Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags
A jam submission

Mirror CastleView game page

A game about bouncing the laser around with mirrors
Submitted by Pampogokiraly — 22 hours, 12 minutes before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

Mirror Castle's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fun/Design#134.0484.048
Technical Implementation#373.6673.667
Overall#1093.2573.257
Graphics/Animation#1523.1433.143
Theme/Limitation#1562.9522.952
Music/Sound#2212.4762.476

Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game apply the limitation (and optionally, the theme)?
Limitation: The final level of the game is the boss level. It will be very clear when you see it ;)

Team Size

Trio (3)

What main engine/tool/language did you use to construct the game?
GDevelop5

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Submitted

I earned 26 stars! Interesting optimizing these levels move counts. Reminiscent of twisty puzzles like the Rubik's cube. Took me a minute to figure out the little triangles were clickable when first playing. I like levels 9 and 13, fun deductive path through them. It was a little hard for me to visually parse things - I actually feel some of the developer art was better both aesthetically and in terms of visual clarity, such as the clean floors, and the simpler yellow mirrors in the menu background. Did not make it to the final puzzle but I hear it's a monster! The levels got a little repetitive for my taste, and started to feel like a slog in the last couple big ones. But I appreciate their concepts.

Submitted

I only have one, very small, suggestion: The vertical (left-bounding/right-bouncing) mirrors are harder to identify than the horizontal (up-bouncing/down-bouncing) ones. You should probably introduce the player to the latter first.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing! I have to agree with you very much on that.

The thing is, that the mirror textures got changed in like the very last day of the jam. Before the mirror upgrades (you can see the old design in the menu backgrounds), it was a lot more clear on what mirror does what.

After the mirrors got changed I had no time for playtesters and so I couldn't change the mirrors or change level 4

Submitted

This is fun, but it's pretty hard! I couldn't manage to get to the final boss level, ended up getting only 28 stars. That makes it a bit hard to see how it relates to the theme, since it's not that present in the rest of the game. The puzzle design is really impressive, making puzzles is HARD, and giving people incentives to do it in the minimum amount of moves was a cool idea. Definitely could've used some more polish, mostly stuff that you've mentioned on the game's page, but overall, nice work.

Developer(+1)

While making our game, I tried to focus less on the limitation, and instead I just did what I thought would be fun.

That is why the "boss" only ended up being the very last level of the game.

Glad you liked it!

Submitted

The music, what there was of it, I did like.

The puzzles were good, gets a little too...track-the-orders-of-operations-effectsy for me. i'm not sure what is gained from the isomorphic perspective? it actually took me a while on the 2nd/3rd puzzle to realize the objects were all just rotated reflectors, i thought they might have been splitters or something. i think top down grid would have been clearer and made it easier to reason about.

and sandbox wouldn't work for me :(

Developer

There is nothing gained from isometric perspective, but I don't think that's actually the point. Isometric view is just a different art sytle, and because I've never done it before I decided to make one now.

The mirrors are introduced at level 4, and you probably got confused on level 5. There is no better way to explain this, other than it's just isometric, and isometric can be confusing for some people.

Can you please explain the "sandbox not working" in a bit more detail? I had two people (including you) saying that it doesn't work, and three people (including me) saying that it works.
Please provide some pictures if needed, or just simply explain the problem in a little more detail so I can avoid it next time I make a game.

Thank you for playing it!

Submitted

maybe it was user error, but clicking on the mirrors or drag/dropping them, just had no effect.

Developer

Have you tried pressing the arrows?

I didn't have time to implement drag and drop, but you can get access to the items/blocks by pressing the arrows on the top-right side of the level.

Submitted

Nice puzzle idea. It could be a popular puzzle game. And also sandbox is a lie.

Developer

it doesn't work?

I'm pretty sure I had it working...

Developer

just tested it, and it works just fine... I don't understand what you mean by sandbox is a lie

Submitted

Idk i tried it and it doesnt seem to work. Maybe im just stupid.

Developer

Can you please explain exactly what isn't working? you press the button and nothing happens, or you couldn't figure out how does the sandbox work, or what? I'm trying to figure out what could be the problem, but only you and someone else reported it and I don't know anything about the issue yet

Submitted

Don't worry i figured it out the problem was i was pressing the buttons too fast.

Developer

oh okay

Submitted(+1)

Thought it was a great game!  I love a good puzzler and I honestly thought this was well done, scaled nicely, and as previous comments stated I liked that you had to fully understand the mechanics of the game before moving forward.  thank you for the good time!

Developer(+1)

Thank you!

I've already replied to so many comments that I don't know what else to say here, other than thank you for playing :P

Submitted(+1)

Forcing the player to go back to level one and earn three stars in order to make it to level four was a genius bit of design. It reinforces to them that the mirror will spawn on the opposite edge and makes sure they understand a core mechanic before moving on. I thought that was really well implemented.

For a first attempt at music, it's not bad at all, but as you noted is too repetitive during a long play session and the good thing is this is a game you want to play all the way through. I had a blast working out the puzzles. The art is simple, but it's cohesive, so it makes the whole thing charming.

Really well done for a small team. Great job.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing the game.

I am indeed very proud of my first few levels as tutorials.

I also enjoyed making the music, so that's def something I'm going to try to improve on, in my/our next few jams.

Glad you liked the game!

(+1)

Nice and interesting. You should still change the graphics and the objects more understandable: maybe you should add some "part"- cards to reveal the part actions to player. Also background music would have a longer play on the loop, and more relaxing sounds added with the feed back sounds of the laser and from the mirror collisions/moving.

This could be played on the mobile devices as well. Good concept and interesting. I guess I'll return to play the rest of the levels in some of my future days.

Developer(+1)

Happy you enjoyed the game.

Most of these problems were already listed in the "known issues" at the bottom of the page, but it doesn't really matter.

The game is fully playable on mobile, and you can come back to the game at any time, cuz it saves your progress.

Submitted (1 edit)

the levels are really good! and found myself very proud when defeating a level with all stars! really like the game and played for a while. could not beat all the levels though because they got so complex!

Developer

thank you for playing! They do get really complex after a few levels. This is mostly because the game didn't have enough mechanics to actually make more simple but still challenging games.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Submitted

Wah, this game has very challenging levels, the design and content is on point! I like the game where you need to think out of the box. There are some levels left, will play it again tomorrow :) Cheers!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing, and good luck with the rest of the levels ;)

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Really nice game, i got totally hooked and played much longer than expected, very happy to see my progress was saved when i came back the next day to finish it ! Thank you for that.

How much did i enjoy it ? I managed to get 3 stars at every level except for the 12th where i couldnt get below 13.

The last level was a bit terryfing at first but once you understand the final setup, it's just like a Rubik's cube. Also thank you for this "useless" wall as a subtle hint, i didin't try for too long on this one but the best i managed to do was 29 moves.

The only detail that slightly bothered me had to do with the visibility, the blue / grey color of the miror's handle is not very well contrasted with the background and this complicates the legibility of the scene.

Kudos to your team, great submission !


You wanted to know so here's the screenshot, i think it doesn't spoil anything but if you want it removed i'll do it 

Developer(+1)

thank you for playing! I think you are the first one to actually complete the boss level (besides me who made it... not even my teammates finished it).

I am very proud of my level 12 three star solution that I've figured out, and for like three days I also had the record of 13 steps.

The mirrors were kind of a fail. If you check the main menu, you can see how my old mirrors looked like. I decided to change them before the last day and I didn't have much time to make them. I think they look nicer, but it also made it a lot more confusing.
Originally I wanted to make them a lot bigger to make them more clear, but sadly the front/back facing mirror's poles would have covered any arrows on the edges of the map.

glad you enjoyed the game and again congrats on being the first one to finish the boss level!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Really fun puzzle game! Love the isometric look and it's just a fun time moving the mirrors around and seeing that lazer blast away. 

And really glad I could play on my phone! 

Couldn't get to the boss unfortunately, but I'll try ti get back to it and all around, great work :) 

Developer(+1)

I'm happy you liked it!

The being able to play on phone was a complete accident. In GDevelop, clicks and finger touches are basically the same, and by accident I've made it playable on phones.

The boss map is really hard, but I'm happy you enjoyed the other levels.

Submitted(+1)

Good job on the levels. As a fellow puzzle dev that was good use of the puzzle elements you have in game so in terms of puzzle design it was challenging but good challenging.

I was impressed you were able to have a sandbox mode in-game. That’s a nice touch. Although you might have left some stuff out to get it in-game I assume.

In terms of music/sound it does become repetitive for awhile but it was not too distracting as I was more focusing on the puzzle itself.

In terms of graphics the static art is great but definitely missing that juice, I think you mentioned it on your page that you did not have time for it.

And for the boss part I have to admit I ran out of brain energy so I had to stop. I got too absorb in getting those 3 stars. so all in all good job! :)

Developer

Thank you for the feedback!

Yeah the movement feels kind of dull at it's current state but I might turn this game into a slightly bigger project in the future, where it will feel a bit better.

I'm really glad you enjoyed the game!

Submitted

Really cool puzzle game. I enjoyed the challenge a lot. Graphics were nice as well. Overall, great work on this!

Developer

Thank you for playing!

Glad you enjoyed the game!

Submitted(+1)

I have to confess, I did not beat the last level before rating, but I have to get back to it to figure that one out.

Seriously though, really nice puzzle game. Had to unlock the last level before I could put this away.

Nice variation of challenges, and nothing felt repeated, nice and simple mechanics to understand.

Star system made me want to try again to improve, and figure out that one "smart" solution.

The music was nice, but had to mute it after 3rd level, as it was too repetitive for me.

Took some time at the start to understand that the arrows ware actual arrows.

Great job!

Developer

eyy thanks for trying it out.

The music is like really really new to me, and I've made it before the last day... I just wanted to try it out ;)

The last boss level is really hard so I can very much understand if you don't finish it. None of my playtesters attempted it lol

I'm glad I managed to make my levels unique. Tho with the current blocks/items/whateverthehellyoucallthese I can't really make any more unique levels, but I might make this into a tiny bit bigger project where I will add more stuff to make the game a little more diverse.

Glad you enjoyed it!