Brand new from Tonypa, creator of CoBaCoLi, ShoOot 2, Kavalmaja, and more, comes Floribular, yet another simple yet highly engaging puzzle game. A 6x6 grid of tiles fills the screen, some of which are covered by colored flowers. The goal is to place a flower on the grid to eliminate as many like-colored flowers as possible. The catch is that matches don't have to be made by adjacent tiles, they can be three or more flowers in that row or column. Difficult to describe, but easy to play, Floribular has the uncanny ability to steal your interest and hold on for quite some time.
Floribular relies on a different sense of spacial orientation to make matches, almost like a game of sudoku. Instead of scanning the board for groups of like-colored tiles, your eyes dart left and right, up and down searching for well-seeded columns and rows where you can score serious points. To make a match, you must have three or more of the same flowers anywhere in a row or column where you just placed your flower. So, for example, if you place a blue flower on a space and at least two other blue flowers are in a row or column connected to that tile, you score a match.
After placing a tile, a number of new flowers grow in random spaces. How many depends on whether you remove any flowers during that turn. If you do, then 2 flowers will appear; if you do not, then 4 flowers will appear. The key to emptying the screen lies in placing flowers to ensure you eliminate more tiles than will be filled before the next move.
If all of this sounds a bit convoluted, don't worry, it isn't. In practice Floribular is very simple and will take you all of three or four turns to get the hang of it. As with any good puzzle game, however, it will take you much longer than that to gain a decent level of proficiency.
Yay for me. Because the game is so new, I made it into the daily, weekly and monthly top score list. The first time ever. It won't last though.
I love how Tonypa takes a tired old concept and twists it just enough, so you know what to do, but it's a whole new game. This and Ununicum are probably my favourites, although I have just noticed some I have missed.
I like it. It's a nice, simple, to-the-point little thing that'll keep you occupied for a few minutes at a time. Plus I managed to get to the top of the high score table on my first try, yay. Guess I'm one of the first. ;)
Other than a minor typo in the intro text, it's hard to fault this game.
Strategywise: concentrate on keeping the sides empty as much as possible. It's hard to eliminate flowers on the sides if they're filled up, whereas it's easy to eliminate flowers in the middle.
Nice little distraction :) I got the highest score of the day/week on my first try. But Jay is a cheater, he played this about 2 weeks ago, so he is higher on the All-time and Monthly list.
Floribular... where does Tonypa come up with these weirdo names for games?
I'm playing it right now. I'm about to break 17,000. What do I have to do to get a high score?
My final score was 33,310. Apparently nobody before me, not even Jay, had broken 20,000.
I felt like I could go on till 50,000, but got bored after 11,000. This game is a bit too repetitive for me, I guess...
When I played it the 2nd time, the "Place a flower without removing any..." box didn't vanish and stayed when the game had already started.
aha!
760... Beat that.
Oh wait...
17,660. Very relaxing. :)
Sorry, I put rude names into the "enter your name" thing when I don't think I've actually gotten onto the scoreboard.
So, sorry. Cock-Goblin is mine. >_>
I lurv it!
Does anyone know how the flower designs are generated, because every time I play they're different...
I get as excited by new Tonypa games as I do by new Mateusz (sp?) games. WHEEEEEEEE
Fun little game for a while - got 18,740 on my second try, but it got kinda boring by the end of it.
Look up tonypa in the dictionary and it will say "Look under Simplicity". ^^
Really, I'm always amazed of Tonypa's games. I don't know how he always manages to come up with these simple ideas, put together some simple graphics for them, get a simple gameplay thrown together, and yet make it all look so complete, like it all really just belongs together like peas in a pod.
I tip my hat to you, tonypa. And I wish that all your games existed for DS, I think they would make an awesome compilation. ^^
Thanks Haploid, the typo should be fixed now.
SonicLover, its hard work to make up those weirdo names for games. I dont want to use common words, specially if other game with such name already exist.
molkman, I will try to figure out what could cause that help box bug.
Kloi, it has 9 different flowers and it uses 5 for each game. The combinations of flowers are manually picked, by me, so there wont be 2 bluish or reds at the same time.
Thanks for all the comments :)
Okay, I loved this game this morning, but when I went back to play this afternoon it had started adding blocks. Now I hate it...the block thing totally ruined the whole Zen vibe and I don't think I want to play it anymore. Bummer!
Oops, I think Tony uploaded an older development version when he fixed the typo. The blocks shouldn't be there. I've emailed him about it, should be fixed soon!
Sorry Amylu!
Pretty nice. I doubt I'll play it again though.
Sorry about the wrong version, please reload the game.
Hey, Jay...I like the game opening in its own window. Is this part of the new design? It's nice!
No, dsrtrosy, the new site design should be ready to roll out by Monday (maybe sooner).
*ears perk up at "new site design"*
Also, great game, tonypa!
I'm sorry to add to the "bug" list, but it seems we've now lost the high scores.
I am really excited to see what is coming on Monday! (maybe sooner)
Haploid: no, strategywise there is precisely no difference between the middle and the sides of the board. The columns and rows can be rearranged in any order whatesoever without making a difference, so if you filled up a big plus shape in the middle of the board that would be equally hard to eliminate.
A relaxing game, but count me too among the ones who feel it could go on forever. Bailed out around 15k.
Could anyone explain the following portion of the review to me?
"After placing a tile, a number of new flowers grow in random spaces. How many depends on whether you replaced a shadowed tile with the flower on your cursor."
As far as I can tell, how many new flowers grow depends on whether you removed flowers in that turn or not. If you did, two will grow; if you didn't, four will grow.
Am I misunderstanding something?
Tayrin, what he refers to is that, if you put your flower down on one of the shadowed tiles (which shows where two of the next flowers are gonna be), then you will only get 3 random flowers into the grid. You basically kill one of the random flowers that way.
A really nice one. I like it a lot that Tonypa doesn't want to come up with something bombastic every time. He's one of the few that realizes that nice little ideas can really make a good game.
What I like a little less here is that all your strategy can be devastated by bad luck (as far as I can see, it's down to luck what kind of flower is going to come next.)
But, all in all, I like it a lot.
ThemePark, thanks for your reply, but I had already tested that and I still got four new flowers each time.
You are right, Tayrin. I had checked myself and as far as I could see, I only got 3 after doing that, but I just tried it again, and I did indeed get 4.
I actually opened the game when it had the block version up, and when I returned to play again the blocks were gone!
I actually preferred the other version, as now this one does just seem very repetitive. I also noticed that now future flowers are foreshadowed, but I have difficulty telling them apart from the others, and wish I could 'turn them off' like in other similar games. Anywho, Perhaps both (block and non-block) versions could be up?
But I do love the game. Great job, once again, tonypa!
Dagnabbit, foo, you're right of course. We can transpose the board in any direction without changing the gamestate significantly, so the sides are exactly equal to any other row or column for that purpose.
Sorry, found this game far too easy - maybe it was just luck, but I got to 15000+ on my first attempt without really trying. Got bored and gave up.
I practically cleared the board so often that I get the impression that I could continue pretty much ad infinitum.
It needs to increase to higher levels of complexity - bigger board after so long, more flower types, more flowers after wrong moves or something?
I'm finding the game itself to be quite pleasant - it's engaging, relaxing, pretty, and original. Yay, tonypa!
However, I find myself frustrated with having to sit through the JIG splash sequence with each replay, plus a 10-second ad about ninety percent of the time. This would be a great game for zoning out if I didn't keep getting shaken out of the zone. Any chance of at least decreasing the ad frequency a bit? :)
I really love this game. Can it be made available for download somehow?
I must be missing something that the 15k+ players have latched on to. I haven't broken 10k yet, and at no point have I ever felt like I could go on forever. Is there some trick to this, or is it just a matter of getting in "the zone," so to speak?
Got 23030. Yes I think it goes on practically forever, too!! I think some of the keys are-
always put flowers with a view to clearing up the board, and keeping the rows/columns with at least one or two spaces free. For example, if you have a choice to clear up 3 with an "L" shape, or to clear up 3 all in one row/column, take the latter. Try to put like colors near each other, so in the future you can clear them easier.
That's about all I know, just keep your eyes open & the patterns become automatic. This game is soothing & I like it, but I think it gets dull. I'd like the option to be able to earn some special-ability flowers, like they change to the color you want, or they blow up a whole row/column, etc.
I've gotten around 45,000 but this game seems very random to me.
I either have not really figured out something about the game or it is so random that you can go from 1,500 to 50,000+ just depending on luck of the draw.
Am I missing something?
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