I can pleasantly say that aside from going to college, I've never been faced with the burden of having to pack up tons of boxes and move my home. From what I hear, it's quite a hassle, and there's no easy way to go about it, no matter how much manpower is on your side. Getting everything into boxes and into a waiting truck takes hours, and who knows how much stuff you might break.
In Jig Easy, Sam, you've got about eight minutes to move out. You'd better lift with your knees!
While your friend is at a dance competition trying to win money to pay back Ernie, the local loan shark, you've got to move all his property out of the building as quickly as possible. Fortunately, you've discovered a method of delivering furniture, appliances, and boxes of books down to the ground in helium-filled bubbles. Also, Ernie digs the beats he hears when these bubbles bounce together, so he'll gladly pay you to write some of the drum beats for the contest. But while this sounds like a cushy job, Murphy's Law seems to be working overtime today. Not only can you not park the moving truck directly underneath the window you're dropping the bubbles from, but the truck's brakes are faulty, and the truck is inching its way down the street.
Since each bounce you make can bring in some dough, you can purchase flower pots, satellite dishes, rats, and hire moving men to bounce the falling bubbles to your moving target. Unfortunately, all of these have a limited number of times you can bounce things off of them before they disappear (the workers' labor contracts seem to work the same way). Your job is to manage your funds properly, and find a way to bounce the falling packages into the truck, while still making a profit to pay back Ernie.
To play, select your bounce implement from the selections in the top-right corner of the game, then click on the building to place it in the playing field. Rats are cheap, but can only withstand one bounce before disappearing, while satellite dishes are more expensive, but can last for twelve hits. Dropping any packing bubble will cost you money as well, so be sure you have a plan for bouncing everything you can into the truck. If you can earn $1000 before the truck reaches the end of the street, you can avoid the wrath of Ernie and your friend can move out in piece (and with some extra cash in hand).
Analysis: Jig Easy, Sam is Matt Slaybaugh's third entry into our competitions, and each time he demonstrates his ability to design compelling gameplay around the theme. The "ball physics" theme of CGDC4 is demonstrated quite nicely in Jig Easy, with appliance-filled ball-shaped bubbles bouncing delightfully across a city scene.
Even with a broken truck and a handful of money to make before time runs out, the game offers one tremendous flaw that can still make the game wickedly easy: The clock, as the most expensive item in the game, has no expiration. Once one experiments with the mechanics of how the game tallies up the scores, a player can easily rack up money with a single well-placed clock (which quickly becomes many well-placed clocks). One common technique for racking up high scores is to "trap" a falling package in between several clocks, thus racking up hundreds of dollars by the second, and allowing the player to reach scores of over a quarter million dollars by the time the truck has crossed the screen. While having an invincible tool is an appealing feature, it unfortunately makes the game quite easy when used improperly.
Clockwork issues aside, Jig Easy, Sam is a very well-designed game. The goal is easy to understand, and a humorous storyline sets the background for a veritable bounce-fest. One sad part about this game is that it only lasts for one "round" and then the game is over. I think this game could be greatly improved by adding different levels that require certain tasks to be accomplished to move forward (such as bouncing the furniture into the truck, while bouncing the moldy "food" that has stood in the fridge for several years into a dumpster, etc.). Who knows, maybe your helium balloon "moving service" could become a hit in the neighborhood, with several jobs for hire.
We thank Matt for another great competition entry, and for having the creativity to name his entry using an anagram of the site's domain name. =)
Jig Easy, Sam, is easy, Sam.
Especially if you get the beginning right, then you just spam your clocks (block the entire layer) so you get a constant income of hundreds at a time (each hit on the clock is +20) and then... yeah.
haha i just had a chair and a tv trapped between a few clocks and i was making thousands in seconds! amazing fun for one play, i dunno but i think you'd have to really love the gameplay and want to be more imaginative with it to get more plays out. make some kind of garden or something :S or an actual song.
I really liked the concept of this game, but I hoped it would be something like a TD game, with multiple levels and increasingly hard enemies.
It's a pretty good game, it would be a lot better if it wasn't so easy...
This game is a HOOT!
Sure it's simplistic and super-easy to finish. But then when you realize how easy it is you have to go back and see if you can finish with serious dough and not break ANYthing.
No, I haven't made it yet. Have you??
This one is fun. Simple and addicting enough to quickly close the browser window when the boss comes around.
Fun, but easy - just place one-at-a-time flower pots until you get 350, the abuse the hell out of the clocks.
The backstory for this is hilariously insane, and the game itself is fun to play. True, it's quite easy (maybe have levels with increasing dollar amounts you need to reach?), but it's just too wacky to ignore.
I think the real point of this game is to throw as many different objects on the screen as you can and listen to the crazy symphony the objects make crashing into each other.
The game itself is easy - but the instructions in the begginning are waaaaaaaay to long - and thus make the game sound rather complicated - which it isn't :) Trying to make that instructions section more cmpact would be an improvement, I guess.
What i especially liked about this entry is the background story - a well-polished synopsys for a movie :)
Great fun, absolutely barmy game :)
Fantastic game. Can't complain about creativity or following the theme of the competition here. Pretty graphics, good physics, easy to pick up and play, loads of replay value...hehe, good job Matt.
Love the story and it's really really enjoyable to play. Excellent!
It was fun to play to start off with, the story was lovely. It was fun the second time round when I realised you could place things on the wall (what a prat not realising this). And then it was fun the third time round going crazy with the clocks as Pandaknight suggested (infinite scores ahoy)
Well done Matt
simple but addictive game crazy story!
HA! I finally made it!
Finished the level and didn't lose a thing.
Dang this goofy game is fun.
I made ten-thousends a second, by buying as many clocks as possible! The more clocks in one layer, the faster stuff bounces!
But beware: If you make one layer to thick, the stuff will bounce right throu the thinner layer!
Fun, clever game. Too easy, as mentioned above.
The interface isn't the greatest, though - would be nice if there were hotkeys for the various items. Or at least put the icons at the bottom.
I noticed a few bugs - sometimes things would disappear when I moved them (!) and if there are still items bouncing around when time is up it displays the ending screen but your score keeps increasing as the items bounce around.
yeh, fun but the clocks make it hilariously easy (0 lost items, 400000 (before the time was up))
how is this easy? i dont get it.
wow! i think this game deserves most creative use of jayisgames in its title! who does not love word games... especially sly ones like jig easy, sam....
$7,055 in the end. Clocks did make it hilariously easy! (first try, too)
did anyone notice "jig easy, sam" is an anagram for Jay is Games!
well, i feel silly, i should learn to read the ENTIRE review, its hidden as the LAST sentence.
I got 750,000 using the clocks; it seems like one could make vastly more than that if one really put one's mind to it.
The interface problems need to be cleaned up... I have to move clocks around just to see the final score!
The game has tons of charm. Thanks for the story and the idea!
2mil and counting :D i traped them in a box of clocks put one underneath where the fall one above and a few to the side of it... im at 4 mil now! love the game simple and addicting!
This was a fun game, until I moved the mouse up slightly too far, the CGDC menu came down, and I had clicked my way out of the game before I realized it.
Is there a way to turn that menu off? Or a way to get to this game directly? Because, that sure took a lot of the fun out of it. "Hey, doing good? Let's send you back to the main menu so you can start over from scratch!"
Yeah. Fun killer.
[Edit: If you don't like what happens when you click the "Back to main menu" button, then don't click it. :p Simple as that. -Jay]
I found a "contradiction" in this game. It says that Sam owes the loan shark $1000, but it says that Sam pays you money for the sounds you make. You need $1000 to win, but that money is Sam's money, meaning that either he could repay the loan himself, or he took out another loan to pay you!
How confusing. Great game, though!
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