LOOPLY - Place a tile. Match colour or shape. Close a LOOP.
Place a tile. Match colour or shape. Close a LOOP.
I’ve been building a small turn-based strategy game for iPhone for the past few months, and it’s finally at the point where I need people other than me playing it.
The TestFlight beta is open and free. You can play with 2, 3 or 4 players on the same board.
How it works
A turn is simple: place one tile.
Tiles can touch if they have the same colour or the same shape. They don’t need to match both. Diagonals don’t count.
You score for placing tiles next to other tiles, but the main thing you’re looking for is a LOOP: a closed ring of tiles around an empty square.
That’s basically the game.
The rules take about a minute to understand. Actually getting good at spotting what you’re giving your opponents is another matter.
You don’t need to be online together
LOOPLY is asynchronous, a bit like Wordfeud.
You make your move, close the app, and get a notification when it’s your turn again.
The default clocks are:
72 hours per turn in a duel
24 hours in 3–4 player games
6 hours in quick games
You can also have multiple games running at the same time.
I’m particularly interested in feedback on those timers. In testing, a 4-player game with the 24-hour clock can easily take 10–14 days. I’m not convinced that’s the sweet spot yet.
2 players feels very different from 4
With two players there’s a lot of back-and-forth over the same bits of board.
With three or four players, things get messy much faster. A move that looks great for you can leave an easy scoring opportunity for the next player, and sometimes blocking someone is more useful than scoring yourself.
That’s probably my favourite part of the game so far.
A few other things
There are three offline practice bots — Rookie, Steady and Sharp — so you can try the game without creating an account.
Also:
colour is never the only way to identify a tile; shape always works too
no ads
nothing you can buy affects a match
optional analytics are just basic counts/timings, not boards, usernames or chat messages
the whole game is available in English and Dutch
What I’d really like testers to look at
Mostly: does the game make sense without me explaining it?
Especially the first five minutes.
I’d also really like feedback on the turn timers and anything involving LOOP scoring. If you see a LOOP that should have counted but didn’t — or one that definitely shouldn’t have counted — screenshot the board.
And crashes, obviously. It’s still a beta :)
Questions and criticism are very welcome. Especially if you’ve found a way to break the scoring that I haven’t.