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A jam submission

CeltedView game page

Swap tiles to connect pieces of celtic knots together
Submitted by Metalmastery (@metalmastery) — 8 hours, 31 minutes before the deadline
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Celted's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Controls#103.8933.893
Overall#133.8513.851
Theme#144.1794.179
Graphics#154.1074.107
Originality#183.8573.857
Fun#203.6433.643
Audio#343.4293.429

Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Godot Version
Godot 3.2.stable.official

Game Description
It's easy at first but then you get celted

Discord Username
metalmastery

Participation Level
It's my first ever game jam and first publicly available game on itch

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Comments

Submitted

Absolute stellar work! I didn’t even think of celtic knots when the theme came up, but it’s such a fitting concept!

Developer

They are connected:) Thank you for the kind words! 

Submitted

Ok, this definitely is my favorite entry of the jam. Please make a mobile version of this!

Developer

Thanks! I will!

Submitted

Excellent geme! The better I've played so far in my opinion! It is original, beautiful, simple, fun! I am really curious about the programmation of this game. Are levels procedurally created? Did you use tilemap or navmesh to check if the path exists? Another question is : can you make a phone version of this? I'd like to play it outside! Also, The only two things I feel a bit sad about are the fact that you didn't customize your buttons and the fact that there are not a lot of sound effects (or maybe I didn't notice them) and that the music does not fit the game really well (but is really charming! :) ) I really loved playing it! :D

Developer(+1)

Thanks for trying it! Yep, I'm going to release it on mobile soon. You're right about controls - it was a big marathon of sleepless nights for me, so the last day of submission I just decided not to screw up what I've done trying to improve it:)

Music and sounds are free placeholders, will be changed on release.

About the levels - yes, they are procedural and created with wave function collapse algorithm. No tilemaps or navmesh used. 

Submitted

i was a little confused right at first, but after a minute it felt really good to play.

Developer(+1)

That's the main concern now - learning curve:) Thanks for trying it!

Submitted

I love it!

I think this would fit very well for a mobile puzzle game! Hope you release an android version at some point so we can kill some time solving these puzzles.

Developer

Thanks! This jam made me go far enough so now I have to make it a game:)

Submitted

Great Concept! The effects and final touches are really cool. But I find the game quite hard from the start, couldn't get past the levels without a hint... but that is maybe my silly brain :D.

Developer

No, you're good:) That the lack of tutorial\introduction levels, I need to fix that to make it more friendly. Thank you for trying it! 

Submitted (1 edit)

Super cool shader effect) Also nice & relaxing music.

Difficulty, as for me, is too big - I didn't finish first level and gave up)) Thing with moving hexes through odd amount of another hexes to invert it - drives me nut ) I think you have to simplify it.

Still - great game!

Developer(+1)

Thanks, comrade! There are some  core mechanics that should be explained in tutorial levels that I had no time to finish for this jam. It would help with solving in general. Yep, I will work on complexity and learning curve as it seems to be the main concern of players here.

Submitted(+1)

Very impressive entry. Nice simple puzzle, awesome looks, a job very well done, congratulations!

Developer

Thank you!

Submitted

cool game i realy enjoyed solving the puzzels , and i mostly liked the visuals and cool variations , but i`m still sure there could be an algorithme thats solves all the puzzels

Developer(+1)

Thanks for trying it! I made a solver based on the same wave function collapse algorithm and it solves them, but for big grids it takes tens of thousands attempts:)

Can I ask what you mean by mostly? What's your concerns/ideas on visuals? (like, I know they are a prototype, I just want to hear real frank thoughts from players experience) 

Submitted (1 edit)

Nice!,for the visuals i loved the visual effects , the textures , the style of the tiles, the animations, and the overal theme in general , the only thing is the lack of a similarely themed ui, but its okay . except that i find it really awesome , and really engaging , one of the best that i`ve played

Developer

Thank you for the clarity! UI sucks, I totally agree:) Will work on that

Submitted(+1)

Wow, I have to say this is one of the best entries I've played so far. I've seen some screens from it before on Reddit but didn't get around to play it until today. I love, absolutely love the graphics. It makes the game so calming. Perhaps the only improvement when I would suggest when it comes to visuals is maybe try to give some depth to tiles and buttons, unless you intentionally went for a bit of flatter look. Music is nice and fits in quite well but I don't know why I expected some strings instrument, probably I associate that with Celtic stuff.

Really great game and a pleasure to play it! Congratulations on making something so pleasing anc complete on your first go. Hope to see more from you :)

Developer

Thank  you for this kind words! You're right about graphics - it needs a lot of improvements. The buttons are default Godot controls and I hope to replace them completely. As for tiles - maybe some sort of normal mapping would work. Music is a free sample I found, it needs to be replaced too:) 
How's the gameplay? What grid sizes you tried? I don't want to bother you with a lot of questions - just please share any thoughts if you have anything

Submitted

I didn't go above the base grid size as I found it challenging enough for my taste. But now that you asked, I might just do that :D. I have to say I really liked the game design from perspective of playability, once you get the grasp of how things work.

Developer(+1)

Read the description again when you try bigger grids:) I was like "ok, I made it, I know how it works", but yesterday I got a challenge from a player (if you complete a pattern without hints you can get the challenge code and send it to friend so they will play the exact same layout but limited in time or moves based on your solution). I was devastated and spent almost a hour trying to solve that. 

Submitted

wow I really liked this game! I wanted to beat the levels without the hints, and got a couple, but I usually needed the hint eventually.

One weird thing was that I was able to solve several puzzles, but I don't really know how I did it, which I think is a good sign that the design is pretty solid.

The music was great and overall the game felt very polished. One of the best games I've played in this jam and one that I see myself playing in the future.  Great entry!

Developer

Glad you enjoyed it! You know, sometimes I don't understand the solution too:) But there are many solutions for most patterns (especially asymmetric ones) and you maybe making one of them and accidentally get another. 

There is some theory that helps solving and I need to make proper tutorials and training levels to explain it. Thanks again, you made me thinking about making it easier for beginners again. 

Submitted

I really like the aesthetic and the visual effects on the "rope". It's pretty difficult to solve these puzzles even with the hint. I've seen something in other games like this where they'll do a little shimmer on some tiles to give a subtle hint as to what you're supposed to rotate next, something like that could help!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for trying it! It's hard to implement proper hints there because most of patterns have more than one solution and could be solved differently. That's a big task to make it easier to start playing for beginners. Thanks, I'll continue improving it!

Submitted

I'm a huge fan of this and played for enough to understand the rotating in a triangular pattern to swap parity but not enough yet to solve puzzles without the picture of the final configuration :p

Is there a reference you used to design these knots, since I don't think Celtic knots are typically hexagonal?

One suggestion for making the game a bit easier to read is having slightly different gradients or colors on pieces of different types, so it's easier to see at a glance which two pieces are the same. I noticed though that there are pieces with the same edge types but different internal knotting (e.g. the straight Y piece and the knotted Y piece). Do those end up actually creating different knots in practice?

Developer

Glad you enjoyed it! Three points turn is one of the core mechanics:) It takes time to develop some sort of vision that allows to play without hints, so you're doing good! 

There's no particular reference, I just love hexagons and tried to adapt celtic patterns to hex grid. 

There are several variations for the same edge/connection type, it makes the whole pattern to feel more or less dense and tangled. It's playing with perception and changes visual complexity without changing actual complexity. 

What do you mean about different gradients? Like every connectivity variation to have its own color? So you know how many sides are connected from color?

Submitted

Yeah, I was thinking each type of connectivity would have its own color so that you can tell at a glance that they're different from a puzzle perspective. Not sure if that would actually look nice in-game but I think it would help with learning to solve the puzzles!

Developer

Yes, it could look like a patchwork and be annoying for experienced players. Probably it could be used as some sort of highlighting in tutorial at the beginning. Thanks for your input!

Submitted

This is a cool little puzzle game and I love the theme. I can see hardcore puzzle fans really getting into this, the bigger knots were way beyond my skill level though. Haha.

Developer

Don't give up:) Thank you for kind words

Submitted

I tried it on linux and the audio settings worked.

Interesting game, very hard without the hints!

Developer

Thanks for trying it! It's a matter of habit I suppose. But without hints you can start challenges!

Submitted

Love the celtic knot theme! Too hard for my brain at the moment, though. Couldn't solve the first puzzle even with the hint, lol. I did notice the audio options didn't do anything for me (I'm on Linux, if that makes a difference).

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks! Try the smallest one (3x4) pattern size. It should have introduction levels I think. Basic movement, 3 point turn explanation, etc. Good point! I appreciate your input!

I'm sorry that audio settings don't work, I'll try to fix that. Asked my friend on Linux and he said he tested it muted:) Asked to test that again carefully and will reupload the fixed build later.

P.S. What Linux version are you running?

Submitted

I'll have to check out the simple puzzle, lol. I'm running on Arch Linux.

Developer

Strange bug. Two other folks reported it works fine on linux for them. I will continue researching.