Tumblestone

Tumblestone is a 2D puzzle game that tasks the player with clearing every square, known as tumblestones, from a board. In Tumblestone's story mode, the player progresses through a map of 12 worlds in a way that is similar to the layout of Super Mario World. Each level has an enclosed space that is filled with colored squares; the player must keep matching three squares of the same color until the space is clear. Modifiers are added to the gameplay for each world, including gray blocks that toggle on and off called "togglers" and multicolored blocks called "wildcards" that when selected can pair with any color on the wildcard itself.

The player may choose to skip levels with tokens earned midway through a world.[6] At the end of each world, the player battles in a "puzzle race", a challenge in which the player must clear a grid three times before the upcoming character does.

Queen Cleo, the ruler of a desert kingdom, encounters colored blocks with faces known as "tumblestones". While she is looking for an all-powerful artifact called the Tumblecrown, she meets many of her friends.

While developing a video game called The Bridge, founder of The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild Ty Taylor met artist Mario Castañeda. In an interview, Taylor stated; "once [he] learned how to make videogames, [he] was always doing it".[8] The Bridge was released on Steam and won in the 2012 Indie Game Challenge for Achievement in Art Direction and Gameplay.[9]

The concept for Tumblestone was invented during a 48-hour game jam, where he met writer Justin Nafziger and programmer Alex Schearer, the latter of whom had prior experience at Microsoft.[10] Game jams require a team to work with their given parameters; according to Taylor, those were "Rainbows and Perseverance".[11] Taylor worked with Nafziger, Schearer, and Castañeda to produce a prototype that began as a Space Invaders-like game in which the player has to shoot three identical, moving, colored ships in a row into still blocks using a specific concept.[12]

At PAX 2015, Tumblestone was part of the PAX 10 program in which 10 indie games are selected for the public to playtest.[12]

On the review aggregator website Metacritic, Tumblestone had average scores of 71, 91, and 82 for its Xbox One,[13] PC,[14] and Wii U versions[15] respectively.

• Official website