Jig Sort

Overview

Jig Sort is a relaxing jigsaw colour-sorting puzzle. Each level shows a vertical stack of empty colored boxes and a bottom tray of loose jigsaw-quadrant pieces. The player drags each quadrant into the box of its matching colour; when all four quadrants of a box are in place the picture snaps together, a glass cap sweeps over it, star particles burst, and the box clears. Complete every box to win. The game ships with three boosters, a visual level editor, an automatic level generator, and a starter pack of 500 hand-tuned / generated JSON levels.

Getting Started

Requirements

• Unity 6 or newer
• Universal Render Pipeline (URP)
• TextMesh Pro (included with Unity)
• Input System package (the template uses both legacy and the new Input System)

Installation

1. Import the Jig Sort package — one self-contained folder that includes the shared win / lose / booster / developer-mode UI stack (namespace HypercasualGameEngine).
2. Ensure the project uses the Universal Render Pipeline (Edit > Project Settings > Graphics).
3. Open the game scene at Assets/Jig Sort/Scenes/GameNew.unity.
4. Run Tools > NewestDevUI > Setup Wizard → Run All Steps — it builds the Canvas, HUD, win/lose panels, booster popups and developer-mode button into the scene.
5. Run Tools > Jig Sort > Setup Wizard → Run All Steps — it creates the SoundManager / GameManager, auto-wires audio, applies the Player & Build settings, and retargets post-processing.
6. Press Play to test the first level.

Quick Test

Once in Play mode, drag a tray piece onto its matching-colour box cell. When all four quadrants of a box sit in their cells, the picture assembles, SoundManager.Instance.PlayLevelClear()-adjacent feedback plays, and the box clears. Clear every box to win — the next level loads automatically. Press the → / ← arrow keys in Play mode to jump between levels for QA.

Folder Structure

During development the package is two top-level folders. The Jig Sort folder holds all game-specific content; NewestDevUI holds the shared UI stack (folded into Jig Sort before Asset Store publishing).

Gameplay

Core Mechanics

Each level displays a vertical stack of empty colored 2×2 boxes down the centre, flanked by two side columns of loose jigsaw-quadrant pieces. The player drags a piece onto a box; it only fits the box of its own colour, and only the cell matching its quadrant (top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right). When all four quadrants of a box are placed, the picture assembles and the box clears.

• Drag to place — Touch or click a piece and drag it to a box; on release it snaps into the matching cell if one is free, otherwise it returns (a Blocked sound plays)
• Four quadrants per box — Each box needs typeIndex 1–4 (cells (0,0), (1,0), (0,1), (1,1)) in its own colour
• Two side columns — Loose pieces sit in a left and a right column mirrored about the boxes; the dock supply is the exact 4-quadrant complement of every box, so every level is solvable
• Stacked pieces — Some pieces spawn greyed and tucked below + behind a front piece, locked until that front piece is placed, then they surface to full colour
• Mystery boxes — Optional hidden boxes show a greyed “?” and refuse pieces until a set number of other boxes clear, then reveal their colour + picture with a pop
• Box completion — When a box is full and single-coloured, a glass cap sweeps over the finished picture, particles burst, and the box clears (CheckCompleteGrid → CompleteGrid)
• Win — All boxes cleared. Win/lose is routed through JigSortGameManager.TriggerWin() so the clear sound fires exactly once before the panel shows
• Progression — On win, LevelManager.AdvanceLevel() runs before the scene reloads (driven by the NewestDevUI LoseWinPanelManager, or the built-in fallback)

Piece Colours

Colours are defined by the ColorType enum (LevelData.cs) and mapped to RGB + picture sprites in the ColorData asset. A sample of the palette:

Win & Lose Conditions

• Win — Every box is completed. Star particles burst, the level-clear sound fires via JigSortGameManager.TriggerWin(), the level index advances, and the next level loads automatically.
• Lose — Optional; routed through JigSortGameManager.TriggerLose(). The base mechanic is non-failing (sorting puzzle), so a lose state can be wired to a move/time limit if desired.

Animations & Feedback

Pieces lerp to their target cells; the box pulses on each fill; a glass cap scales over the completed picture and star particles burst. The dragged piece shows a 2D sprite outline (OutlineController + Resources/BlockOutline.shader) and the target box highlights white while a piece hovers over it.

Scripts Reference

Game-specific runtime scripts use the JigSort.Scripts namespace; editor scripts use JigSort.Editor. The static LevelManager and the SoundManager singleton live under HypercasualGameEngine so the shared NewestDevUI scripts resolve against them. The win/lose, booster, and developer-mode scripts are provided by the NewestDevUI package (also HypercasualGameEngine).

Core Scripts (Jig Sort)

Engine Scripts (Jig Sort)

Editor Scripts (Jig Sort)

Shared UI Scripts (NewestDevUI — namespace HypercasualGameEngine)

Level Editor

Open it from Tools > Jig Sort > Level Editor. The window is split into two panes:

• Left pane — the level list. Reorder with ▲ / ▼, + Add Level, Duplicate Selected, Delete Selected (with confirm), Save All Levels (green), and Reload from Disk (with confirm). A footer shows the total level count.
• Right pane — the selected level. Edit the three booster counts, add / remove boxes, choose each box's colour, and toggle pre-placed quadrants on a Y-flipped 2×2 grid canvas (top row is y = 1). The dock supply is auto-derived as the exact complement of the boxes and shown as a live count, so the level stays solvable.

Levels are written to Assets/Jig Sort/Resources/Levels/Level_N.json on Save All Levels.

Auto Level Generator

Open it from Tools > Jig Sort > Auto Level Generator. It appends new levels starting after the last existing one (never overwrites). Tunables:

• Levels to Generate — default 500.
• Difficulty Ceiling Level — the level at which the curve hits maximum difficulty (default 12). The ramp is concave (square-root), so all content variety lands in the first dozen levels; later levels are seed-varied plays at max difficulty.
• Box count min / max — how many colored boxes per level.
• Distinct colours min / max — palette variety.
• Pre-placed per box (easy) — quadrants already in each box on easy levels (eases early levels; ramps to 0).
• Booster maxima — Shuffle / Bomb / Unlock counts at full difficulty.

Every generated level is solvable by construction: each box gets one colour, the tray is the exact 4-quadrant complement of all boxes, and all boxes are visible at start — there is no luck-based generation and no "force a matching turn" post-process. A red Delete All Levels button (with confirm) clears the folder.

Boosters

Three boosters, level-gated by the per-level counts in LevelData. The buttons, counts, and one-time tutorial popups are provided by the NewestDevUI BoosterManager; the effects are implemented game-side in GameLevel / JigSortGameManager.

The one-time tutorial popup fires on the first click of each booster before any "can this run" gate, so the player always learns what a booster does. Popup state is persisted under PlayerPrefs keys BoosterPopupShown_Shuffle/Bomb/Unlock.

Customization

Change the artwork

Swap the quadrant sprites in the BlockData asset and the per-colour picture sprites in the ColorData asset. The 13-colour ColorType palette can be re-tinted in ColorData without touching code.

Puzzle pictures

Drop your puzzle images (PNG) into Assets/Jig Sort/PuzzleImages/, then run Tools → Jig Sort → Refresh Puzzle Images — it imports them as sprites and builds Resources/PuzzleImageData.asset. The Auto Level Generator then assigns a random picture to each colour in every level (same-colour boxes share a picture); the four quadrants of a box assemble that image. If a level has no picture assigned for a colour, it falls back to the ColorData sprite. Tip: for the four quadrants to tile cleanly, give the images a consistent sprite size / Pixels-Per-Unit in the importer.

Tune difficulty

Use the Auto Level Generator's min/max ranges and difficulty ceiling, or hand-author levels in the Level Editor. Levels 1–5 are hand-tuned as a gentle on-ramp.

Audio

Drop your WAV clips into Assets/Jig Sort/Audio/ (use names containing LevelClear, LevelFail, Blocked, Pickup, Place, Complete, Shuffle, Bomb, Unlock, or the Success*/Fail*/Pop*/Switch* pools) and run the Jig Sort Setup Wizard's "Auto-wire SoundManager clips" step.

Post-processing

The shared HC URP profile lives at Assets/Jig Sort/PostProcessing/HC-PostProcessing-Volume.asset. The Setup Wizard retargets the scene's Global Volume and the URP render-pipeline assets to it at weight 0.8.

Support

This template is part of the HyperCasual Game Engine — Mobile Puzzle Templates Kit. For questions about the shared UI / booster / developer-mode stack, see Assets/Jig Sort/Documentation/NewestDevUI-README.md. For the game-specific systems, the in-line XML comments in each script under Assets/Jig Sort/Scripts/ and Assets/Jig Sort/Editor/ are the source of truth.

Contact

Questions, bug reports, or feature requests? Email ragendom@gmail.com.

Common Issues