MalBots, Begone!

About

MalBots, Begone! is a falling-blocks puzzle game that combines elements from Puyo Puyo and Dr. Mario.

It features retro-inspired pixel art graphics combined with modern post-processing effects for the best of both worlds. The UI is mainly inspired by the SNES and GBA/NDS era, and the appearance of the blocks can be changed to a wide variety of skins replicating the look of various eras of video game graphics, as well as the slick vector graphics used in promotional material.

Controls

The confirm and cancel buttons are in Nintendo order (A on the right, B on the bottom) by default. You can swap them as you want in the settings menu or the initial setup process.

Gamepad: D-pad left/right to move pieces, A and B buttons to rotate pieces, D-pad down to soft drop, D-pad up to hard drop.

Keyboard: Arrow left/right to move pieces, Z and X to rotate pieces, Arrow down to soft drop, Space to hard drop.

Touchscreen (Virtual gamepad): Tap the on-screen buttons to control the game like on a gamepad.

Touchscreen (Gesture pad): Swipe left and right to move the piece. Tap the screen to rotate the piece. (The direction depends on which half of the screen you tap.) Swipe down and hold to soft drop. Swipe down fast to hard drop.

Modes

• Arcade: Play freely for endless fun!
• Story (under construction)
• School: Learn the basics of the game!
• Edit: Create your own puzzles!

What are MalBots?

MalBots are pieces of malware given a virtual, tangible form. They are all weak to their own color of anti-MalBot block, except for Asterisk, which is weak to all colors of blocks.

Jellysquid grabs sensitive data with its noodly tentacles. It is the most widespread of all the MalBots; they coordinate with each other to form a botnet.

Hibernator is a little black cat that naps in your file system, only to wake up later as a big, scary lion.

Python is a malicious Python script. What each one does varies, but it especially loves to live inside vulnerable PyPI libraries.

Blob is a blob of data that absorbs and nullifies all sensitive information it comes across, in order to bloat even more.

Kaybug is an autonomous script that flies around the Internet looking for bugs to exploit.

Asterisk is a general cross-platform virus that can infect a wide variety of systems, but as a consequence, has many weaknesses.

Anti-MalBot Blocks are packaged code to weaken, nullify, and erase MalBots. At least four of them must touch each other side-to-side for them to activate.

Warning: Public beta

This game still has unfinished features and parts, and definitely contains bugs. As such, it may be unplayable on certain platforms, after certain updates.

An incomplete list of known issues and missing features:

• Mission Train mode in Arcade
• Story Mode
• Custom level saving and loading from image (QR code reading and generation didn't pan out well with Godot Engine + Android)
• Only 1 music selection for each mode

Please join the official Discord server for bug reports, feature requests, and discussion!