I did not advance as much as i thought this month. In part because i do not like what i already have.

Currently, the screen looks like thus:

I have drawn more types of enemies, although all of them behave the same, and in a very stupid way, and in the four corners there are the “slots” for the different kind of energies that “connect” to the weapons to use instead of moving around in a turn.

The idea is that each weapon has four different modes, one for each kind of energy where you can connect it to. In other words, depending on the corner you put the weapon to, it does a different action, if there is enough energy, that you can accumulate by following a path of the same color / polygon. You only have four weapons and must have all of the connected, which means you have to swap them around, changing the actions you can do two at a time.

That means that i should come up with 16 different effects/attacks and how to organize them because every time the player swaps weapons she has to make sacrifices—“i want the effect of this weapon, but can only use it if i remove the effect of that other weapon.”

I have absolutely no idea how to do that.

There are attacks that are obvious, like shoot on a given direction and do as damage as energy there is of that kind; teleporting; radial attacks, à la EMP; health recovery; increase armor; and i believe i have no more ideas. Five of the sixteen i need.

Not that i have much interest in thinking about it, however.

When i had the original idea, what i was envisioning was to entwine a global story that is being revealed with hints that you can find at each of the space ships you play; something completely optional for those that only want action. It was a way to have what we two of us like most of a game.

Being too focused on having it on a mobile screen, without ending up with a “Pixel Dungeon in space”, in the end i have reduced it so much that the only part that remained was the fighting, that i find quite boring. Or maybe it is this idea of trying to mix-in match-3 mechanics that is is boring—what do i know?

I have no clue what to do next. I already started this game many times, with different approaches, and still have not found any that i like.