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A jam submission

A Sailor's PastimeView game page

GMTK Game Jam 2021: a puzzle game about ropes, crates and barrels
Submitted by Menderbug (@menderbug), zacharybarbanell, Corey Hardt (@corey_hardt), DJMcMayhem — 8 hours, 31 minutes before the deadline
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A Sailor's Pastime's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Originality#464.3284.328
Overall#1683.9793.979
Fun#2573.8133.813
Presentation#6683.7973.797

Ranked from 64 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
The crates and barrels you need to move around are tied up in ropes. And sometimes the ropes themselves are knotted together.

Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam

Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam

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Comments

Viewing comments 29 to 10 of 29 · Next page · Last page
(+2)

Neat concept! I included it in my GMTK compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :)

Submitted(+2)

I got as far as crosses and my brain melted. I will be coming back to this though, it's addictive.

Developer

Crosses turned out to be a significant and unintentional difficulty spike. I'd recommend skipping it for now using the level select and coming back to it later. :)

Submitted(+2)

That was a very interesting mechanic that I enjoyed and the graphics compliments the game very well

Submitted(+1)

That is a very clever mechanic you have here !

Submitted(+2)

Very cool idea! Controls are a little unintuitive at some points, but with a little trial and error, I managed to always implement my plans.

Submitted(+2)

Definitely one of the most unique layouts for a puzzle game I've seen and a deceptively simple layout with waaaay too many combinations to list that I feel like definitely allow for some unique solutions.  (and confusing ones)

Tho a few points, probably mostly personal stuff, I have would be:

  • The distinction between a "knot"/corner bit you can remove or can't seems to be not very clear?  Probably wrong on this one but I had a bit of trouble telling.  
  • Also when I could do a diagonal was pretty clear because of the indicator once I noticed it, but there were a decent amount of situations where I thought I could move the rope diagonally, but I wasn't actually able to.  It's probably just me not noticing how but it definitely hurt trying to use the diagonal mechanic personally.
  • The rope layouts are a genius thing to add for level complexity.   While also being the most painful thing in the levels to figure out.  Just a simple 180 or 90 degree turn with the ropes becomes incredibly complex with the moveset limitations.  Which is good and bad.. depending on level design of course.

Overall though, a crazy puzzle game.  Definitely had me the most stumped out of all of them so far.

Submitted(+1)

A super fun puzzle game! Makes me want to come back and master it for real. I would just maybe add some more indication to the player when a rope is movable.

Submitted(+1)

Really well made! I feel like I would enjoy playing this on my phone as it is! That way I could take the time to actually figure out all these amazing puzzles!

Nice!

Submitted(+2)

Really neat to see actual knots and ropes in a puzzle game! I've managed to make it to the last 2 levels and might go back to try and finish it off later :)

Controlling this in a puzzlescript format is probably the main issue which you all have probably already gotten feedback on. I think the difficulty ceiling could be expanded lot further if the game has graphics that make it easier to visualize things + controls that make it easier to grasp how to manipulate the positions of entangled ropes (it took me a long time to understand how to do the "cross" level in terms of just moving one loop of rope around another loop).

It was a lot of fun though and really neat to see a puzzle game that uses rope and knots in the knot theory sense!

Almost forgot to mention, the music is lovely and fits the game theme well. I'm a big fan of it!

Submitted(+2)

Great music and art, but the concept was best for me. Loved the untieing ropes and found myself getting way more invested than I thought I would haha. The puzzles are challenging and certainly well thought out. Great job!

Submitted(+2)

Great design, a highlight of the jam for me. Very creative puzzles, excellent presentation, unique mechanical twist on a classic genre - well done!

Submitted(+3)

First level, I thought ... that's Sokoban :-D then you wrote just Sokoban.

I like very very much the idea with the rope. That's very new to me, did not see anything like that. And in combination with the sokoban blocks creates itneresting twists.

Controls felt a bit unresponsive (WebGL version).

Submitted(+1)

Great depth and complicated puzzles, I love the graphics and the way the game progresses

Submitted (1 edit) (+2)

Goodness, this game has so many layers! And so many levels where many other puzzle games have only had around 5-6. Well done!

Submitted (2 edits) (+3)

Deceptive depth all around -- absolutely nailed it! There would be a place in my steam library for a casual puzzler with these mechanics. 

I was more of a fan of the crate/barrel puzzles than the 'pure rope puzzles', and I think it's because the pixel art style, combined with the zoom level, makes it difficult to clearly make out the over/under, especially when the rope is over the template. Putting the template with partial opacity over the rope, and adopting a textured approach to drive home the shadows would have made it way easier on my eyes.

"Crosses" was the big difficulty spike for me. I ended up going back through the earlier puzzles again to see if I missed a mechanic. It eased up after that, so I'd be curious to find out if that was a common pothole for players. 

I, of course, volunteer to playtest to help smooth out any difficulty spikes in your next endeavor :)

I spent longer on this than any other jam game so far, and I'm very happy with how I spent my reviewing time. Best of luck in the jam!

Developer

Thanks for the detailed feedback and kind words, glad you enjoyed!

The rope templates are indeed visually confusing, and something I wish we had tested more. Some color changes such as that were made pretty late in the jam and were a bit rushed.

Submitted(+2)

Very original mechanic, and I think that the extensions you came up with were very clever! Figuring out how to beat "Exchange" was very rewarding. (Got stuck on "Crosses" though). 


Great work! With more time, I think you all can turn this into something special!

Developer(+1)

Thank you! Yeah, Crosses turned out to be quite a difficulty spike. It was a fairly late addition and we misjudged its position in the level progression. No shame in skipping it and revisiting it later. :)

Submitted(+1)

Fun game with nice and tricky puzzles. I enjoyed the theming too. The rope mechanics were hard to understand (thanks, puzzlescript) but remembering it is modeling real rope, somewhat, helped me figure them out.

Submitted(+1)

very unique puzzles and a cool little atmosphere! well done :)

Submitted(+1)

Fun puzzle game!

Viewing comments 29 to 10 of 29 · Next page · Last page