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rube goldberg machine mentioned!!

This feels like something I could've played a bunch on coolmathgames, very fun and super impressive scope!

I think my biggest critique isn't even about the game- I think it would be nice if a more standard/readable font was used for important information on the game page.

About the game itself (I have a lot to say because it was very enjoyable and I hope you'll do more game stuff in the future!):

- Would be super beneficial to have a "clear all pieces in level" button

- Depth perception skill issue on my part, but having more visual aids in the tilemaps to distinguish the grid so I know what spots are lining up where I want them to easier would be helpful (e.g. if each diagonal row had slight variation from the next in a stripe-pattern, almost? so you could know "oh this is part of the slightly darker row, so it will line up with the slightly darker row over there")

- Not sure if it was intentional that pieces did not have to be part of the reaction to count towards the gold medal. I liked that it made it easy for me to get gold every time but felt like I was cheesing it (maybe I just lack integrity in games)

- The little bits of humour that allowed the dev's personality to shine through were a delight- I liked the 'lore' and the breakdancing dragoon a lot.

- When I got to the last level I got a little terrified at first glance of the 4million buttons but I think it was absolutely perfect as a final level- not so easy that it feels anticlimactic but not so difficult or frustrating that I didn't feel well rewarded for my time. In general for a first dev project it felt like your grasp on gameplay loop and how to reward the player was brilliant!

The pieces not having to be part of the chain reaction was definitely an oversight by me when putting the scoring system together last minute. Nice catch.

Funny you mentioned the scope. I went with the idea of building a rube goldberg machine for the game jam because I wanted to make a game featuring a ton of imitated physics of objects in an isometric perspective. Coding the various physics movement of object shouldn't be a problem. However, after a couple of days working on this idea, realized the only way to make a game with this idea is to let the player create the rube goldberg machine, which would require an editor to place/remove pieces. What I had thought was going to be a short and simple game to make turned into something way out of scope.

I had zero experience with game development (although I've played around with godot enough to know how to use it without much issue), let alone game editor development. So, with only 1 week to make the game (yes, I only joined the game jam 1 week before the end lmao), I decided to scrap the imitated physics side and focus on creating pieces that do different things without needing physics to make it work so that I could put more time into creating the editor. Which was a good call because I just barely put together and submitted a cohesive game with less than 20 minutes remaining.

There is one thing that remains of the original imitated physics idea in the game, and that's the cannon. The cannon fires an egg dragoon in an arc towards the target position. The arc which the egg dragoon travels uses a math function that changes the arc depending on the distance it needs to travel. This means no matter the distance, the egg dragoon will travel in a perfect arc from the cannon to the target location. It's unfortunate that I couldn't show it off more since I had to turn down the scope.