powertile
Powertile is a short "prototype-sized" tile laying puzzle game. I made it during my garden leave from my last job, you can read more about the process on my gamedev blog.
how to play
The goal is to make "solutions" for each level using tiles with various effects and powers. Each time you clear a level, a new one will unlock (there are 16 levels), and you will unlock another tile type (you can go back to old levels and use newly unlocked types!)
Most tiles will "generate power", giving you the points you need to complete the level, but you will have to be smart about placement so you don't go over budget. Additionally, you can go for a harder clear by trying to generate "ichor", the blue resource. See if you can get all blue checkmarks!
controls
mouse/keyboard required!
There are three tools: get info, place and erase:
- Get info (shortcut: Q) will give you info about each tile you hover over
- Place (shortcut: W) lets you place tiles into the level
- You can use the rotate button (shortcut: R or scroll wheel) to rotate
- You can click on tiles to the left to switch tiles. Once you have enough types, you can use the +/- buttons to navigate the pages (shortcut: 1, 2, 3)
- Erase (shortcut: R) lets you erase placed tiles
saving
The game saves whenever you exit a level. As long as you don't empty your cache, your progress should be there next time you come back to this page.
credits
- Game design, coding, art, everything by me (Ossian Borén aka catnipped)
- Dedicated to Yoko, the cat (2011-2025)
Playtesting/feedback:
- Peter Björklund
- Erik Svedäng
- Ida Borén
- Ellie Smart
- Sebastian Larsson
- Jacob Lind
- Billy Rösehag
Special Thanks
- Ellie, the human
- Odin, the cat
- The Semla Team
- Zep, for creating pico-8 and picotron
- Folks on the picotron discord
no music???
Yeah, I didn't have time to make any music or sound (might show up later). Put on your favourite relaxing music to solve puzzles to. here are some albums I can recommend:
Development log
- powertile release!10 days ago
Comments
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Just did a small fix to let players interact with the game even If they haven't clicked through the tutorial popups. Unfortunately each time I update, saves will be lost, so I'll try to only do big updates from now on!
I've just played 5 levels for now but have to say the game is so cool! It contains very interesting puzzles by their own. However adding "ichor" mechanic is so clever I just had to write this comment. Great job! :)
Two minor suggestions from my side:
1. I've watched gifs before playing, so when I started first level I immediately solved the puzzle without touching tutorial. Then I was little bit confused why I can't click my green "ready" button. It turns out I have to go through the tutorial to do this. I think you could make tutorial optional or make it more clear it's still not finished.
2. You introduce new element after every level. This makes the game super condensed which may be fine for many players. For me it was too dense though. I'd like to have more levels with newly introduced element to get familiar with it, know it's good and bad sides, discover which synergies play well on various levels (e.g. open vs tight level). It's a lot of work I know, but you could turn it into fully functional title with several worlds that have their own flavour and maybe own "ichor" goal.
Thank you for playing, and for posting feedback! I agree on both points. I did a tiny fix for the "ready" button, so now it should be clickable without going through the popups. The tutorial was hacked together last minute...
And the plan was to have many more levels and to give the new tile types out slowly (About 1 per 4 levels). I agree it gets too dense, but unfortunately I ran out of time. Might do that change if I come back to this later to make more levels though!
Wow! Really cool and well thought through game concept! I think the UI needs a bit more clarity to get in at the beginning, e.g. replace the "0/12$" with "12$", and write "remaining" under it, which makes it more intuitive. Also the "E" under erase looks like a "C", which confused me. If you now add some SFX and cool 8-bit music this would be top-class! I enjoyed it! :)