Controls

- Start game: "x" or "z"

- Move pieces: "left arrow" and "right arrow"

- Rotate piece: "up arrow" or "z" (always clockwise)

- Drop piece: "down arrow"

- See trophies: hold "x" (only while playing)

- Back to menu: "z" (only in game over screen)

- Pause game: "p" (arrows to navigate, "x" to  select and "p" to close )

Objectives and mechanics

The objective is to match 6 differents pieces, so they explode and give you experience and score. You can match in 2 ways, by shame colour or by same shape. Try to match as much pieces as posible to get better rewards. Once tou level up, you get one random disadvantage, so the game gets more difficult each level. The disadvantages are shown to the right side.

Disadvantages

- COL: one extra color

- SHP: one extra shape

- CHN: +4 to chain (you have to match now 6 + 4 pieces to get rewards)

- PAR:  a parasite appears in random column each turn (parasite is a random piece)

- SIZ: chance to increase the size of the piece ( +1 piece to drop that turn)

- BUB: chance to drop a bubble (can not be matched,  destroyed by macthing near it)

- FOA: chance that a bubble appears from the bottom of one random column

- TIM: get -50% time to place a piece (if time runs out, piece will be dropped)

Now, let's talk about getting score. Each piece in the match is worth 1 point, it can be increased by completing tasks with the match.

Match tasks

- MAX SHAPES: get all shapes in a combo +1 point

- MAX COLORS: get all colors in a combo +1 point

- JUNCTION: join left and right walls +3 points

- MONO COLOR: combo with only one color +5 points

- MONO SHAPE: combo with only one shape +5 points

- CHAIN: multiple combo in one turn +(2 + chain_count) points

- ALL CLEAR: clear the board +(5 + level) points

- BIG: Make a combo of 12+ stones +5 points

- HUGE: make a combo of 18+ stones +7 points

- LAST STAND: only one stone in the board (after combo) +3 points

- DUTY: combo with 1+ duty stone +(number of duty used) points

- FULL DUTY: combo with all duty stones +(3 + level) points

- SCHOLAR: combo with lvl 6 or above +1 point

- VETERAN: combo with lvl 9 or above +2 points

- LEGEND: combo with lvl 10 or above +3 points

What is duty? It is the three stones to the left, the are random and have bonus when you combo with at least one of them. They are not reseted, it is the same duty stones the whole game. 

About the game

Basically, I add more functionalities to the original game. You can play the original game by benjamin_soule here BondStones_Original

Why did I do it?

I was playing random pico-8 games in the lexaloffle page and discover this game. I quickly liked it so I look the code to see how it was done in orden to improve my own games (if you want it the tag is #bondstones-0 ). And after playing for a while I wanted to add some features that I think the game needs, as well as some changes I hope are improvements.

What did I change?

Firstly I created a ranking system that saves the 5 best scores. I did the cups to show the ranking in a better way. Then I did the visuals when you get a record while playing, so you know you are in the ranking. Finally in the game over screen I also did the visuals by adding the corresponding cup according to the rank and a congrats message. That is the new feature I added, but I also changed lots of things. 

- Decreased the minimum chain to match (from 12 to 6)

- Decreased the BIG and HUGE tasks requirements (from 20, 30 to 12, 18)

- Changed the visuals, bubbles now show where they fall, and sprite change to bubbles to make them more like a bubble and not a bomb

- Changed some shapes that I think they are hard to see to simpler ones

- Increased the score given by tasks (can not remember all changes, but you get more score)

Have fun playing, try to beat my record 6926 points.