Hi everyone! I’ve been building STATIC: Signal Lost, a match-3 puzzle game wrapped in a slow-burn ARG/horror narrative, and it just went live on Google Play. Built entirely in Godot 4.x (GDScript), and I’d love feedback from this community since a lot of you have shipped mobile titles before.
The core loop is standard match-3 (swap, cascade, combo), but the twist is a sanity meter instead of a simple move counter — every failed swap costs you sanity, every cascade restores a little, and as sanity drops the game’s tone shifts: the narrator gets more hostile and fragmented, the visuals corrupt, and “corruption events” start interfering with the board (forbidden tiles, void tiles that punish you hard if triggered). There’s also a lore/journal system tied to an in-universe “Protocol Delta” conspiracy that unlocks as you play, plus a growing set of power tiles (row/column/cross/color blasts, area blasts) and jelly-tile objectives for variety.
Technically it’s all custom: board logic, matcher, gravity/cascade resolution, and a narrator/dialogue system are separate autoloads so the pipeline pre-computes a full cascade and animates it step by step rather than resolving live. 17 languages supported, rewarded ads for extra moves/power-ups, and a small in-app-purchase “support pack” system for players who want to back the project.
I’m mainly looking for feedback on:
- First-level onboarding — does the tutorial make the sanity/corruption mechanic clear without over-explaining?
- Difficulty pacing — does it feel fair through the first 10–15 levels, or too punishing?
- The horror tone — does it land, or does it feel gimmicky bolted onto a match-3?
- Any bugs, crashes, or UI/UX rough edges on your device.
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.staticsignallost
Happy to answer questions about the Godot-side architecture (cascade animation, autoload structure, translation pipeline) if that’s useful to anyone building something similar. Thanks in advance for any time you give it!