Post by Ingix in The Power of 45 Brains comments

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Very nice game from the "graphical programming" genre. For the jam it is OK as is, for further development I have the following suggestions:

1) At least a readme file that contains what is explained above here, because just 'as is' the game is not discoverable. Much better would be an ingame explanation and tooltips what the different brains do and 'how the game works'.

2) As Taupsi said, some means to continue playing the game from where one left of. Minimum would be some way to select some level no XXX, better would be if the game saved which levels I already solved and would present me with a seletion screen where the solved levels are marked (say green) and the unsolved are red (or may open/closed lock).

3) I initially did not realize that the 'exchange the colors around the rainbow' brains come in two versions (rotate clockewise and counterclockweise). Maybe inside the ring of colors there could be a curved arrow that goes (counter-)clockwise to make players understand that, because the current symbols are too similar to make the player see the difference, IMO.

Foggy Cornslakes7 years ago

Thanks for playing! Sorry for the delayed response - we've just posted an update to the game, which includes our attempts to address the issues and suggestions you've brought up.

We *are* planning on further development (casually, for the next couple of weeks until the presumed stream, at least) - so if you don't mind giving the game another go, we would love to hear some more of your thoughts of it!

Ingix7 years ago (1 edit)

Graphical and UX improvements are obvious in the v0.2 version. I hope you didn't have to sacrifce too many testers to get those nice brain images ;-)

Played until level 07 (Chancellor) , which was hard for me, although the solution isn't that complicated.

One little problem I noticed: When you select a brain or the emitter for starting a connection line that object is graphically marked. But when you reach the end of a connection (the receiver of that connection), this object is not marked (although I saw that the connection line will snap once it comes near a brain). This way I 'overshot' a few times and the connection was not made when I released the mouse button. It would IMO be good if the receiver object (brain or the final receiver) would also be marked, so that the player is sure that the desired connection has been recognized by the game when the mouse button is released.

Will play more after the weekend and make more comments if I find something.

Keep up the good work!

Foggy Cornslakes7 years ago (1 edit)

Thanks!

Rest assured that no testers have been harmed in the making of this game. As an ethical development team, we have a strict policy of only using brains of the naturally deceased, or lab grown brains. Full disclosure - while this hasen't happend yet, had come across a brain of considerable comedic value, the aforementioned policy will be disregarded.

We are looking into various possible hint systems, and also trying to make the difficu;ty curve more gradual by adding additional levels.

Regarding the last suggestion -have thought it's such a great idea, we immediately implemented it and it's working great, it will be included in the next update for sure.

Again, thanks for playing - your feedback really helps.

Ingix7 years ago

In order of decreasing importance:

1) I played V1.6 until level 15, and while some were easy, some less so, level 12 (Warm) has me totally stumped. I assume at the moment that something went wrong and it is basically unsolvable. The description "Warm colors only" seems to imply one thing, but the actual requirement is that you have to produce a certain sequence that is 'totally random' and changes from each trial to the next. Here (My version of level "Warm") you can see that the same input color (green) has a different output triplet each time it occurs. Please check that level!

2) In the manual level selection some levels have some number attached to them (see here), what does this signify?

3) It would be nice if the process stopped when an error happens, so that one can see where it went wrong.

4) A 'single step' speed that waits indefinitely and advances the machine one step when a certain button is pressed would also be 'nice to have'.

Best regards,

Ingix

Foggy Cornslakes7 years ago

Hi Ingix, again sorry for the delay - we somehow missed these comments until now.

1) Regarding the "Warm" level, as well as other levels, we are having a really hard time finding a good way to represent the input/output requirements in a way that is intuitive and readable. In the screenshot you attached, what is presented as the required output is correct - but imagine you filter out from the input every signal that isn't a warm color, and then collapse all the remaining empty (grey) signals - you would get the sequence orange, red - which is the beginning of the output sequence.

A general way to think about this problem is that there is no 1:1 match between an input signal in some location in the input sequence, and an output signal in the corresponding location in the output sequence.

In the input sequence, we show you exactly which signals the generator is going to create in each game beat. That means we have to include empty signals.

In the output sequence, however, we completely disregard empty signals. That is - if you can get your brains to produce the pattern "red empty empty empty red empty empty...", that would satisfy the requirements of an output "red red red...".

The reason for that is twofold - first of all, we can't know what the delay is going to be between the time the first signal is generated and the time it reaches the output sensor - that depends on the structure the player builds. Secondly, disregarding empty signals allows many more possible solutions to the puzzles, and some of them would be impossible without it.

Since the beginning of the project we knew that representing the input/required output in going to be a challenge, but we overestimated our ability to overcome it...

2) The numbers appear next to stages you've completed, and are a scoring system of sorts: the first number is the number of brains you didn't use in the stage, the second number is the number of brain connections you didn't use (i.e. the maximum number of connections possible between the amount of brains available in the stage minus the number of connections you used in your solution)

3,4) It's been a while since we worked on the game, thanks for the suggestions, we'll add them to the backlog, and if we get any idea on how to significantly improve the game which will motivate us to go back to it (for example, a solution to the problem described in 1)), we'll make sure to implement them.

Thanks again for taking the time to play and comment!

Ingix7 years ago (1 edit)

Playing version 2007-07-10:

1) Had to skip level 23 (Mind over Matter) because it's too hard for me. Good that this skip feature is there, because any level can be too hard for somebody.

2) When the numerical manipulation brains appeared (first the one with the "+" sign) I incorrectly assumed that they would take any input numbers and output the sum of them (ignoring non-numerical input). That was what the "+" sign signaled to me. It took me several trials to find out that they are increment brains (thay are only called that in a later level). I suggest changing the images to read "+1" and "-1", resp. and calling them increment brains on the very first level they come up.

itch.io

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