Soapy Sort

In Soapy Sort you are tasked with doing the dishes in the most satisfying way possible. Place trays of dirty dishes next to each other to sort items into separate groups. Flying robots will clean up full trays and make room for new ones.

Background
Soapy Sort is the result of me dipping my toes into game development. The goal of this solo project is to experience the full process, from idea generation to programming to artwork and sound to publishing, and everything I've forgotten to list here.

The game is at a point where it's at least a playable prototype that I can share and collect feedback on. I'd love to hear how you found this game, and your feedback and thoughts on it!

Future of the game
I'm currently working on some other game ideas I have, and have paused working on this Soapy Sort. If I were to develop this game further, I have a ton of ideas of where I want to take it:

• Much more elements to merge with, with more complexity to their rules.
• Extended merge logic, to be able to handle much more variety and make your choices as a player deeper.
• More variation in powerups: crazy things like a shrink ray to change plates into saucers or something.
• Some progression through the game: after x moves the day ends and the player has to make a choice that impacts the coming days.

My own reflection
This project is a learning journey, and I've learned a lot. I'm really happy with what I've created so far:

• It feels pretty good to play as it is, the merging is smooth and satisfying. During development I often caught myself just vibing with it, and I'm really happy with that.
• The systems behind the game are pretty flexible already for new content or making tweaks. There's areas to improve, but a lot to build on already.
• The artwork is super derpy and I love it, the style is both the result of where my skill level is at, and the deliberate choice to lean into that. There's definitely a lot to improve here to make everything look less flat, better use of shadows, cleaner animations, more variation in the particles, etc.
• Sound is an area where I didn't have much experience at all going in and to me it shows (or... sounds?). It's a collection of fairly random sounds and not everything fits. Some variation in music would also be nice.