AM4LGAM8

About the game

AM4LGAM8 (read it as "amalgamate") is a small score-attack puzzle made for Ludum Dare 54, whose theme was "Limited space". Everything happens inside a four-by-four box surrounded by a thick wall. Tiles appear in the box one at a time, and every move you make brings in a new one, so the real question is always where the next tile will fit.

There are three kinds of tile. Coins carry a value of 1, 2, 4 or 8, and pushing a coin into another of the same value merges them into one coin of double the value, which frees a square. Bombs do nothing on their own, but pushing one bomb into another sets them off: the explosion clears the square where they met and the four squares around it, and every coin and bomb caught in it is added to your score, coins at their face value. Walls cannot be moved or blown up, so each one that drops in takes a square away for the rest of the run.

You move by dragging a tile one square in any direction. A tile pushes whatever is in front of it, like crates in a warehouse game, as long as the line is not blocked by a wall; when the pushed tile cannot move, the two tiles combine if they can. The run ends when no move is possible, and the screen shows your score.

It was made in 48 hours by Olivier Pinon in Rust with the Bevy engine, with pixel art of the author's own, as a tribute to 2048.

Playing it here

The game runs in the page and is played with the mouse (on a touch screen, drag with a finger). Click Click to play; the first start loads about 6 MB, then the title screen appears. Click Play. Nothing is saved between runs.

Controls

Tips

Bombs are your score. Merging coins only makes room; points come from explosions. Line up two bombs next to a crowd of high-value coins before you push them together.

Merge to breathe. Two coins of the same value take one square once merged. When the box gets tight, look for any pair you can join.

Mind the walls. A wall that lands in the middle of the box splits it and makes pushing much harder. Try to keep the centre busy with coins so that new tiles tend to land at the edges.

Credits and licence

AM4LGAM8 was made by Olivier Pinon (AlisCode on GitHub, opinon on itch.io) for Ludum Dare 54 and is released under the MIT License; the pixel art is the author's own. The original font, Joystix, does not allow redistributing the file, so this version uses Press Start 2P by CodeMan38 (SIL Open Font License 1.1) at slightly smaller sizes; the title picture keeps the author's own lettering. The licence texts, those of the Rust libraries compiled into the game, the source and our changes are linked from this page.

FAQ

My drag did nothing. The move was not possible: the tile, or the line it pushes, is blocked by a wall or by the edge of the box, and the tile it hits cannot combine with it.

Why did a tile appear when nothing merged? Every valid move brings in one new tile at a random free square. That is what makes the space run out.

Do walls ever go away? No. Explosions remove coins and bombs, but walls stay until the end of the run.