Amoebax FAQ
Here you can find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about Amoebax. If you have a question not answered on this page, you can ask it to us.
- General
- What is Amoebax?
- Where does that name come from?
- Do we need yet another Puyo Puyo™ clone?
- In which platforms is Amoebax available?
- Is Amoebax finished?
- There will be a multiplayer option?
- Why the graphics for the GP2X and the other platforms aren't the same?
- How can I contribute?
- You made up the questions, didn't you?
General
What is Amoebax?
Amoebax is a free game that tries to be a clone of Puyo Puyo™ by Compile.
The objective of Amoebax is to beat you opponent by filling up her grid. In order to do so, you have to connect four or more amoebas of the same colour.
When four or more amoebas of the same colour are together, a chain is formed and ghost amoebas are sent to your opponent's grid. The more amoebas the chain has, the more ghost amoebas are sent to you opponent's grid. When a chain gets deleted, the amoebas that were on the top of the deleted amoebas falls by effect of the gravity. If those falling amoebas make a new chain, then an step chain is formed and even more ghost amoebas are sent to you opponent.
The ghost amoebas can't be joined together. The only way to get rid of those ghost amoebas is to make a chain that has one or more amoebas touching the ghost amoebas.
Where does that name come from?
A year or so ago, I (Jordi) started to design and draw the blob-like sprites to be used by my then unnamed game. One of my co-workers saw me trying to draw them, and since I really suck at drawing, he asked me: “What are you doing? Drawing amoebas?”. I though that it was funny, and since the game was designed to be played at the GP2X, I decided to name it Amoebax.
(Well, at first I though to call it “PuyoX-PuyoX”… Yes, I'm that creative.)
Do we need yet another Puyo Puyo™ clone?
In short: no. There are plenty of good implementations of Puyo Puyo™-like games around the net, like FloboPuyo or Teepop, to name a few.
The reason we're doing Amoebax is because is a simple enough game to be approached by beginners like us. Very important if you take into account that it's the first time that we are doing something like this as a group. Take it as an educational project.
In which platforms is Amoebax available?
Currently, the only binaries that can be downloaded from this page are for GP2X. However, the game can be compiled and run at least on GNU/Linux, Apple Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows XP. But since Amoebax uses SDL, I guess that it could be used on more platforms than that.
Is Amoebax finished?
No! We released a very early alpha version of it because some GP2X forums expressed interest after I published a video on YouTube.com. That's why the only released binaries are for GP2X.
There will be a multiplayer option?
Two players will be able to play Amoebax on the same computer. There will not be a network mode, mainly because we are not experienced enough to take this path.
Why the graphics for the GP2X and the other platforms aren't the same?
Because both are temporal. The graphics for the GP2X version are those graphics that gave the name to the game, but they were only designed for GP2X (like, 16x16 pixels each amoeba). As we wanted to make a PC & Mac version of it, with support for multiple resolutions, we needed more temporal graphics while waiting for our artist. Since I (Jordi) really suck at drawing, I made much more simpler amoebas this time, just enough to see if the game works as expected or not.
Have in mind, though, that all platforms will have final graphics that will be more like the ones on the GP2X. :-)
How can I contribute?
Just play the game :-)
That's right, playing the game and sending us your comments, bugs found, ideas, etc… is enough.
Of course, if you want more than just play you can help us in many areas: code, graphics, sound,… just take what you don't like of (or lacks in) Amoebax and send us your contributions. We'll welcome any contribution.
You made up the questions, didn't you?
Yes.
