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I'm jumping the gun a little and testing some of the early entries! The link below is a Google Doc with my real-time thoughts.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NDU8JJY1KrnpsZTCBq5aNNp6VWDX4_nUzcL6D6eTECY/...


So, I didn’t play a ton of this, so I can only judge some of the early puzzles, but it is difficult to evaluate and give a ton of strong feedback to a title at this stage in development where it’s so unpolished.

I think the aesthetic of the game is really visually interesting, it’s quite minimalist and pops out with the high contrast sheer black and white. This same aesthetic on the other hand actively harms the game in a lot of ways. Everything from walls to boxes to floors to doors are a big white void, and so it’s frequently difficult to tell what I’m even looking at while I try to solve puzzles. What looks like a part of a wall can actually be a platform that moves up and down when you press buttons, what appears to be a line delineating the horizon of the floor ends up being one of the black lines used to show what buttons activate what. I want to say ā€œadd more coloursā€ to things like the activation lines, but that conflicts with the aesthetic. It is possible more textures would help, because 1-bit games that only use stark blacks and whites have been made before and work to convey their environments, although I’ve never seen a Portal-style puzzle platformer like this attempt that, meaning it’s possible the aesthetic simply isn’t reasonable for this type of game.

The lack of sounds obviously harms game feel and feedback, and the general physics of the game are uncomfortable and strange, but these aspects are clearly intended to be improved upon as development proceeds so I can’t put too much emphasis on that. I had a look at the previous Stixcape game for reference and it appears that game had the same aesthetic choices, although I only saw one comment and one review, so the actual reception of the title is harder to gauge and I’m not sure if this art style worked for your other players. In any case, the aesthetic and physics made it a really difficult experience for me, in spite of the clever concepts with the boxes and switches.

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I’m working on music and SFX right now, thanks to your feedback I’ll put physics in mind too. But I don’t think I’ll change the 2 colours concept, It’s what made me make this game. I look forward to find a solution instead of just adding more colours.

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Totally understandable! The stark black and white aesthetic is pretty notable so I also think it'd be a shame to incorporate more colours. That said, I'm sure you can think of other ways that can improve the play experience, especially once more testers roll in.

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Hey, thanks again for playing.

I’ve decided to add a third colour to the game being gray in a new version of the game, Gametest 2.

I made it for voting, hope you try it.