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slipperhat2 days ago(+1)

Always nice to see a PICO game pop up, and this was a lovely implementation of the theme within the confines of that ecosystem.

I don't personally play too many puzzle games, so I'm not sure how to describe it; perhaps it's Sokoban-esque? Regardless, this worked really well, both in implementation, use of the theme, and the actual feel in the game. There was definitely a knack to these puzzles and when I started encountering ones I had seen before the penny started to drop.

There were certainly some I just could not solve. I'm not sure if there's a situation where if I made a bad choice for the first move, all the blocks ended up in terrible positions that were hard to recover from, and whether this is a 'me' issue (which is pretty likely as I'm quite poor at these games).

I don't think I have much to say critically; I really think everything was designed well. The tutorial was helpful, and I love the overall look and feel of the game. Perhaps a little more variety to the puzzles could have been great, but honestly it's a charming and fun little PICO game that doesn't need much more! Many thanks.

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Nogardagem2 days ago(+1)

Thank you so much! I really wanted to make a PICO-8 game for this because I've been having fun with it lately.

I'm honestly not quite sure how to describe this game either lol. I know Sokoban tends to have per-tile movements and a player character or something so I'm not sure if this counts, but I really don't know what else to call it.

There were some levels I just couldn't solve either! Mostly because I would get impatient and mess everything up. Restarting when you mess up is very important but especially early in a run you can't afford many resets. I think to best fix this the first few resets per level should be free.

I also would have liked to add more variety to the levels but I was busy while making the game and couldn't come up with much more systems in the time I had. I think what I would have most liked is to make varying difficulty level sets, so say you could select 8x8 puzzles with 5 moving blocks as your starting setup and then the whole run would be like that. Also, I could have made it ramp up from the beginning of the run, so you're guaranteed to get past a first few easy levels and then you start to hit harder ones.

It's also always a struggle to add variety to random or procedural generation like this because it risks having some levels that are way too easy and some that are way too hard. It's already a problem with the simple level gen I have now but it would get so much worse. I know there's a right way to do it (look more in-depth on the possible level layouts you can get and how easy it is to go from any board state to any other), but again I struggled with time there for what would work best.

Thanks again for you detailed review! I'm very happy to get feedback like this.

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slipperhat2 days ago(+1)

You know, that makes me feel so much better to know that you also struggled! Honestly I feel like such a smooth brain when I'm playing puzzle games!

It is super tricky to decide how to get the variety, but having varied puzzle sizes is actually a great idea. Although for a jam it's probably in a great place size and difficulty-wise, perhaps it's only a consideration if you ever come back to it

Thanks for coming back to me all the additional info.

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Nogardagem2 days ago(+1)

No problem! I love getting to respond to people about my games, especially if they seem passionate. I do want to try coming back to this game sometime soon but for now I get a break because the jam is over. Thanks again for your comment!

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