The story of how gourds became a videogame

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Making videogames worked great for me to learn programming, I still remember the struggle of understanding game engines. At some point I went into systems programming, until it was time to graduate and do a final project.

That final project was made three years ago and is still actively used. For instance, the project has been demonstrated as an example for the new graduation projects, which is quite an honor to hear afterwards. So I figured that it would be fun to shortly introduce the game here.

The game with a fruity name

Gourds is a slide puzzle with hexagonal pieces that occupy two spaces; they look like bottle gourds, hence the name. The goal is to match the colors of the pieces with the background, and if that happens the pieces disappear and show the background image. There is a level navigation that is also a larger background image, completing levels shows the larger image.

The game is playable as an intuitive web application, and includes a hundred predesigned levels and an endless mode. There is a leaderboard and an editor to let players design their own puzzles.

There are three possible moves that you can do in the game: a piece can either turn, slide of pivot.

Feel free to try to play the game!