Torre di Amore e Potere

Really interesting concept, but I had a hard time at first identifying which block is what, a screen showing the individual blocks would help a lot! Also, I don't know if it was by design or not, based on what tiles I had or something other, but I would not get the income at the end of the turn timer.

Other than that it is a great concept, very original and quite fun to play!

Hi Gustavo, yes the UI is unfortunately a bit lacking in terms of feedback, explaining the graphics in the help section would indeed have been better.
I have never seen the income not be added correctly, are you sure? Under income it says how much you should get for each of the income categories.

Pros:

• An interesting and unique puzzle game concept based around the tower theme
• Challenging balancing act around building to make money and building to meet the goal
• Diverse requirements to beat each stage.

Cons:

• Extreme dependency on randomness for success. So many games felt like I lost due to bad peice combos, and I felt the need to restart each level until I got a set of starting peices that gave me a chance at beating the level.
• Some mechanics feel like oversights, like the inabilty to rotate peices, or the fact that windows can only score love horizontally. Modifying these would give the player more chances to succeed.

There's good ideas in there for sure, just needs some refinement. Good work!

Really liked the idea and it seemed executed pretty well, it's just a shame I'm not very good at these kinds of games! Oh well, still had a lot of fun. There's quite a lot of things programmed in which makes it impressive even for an unranked game. I think my only real problem would be that since you only have four market options, there's a high degree of randomness that can feel unfair at times. Still though, awesome job!

This is a really nice puzzle game. It's really hard to find the right path to build your tower and it's nice for the challenge.
Same as @Wazz, I feel like the ability to rotate or at least mirror pieces is really missing.
The UI need also some improvements, it's not easy to understand all mechanics during the first games.
Also, when you don't have enough money, you can't wait leaving the current pieces on the store, it's so frustrating when you just have the right piece but you can't afford it before 1 turn and you lost it by pressing the wait button :(

Any way good jood ;)

Thanks for the comments!

@Wazz and @Thrainsa, I considered letting the player rotate pieces but felt this would increase the complexity of the game too much. For me at least it is difficult enough to decide whether it is worth fitting a piece in my tower (possibly anticipating next pieces) at the listed price, having to think about the various rotations with which it would fit would be information overload. A minor thematic problem is also that windows have a fixed orientation. I quite like the idea of flipping as Thrainsa suggests, I find this easier to imagine than rotating and it sidesteps the window orientation problem.

I think the randomness factor is highest with Love, where you can simply get a piece with two adjacent windows, or wait for ten turns without getting any suitable piece. As Wazz suggests, allowing vertical connectivity would have been a good solution for this. I wonder whether each level is (practically) always beatable, and whether a really good player (or AI) could always pull it off.

I really like this game idea, and you implemented many rules which make the game interesting.
I agree with many feedbacks aready written. Here are the most important as to me:

• difficult to understand the rules on the first games (I'm not sure yet of the effects of some squares)
• you have to rely heavily on luck, especially for the love, which is very difficult to organize.

The purchase / placement / income mechanic is a very good combination. it usually works well with a bidding system, which is not here. So it is only random that makes the price.
Perhaps you could change some rules so we are not stuck, or we have more power on the available pieces… ?
Last remark: graphics don't make me feel in Italy at the Renaissance. That would have been great :)

I made a lot of remarks, but it is only because I enjoyed the game and played it a lot, and will certainly play again.

Great concept! It reminds me a bit of Patchwork, the board game. I love how it encourages building a weird tower, just to fit more windows together. In general though, I found that my fate depends pretty heavily on the RNG.

San Gimignano: The first time, I didn't include any windmills from the start, so I had only 10 income, which means spamming the Wait button and eventually just running out of turns. The second time, I focused too much on income and failed to reach either the Love or Height objectives. The third and fourth time, it was more balanced but I still failed the objectives. The fifth time, I got the height, but just got unlucky with window placement (or was it a lack of planning?). The seventh time, I would have had it on the last turn, if not for the Tuscan objections to polyamoury. But the eighth time, I finally made it, with 6 turns to spare no less!

Siena: A whole new game with the exact same elements! Changing up both the objectives and the income is a brilliant way to get more mileage out of the same mechanics, although it takes more balancing of course. Because of my difficulties with Love, I focused on Girth for income instead. The drawback turned out to be that it can go down as well as up, so it can be wise to not place blocks immediately. Failed the first time only on the Height requirement, the second time was worse. Aaaanyway I should go to bed now…

Sometimes you get blocks with a window somewhere in the middle. Is there any use for that, or is it just a quirk of the random generator? In any case, I found the Love requirement the hardest to meet. It might be nice if the requirement was to have two windows in the same row, not necessarily adjacent, but a third would nullify the effect.

I wonder how it would change if you got income every turn (adjusted downwards accordingly, of course). Might be slightly less frustrating.

Rather than swapping out all the blocks on the market (including the one I really want but can't afford for one more turn), it might be nice to swap out only a single one instead, e.g. with right-click.

UI nitpick: it would be nice if buy buttons turned grey when you don't have enough money. Saves on eye movements.