixed a bug linked to sound options (if you clicked on the sound icon to mute the game, the sound was unexpectedly back in the next level), added a few levels and changed the order of some of them and added an analog watch to all screens (a kind of tradition I respect in every game to keep me connected to real world and go to bed in time !).

                  Incoming WIP levels will bring new features to the game.

                  • "inverted" robots (when you want one to go left, it actually goes right)
                  • still out of battery robots which need to be touched by another robot to get back to life
                  • different types of robots with their own charging stations

                  Don't hesitate if you have other ideas, the game is now far from over !