Post Mortem: Pollination

Since the first game was me working out simple movement and collisions, it occurred to me that I could create a relaxing chain-reaction game I wanted to make ages ago. This was initially created for the IGF Pirate Kart in 2012 so when I came to releasing my next game I decided to quickly tidy this game up and get that out next.
So I had a tree object which I created with a big 2D array using different numbers to trigger the different types of blocks (light bark, dark bark, green leaves). Then I have a repeating timer which creates falling blocks in a random position inside the tree. These then slowly fall to the ground. Then the player can tap one of these to create an explosion which throws out small fragments. If any of these fragments hit another falling block then this will cause a further explosion. And so on. The player has three 'shots' to create the biggest chain reactions for the most points.
Following some nice comments and some feedback I added flowers which would grow as larger chain reactions are created. Different coloured flowers have different effects (free shots, extra shots, low gravity, extra points). This really made the game much more interesting to play.

I have a soft spot for this game even though it suffers from some major flaws:
* Players never get the 3 shots thing. They often just keep tapping the screen and fire them all immediately.
* If two blocks are really close together then sometimes the collision goes mad and causes a massive explosion which either freezes the game for a moment or crashes it outright.
People also seem to comment on the dark green sky a lot. I know its wrong but I found a bright blue sky to be offensive to my eyes.

I recently had another look at this game and started to make some proper graphics and changed the mechanics of the game so there was only one shot, use shockwaves for collision rather than fragments and the aim for the player is keep there reaction going for as long as possible. I really liked the start of this but that approach brought its own problems.

Interesting fact: Pollination is the second highest rated game on IndieCity - only beaten by Thomas Was Alone
Here are the links to the original game if Pollination sounds like something you would be interested in. Its completely free at the moment so you have nothing to lose: