Tile Explorer

A triple-tile match puzzle, rendered in real 3D. Tap tiles from layered stacks into a 7-slot tray. Match three of the same icon and they vanish. Clear the board to win. No ads, no IAP, no analytics, no tracking.

Since v1.0 the game renders as a true 3D scene: rounded beveled tiles (procedural meshes), a perspective camera, a directional sun with real-time shadows, arc fly-to-tray animations with landing squash, and particle bursts on matches. The 12 cartoon icons are still authored as 2D _draw() vector art (inspired by Tile Trip) and are baked into textures at startup — there are no external assets anywhere in the project.

Install on Android

Direct APK download: https://github.com/Matswm86/tile-explorer/releases/download/latest/tile-explorer.apk

1. Open that link in your phone's browser and tap to download.
2. When you tap the downloaded file, Android may say "For your security, your phone is not allowed to install unknown apps from this source." Tap Settings, toggle Allow from this source, then go back and install.
3. The app appears as Tile Explorer.

The APK is debug-signed with a stable key (stored as the ANDROID_DEBUG_KEYSTORE_BASE64 GitHub secret), so reinstalling a newer build over an older one Just Works — no uninstall needed.

Permanent versioned downloads are also published to the Releases page when a vX.Y.Z tag is pushed.

How to play

• Tap any unblocked tile (one not covered by another tile above it). It flies into the wooden tray at the bottom of the screen. Blocked tiles are dimmed and wiggle when tapped.
• The tray holds 7 tiles. Tiles auto-sort by icon so groups stay together.
• When three tiles of the same icon end up in the tray, they clear.
• Win by emptying the board with the tray empty too.
• Lose when the tray fills with 7 tiles that can't form a triple.

Power-ups (3 charges each per level)

Button	What it does
Undo	Sends the last tile you tapped back to the board.
Clear 3	Deletes the leftmost 3 tiles in the tray, plus enough matching board tiles of the same icons to keep every icon's remaining count a multiple of 3 (so the level stays solvable).
Shuffle	Randomly re-assigns the icons on remaining board tiles.

Run from source (desktop)

1. Install Godot 4.6.x from https://godotengine.org/ (single binary, no install needed — just extract and run).
2. Open the editor → Import → pick project.godot in this folder.
3. Press F5 (or hit ▶). Mouse acts as touch on desktop.

Level format

Each level is a JSON file in data/levels/. Coordinates are absolute pixels referenced to a 1080×1920 viewport (the project stretch mode handles scaling on other resolutions).

{
  "level": 1,
  "tile_size": 130,
  "tiles": [
    {"icon": 0, "x": 380, "y": 580, "layer": 0},
    {"icon": 1, "x": 540, "y": 580, "layer": 0}
  ]
}

• icon is an integer index into Icons.TABLE in scripts/Icons.gd (12 themed icons: soccer ball, apple, cat, fish, cherry, watermelon, bone, mushroom, ghost, banana, carrot, donut — all drawn procedurally).
• layer is z-order: higher layers cover lower layers. A tile is tappable only when no tile on a strictly higher layer overlaps its bounding box.
• Each icon must appear in a multiple of 3 (so triples can clear).

Generate or hand-author additional levels and bump max_level in the Game scene to expose them.

Difficulty curve

30 levels with progressive difficulty:

Range	Tiles	Layers	Icons	Notes
L1–L5	12 → 36	1 → 4	4 → 6	Intro, simple grids
L6–L11	42 → 72	3 → 5	7 → 12	All 12 icons unlocked at L11
L12–L20	81 → 150	5 → 6	12	Denser stacked piles
L21–L30	156 → 216	6 → 7	12	Deep centred pyramids

Levels are generated by gen_levels.py (centred-pyramid layouts, where each upper layer is smaller and centred over the layer below — peeling back outer rings reveals the inner core).

CI builds (how the APK gets made)

Every push to main triggers .github/workflows/build-android.yml, which:

1. Spins up ubuntu-latest, installs Java 17 + Android SDK.
2. Downloads Godot 4.6.2 headless + Android export templates.
3. Decodes the stable debug keystore from the ANDROID_DEBUG_KEYSTORE_BASE64 secret (falls back to generating an ephemeral keystore if the secret isn't set, so forks still build).
4. Writes editor_settings-4.6.tres and the build template marker files.
5. Runs godot --headless --export-debug "Android" tile-explorer.apk.
6. Uploads the APK as a workflow artifact, and updates the rolling latest pre-release on the Releases page.

For a permanent versioned APK: git tag v0.1.0 && git push --tags.

The full debugging history of this workflow lives in ball-connect's docs/godot-android-ci-notes.md — same workflow, same gotchas.

File map

project.godot                   Engine settings (1080×1920 portrait, GL Compat)
export_presets.cfg              Android export preset (gradle build, arm64-v8a)
icon.svg                        App icon
.github/workflows/
  build-android.yml             CI workflow that produces the APK
scenes/
  Game3D.tscn                   Root 3D scene: camera, sun, sky, UI
scripts/
  GameManager3D.gd              State machine, level loader, power-ups, win/lose
  Board3D.gd                    Tile collection, blocking detection, ray picking
  Tray3D.gd                     7-slot tray, triple-match logic, arc animations
  Tile3D.gd                     Rounded-box tile body + icon quad + materials
  RoundedBox.gd                 Procedural rounded-box ArrayMesh generator
  IconBaker.gd                  Bakes the 2D icon art into 3D textures at startup
  Fx3D.gd                       Match-burst and win-confetti particles
  Icons.gd                      12 themed icon definitions, 2D draw helpers
  Drawing.gd                    Rounded-rect 2D draw helpers (used by the baker)
data/levels/
  level_01.json                 …through level_30.json (30 levels)

Dev harness

Set TILE_DEVSHOT=/path/shot.png to boot the game, screenshot and exit. Optional: TILE_DEVLEVEL=N (jump to level), TILE_DEVTAPS=N (simulate N taps through the real ray-picking path and assert triples clear), and TILE_DEVMODE=power|lose (exercise the power-ups / force the lose path). Inert unless the env var is set.

Design rules (locked-in defaults)

• Tile size: 130 px square. Viewport: 1080×1920 portrait.
• Tile-blocking inset: 6 px (tiles must overlap by more than this to count as covering) — see Board3D.OVERLAP_INSET. Blocking runs in the original 130 px level space, so 2D-era levels behave identically in 3D.
• Tray sort: tiles auto-sort by icon_id, so same-icon tiles always end up adjacent. Triple-match resolves on count, not on adjacency.
• Power-ups reset to 3 charges at the start of each level.
• Lose condition fires the moment the tray is full after triple resolution; players who anticipate this can pre-emptively use Clear 3 or Undo on the previous turn.