The Benchmark
The Flow Free series is the game that inspired all of my games, and it is probably the most popular game with the same rules. I’ve played lots of other games with the same rules – and a large majority of them attempt to copy Flow (but usually fall short in one or more areas).
I made a couple of major gameplay decisions detailed below that are different from Flow and I think make my games better. Flow does do a very good job compensating for these “flaws.”
The Board
The background of the board is black in Flow Free and most other CTD games – but a white board or even light grayish board is not too uncommon either.
I went with white as the default board color and think it’s a little easier on the eyes – and fits a lot better with the Metro color scheme that I use for the dots, but in Connect Unlimited you can change the background to black.
CTD: Portals and CTD: Shadows are the only games I’ve seen where the board is both white and black – and in the same level. But they are also unique (as far as I can tell) all the levels feature inner walls that split the board into 2 or more sectors that are only connected via shadows or portals.
Touch Controls
Most of the other Flow like games fail here.
The problem that most games don’t address is with the touch-response interval: if you are trying to draw lines quickly, the touch event does not trigger often enough to catch every tile that the line passes through.
This is especially a problem on larger boards where the tiles are smaller.
If this isn’t compensated for – the game feels unresponsive and sluggish. Flow does this very well, and so do my games (in my opinion). I put a lot of effort into this especially when I was developing Arcade Mode for Connect Unlimited where speed is important.
There are other games that do it fine too. Play any one of them, and then play a game that doesn’t address this – and you will likely get frustrated quickly.
Breaking Lines
Connect matching colors with pipe to create a Flow®. Pair all colors, and cover the entire board to solve each puzzle in Flow Free. But watch out, pipes will break if they cross or overlap! – from the Flow Free game description on the Play Store.
This is where I think Flow goes wrong – and in a pretty bad way. This rule in my opinion does nothing but cause frustration. You almost never want an existing line to break while drawing another line.
Flow is a puzzle game – not a test of how accurately you can draw lines with your finger. The larger the board size, the easier it is to mess up and break lines.
Needless to say – in my games, other lines do not break while you’re drawing a line.
My guess is that the developers of Flow had this in the original version of the game – where the board sizes probably didn’t get big enough for it to be a major problem – and didn’t want to change it once the game became popular.
Flow does it well though – many others don’t
Like I mentioned – Flow does a good job compensating for this:
- Broken lines will unbreak if you go move your finger backwards before the breaking point- as long as you don’t pick up your finger after breaking the line.
- This is a huge flaw in some games – if a line breaks and you can’t do anything about it, it gets really, really annoying
- Recently the developers of Flow added an Undo button
- I don’t think I’ve seen this in any other game – it definitely helps to address the problem, but is completely unnecessary if the lines didn’t break in the first place.
I Don’t Care About Moves
And here is the other major difference in the gameplay of my games and the Flow Free series.
In Flow Free and most other games, you have to complete a level in the minimum amount of “moves” (the minimum is equal to the number of lines required to solve the puzzle) in order to get a perfect score. Basically – once you start drawing a line, you have to finish the line and cannot redraw it again to score perfect for the level.
Unlike breaking lines – the decision to count moves or not is debatable.
Counting moves does add a level of challenge to the puzzles. My experience though is that the majority of the time that you fail to get a perfect on a level it’s a result of an unintended touch or pipe breaking. In fact – I think my own games would be far more justified in having this rule because the lines do not break.
Still, I believe CTD: Shadows and CTD: Portals would be too difficult with this rule. I have trouble with them anyway – and I draw partial lines all the time.
Another major issue I have with this rule is that it’s so easy to get around:
- If you have a good memory, just refresh the level and do it over again if you made a mistake.
- If not – or the board size is too big to remember it all, just take a screenshot.
I used to do the latter all the time when I played Flow Free. It’s a bit of a pain taking screenshots and flipping back and forth and certainly did not increase my enjoyment of the game. Which is why I never liked the rule and don’t enforce it.
Again, at least Flow does it right
Flow doesn’t penalize you for picking up your finger and resuming (or redrawing) the last line that you draw. Many other games do – which is a fatal flaw again IMO. Some are even worse and might count multiple moves without even picking up your finger.
Hints
Most Flow games offer hints – and most charge for additional hints (including all games in the Flow Free series). For almost all games a hint will draw a line on the board for you – you don’t have any control over which line it draws and I am not sure how they’re determined.
For Connect Unlimited – my hint button works like this too. It will pick the longest line in the level that you haven’t already drawn and draw it for you. At least the hints don’t cost anything – though I limit their use to 2 per level.
CTD Shadows offers 4 different ways to get help on a level. Read about them at Scoring/Hint Options. For CTD: Portals, I only included Hint Mode. This is because I stopped using any of the other options – but if anyone asks for them, it is easy enough to add them back in.
Conclusion
Flow Free set the standard and most similar games try to copy it exactly. Only a small fraction of the games manage not to fail in one of the above categories. Even if they don’t fail – they are usually limited by the same flaws Flow has described above.
Flow Free’s style of gameplay worked alright for the first 3 games in their series – though the larger levels are much better on a tablet.
Flow Free: Warps is a much harder game though – and doesn’t need any added difficulty with the move requirement or breaking lines. It needs more free hints, a cheaper price for hints, or at least an option to purchase unlimited hints (of course, all 3 would be best).
By not allowing lines to break and not counting moves, larger board sizes become playable even on a phone. And with free hints/hint modes, the boundaries can be pushed even further with levels that would otherwise be too difficult to include.