Colorful friends is a game loosely inspired by Big Bang Theory. In an episode of Big Bang Theory, Sheldon creates a puzzle where you must seat people at a dinner table. The color of the people dictates who they can sit next to and where they can sit. I made a game similar to that in Pico-8: Colorful Friends.
There are 25 levels in the game. In each level you must meet the demands of every person.
Each color of person demands a certain number of neighbours (up, down, left and right) between a minimum and maximum.
The min and max neighbours for a color can be seen in the bottom right corner of the screen when your cursor is over a person of that color (if you cursor is over a red person, you can see the min and max neighbours for a red person).
But, just to be clear, below are the demands for each color.
Red: Min 1, max 2 neighbours
Green: Min 2, max 3 neighbours
Blue: Min 3, max 4 neighbours
(Light) Brown: 0 neighbours
In the top left corner, you can see the number of people you must place for each color with vertical lines. You must place everyone down to complete the level.
The amount of neighbours for the person that your cursor is on can be seen to the right of the table in the middle of the screen.
Under the table in the middle of the screen, you might see red circles. Those are your lives. Submit incorrectly, and you lose a life. If you lose all of your lives, you are sent back a level. But-- when you submit incorrectly, small white squares will appear on the people with unmet demands.
When you start a level, you may notice there are already people there with a yellow and orange square on top of them. That means that that person is locked (you cannot change their color).
From level 13 and up, there are special tiles which appear as dots or diagonal lines. They put special effects on the person on top of them:
Pink dot: Range +1 (they see neighbours at 2 tiles up, 2 tiles down, 2 left and 2 right)
Yellow dot: Min +1 (the minimum demand for neighbours increases by 1)
Purplish diagonal line: Mirror (all other tiles with the Mirror effect are identical)
If you complete the game, you unlock Infinite mode:
You have 3 lives for every level that are not refilled.
See how far you can get.
In the bottom right corner of the screen, you can see info on the Checkmaster.
When activated, the Checkmaster will tell you if the person your cursor is on is too lonely, too crowded, or comfortable.
You start with 2 uses of the Checkmaster, as you can see as the blue number in the top right corner of the screen. You receive 1 more use of the Checkmaster every 10 levels.
In the shop you can buy things with coins. Here are the options:
Inf: +1 HP - start with 1 more health when playing infinite mode.
Inf: +1 start - get a head-start in infinite mode.