PlayRing for PlayDate

PlayRing is based on an old Windows puzzler by the name of FastRing. I can't find much information about it online anymore so I don't know who made it.

Rules are simple:

Orbs are placed on the playfield as time passes. You have to clear orbs to refill the timer bar and get points. If the timer runs out you lose.

To clear orbs you have to select a "ring". Start with an orb by moving the cursor onto it and pressing A. Then you can move horizontally or vertically to other orbs, adding them to the selection. You can't move onto an orb twice and you can't change direction on spaces without orbs on them. Return to the starting orb (the one with a circle around it) after selecting at least 4 orbs to clear all selected orbs.

You can unselect the last orb by pressing B or unselect all orbs by holding B.

There's a 1:1 correspondence between the timer bar and the number of orbs on the field, removing an orb will give enough time for an additional orb to be placed so when time runs out you'll always have the same number of orbs on the play field (around 35). Time ticks down a bit slower the more orbs there are on the field.

The game speeds up based on the total number of orbs cleared. Clearing more orbs at once gives more points.

The game is written in Lua.

Version History

1.2

• Added icon for PlayDate OS version 2.0
• Added sounds
• While selecting orbs you can go back with the d-pad as well as the B button.

1.1

• Now draws lines between the orbs you select, this should make it more clear what the whole "ring" business is about.
• Orbs don't spawn on these lines, avoids some weirdness with where you could go.
• Lines can cross each other, each crossing now gives points like clearing an additional orb in that ring (but does not provide extra time).
• Clearing orbs is now illustrated with an animation showing where the points come from. This should also give you a bit of a breather. Was much harder to implement than I would have thought...

1.0

Initial release