Actually, that is a very good puzzle design question.
Before I dive in - just a heads up that I’m not the sharpest when it comes to spatial awareness 😅 So take this with a grain of salt! That said, I found the game genuinely compelling, but the thing that tripped me up was how quickly the number of variables to consider started stacking up.
On Day 2, I was already getting overwhelmed by all the possible interactions. The combinatorics escalate fast! For me personally, the learning curve might have been easier if early levels had some constraints - for example, unmovable stones or stones that rotate in only one direction. (The second still adds complexity, but it’s more intuitively predictable.)
Also, a clearer sense of difficulty progression might help - something like: Day 1 puzzle requires 1 rotation, Day 2 needs 2, and so on. Just a soft, guiding metric to help players calibrate expectations.
Another thing I noticed: because of how the core mechanic works, the solution path is often pretty counterintuitive.You sometimes need to rotate symbols away from the target to get them to the right spot later. It’s a really interesting twist - and definitely something to lean into - but worth factoring in when puzzle designing.
Anyway - just my two cents. It’s a beautifully made game, and I’m really glad I played it!
I totally get what you are trying to say and I deeply appreciate your suggestions. I have some ideas to make challenges more intuitive.
It was my first participation in GMTK game jam and I learned something that I didnt think about it too much before. It's the fact that jam's players attention span to my game will be very very short. Actually much shorter than I thought.
when you design a puzzle game, you would like to show players the potential and depth of its mechanics. so you design some levels with other abilities and bring them up relatively soon, so it fits the average attention span of the players.
but meanwhile, the difficulty curve must remain smooth too.
I realized finding a balance point between these two, in a game jam, is extremely difficult in such type of puzzle games.
You're absolutely right! I came to the same conclusion after my first game jam - balancing showcase vs. smooth progression is really hard in a puzzle game. Since then, I’ve started intentionally keeping the difficulty more approachable. For jam entries, I want most players to be able to finish in one sitting, even if it means holding back a bit on the depth.
You did a great job capturing a compelling mechanic, and with a bit more breathing room post-jam, I can totally see it shining even brighter.