Just played through the game a few times and here are some observations. I was playing on a mouse and keyboard because I don't own a controller.
First the good. The mechanic is solid and enjoyable. There is a ton of potential with it! Finding the solution always felt fair, even when it took me a minute to get there. A big part of that was that each puzzle room fit in a single screen, which meant I could take in the entire picture as I went. The progression of new mechanics and their introduction was spot on. I really liked the little robot.
The critique. Sorry it's so much longer than the praise xD It's very easy to sum up what you like without going into detail, but critiquing always feels like it needs more precision to convey exactly what you mean, you know?
- Jumping felt very floating, in a way where I never felt like I could reliable execute precise jumps. In particular, it felt like I jumped with an initial speed and if I held the jump button the jump would accelerate the higher I went. Which left me frequently finding myself jumping too high then being frustrated at the slow fall speed and feeling like I was having to wait too long to land so I could try again.
- On several of the puzzles, mostly the ones involving the screws, I would figure out the solution pretty early on, then get stuck on nailing down the execution. The screws moved very slowly with no way to reset them quickly after I had already missed on that attempt, so it felt like there was a lot of sitting around waiting to be allowed to retry.
- Relatedly, I tried just restarting the level a few times because that was the fastest way to get the room back to it's initial state, only to find myself several rooms back, having to replay through puzzles I had already solved. Which is to say, resetting the entire level when there are multiple rooms can be a frustrating situation, especially when I got myself stuck and had to restart. It would be nice if each individual room was considered its own "level" for the purposes of restarting.
- The slow swipe transition to restart levels felt like it took longer than it really needed too. It would be nice to hit a button and pretty instantaneously reset to the start of a puzzle.
- The one way platforms felt inconsistent in their rules. Particularly not being able to pass through them upwards with a magnet but then later being expected to drop through them with a magnet. It also felt weird that I couldn't throw the magnet upwards through them.
- The slowed movement speed right after landing felt bad. Especially when combined with the floatiness of the jumps. It made the puzzles that required precise movement feel unnecessarily difficult. I frequently found myself trying to avoid jumping whenever possible as a result.
- It felt like it took a long time for magnets to respawn.
- I feel like I might have solved the last puzzle incorrectly? The one where you have to ride a plug across a spike pit then use the magnet to block a laser to open a pair of locked doors. The solution I came up with was destroying the magnet and hoping the new one would spawn and fall onto the moving plug. If that was the solution, then the lag between the magnet being destroyed and a new one spawning made it feel less like I was getting the timing right and more like I was taking wild stabs at the wrong answer and being punished for it.
Bugs!
- Multiple times I got trapped trying to drop down through the one-way platforms. The platform would flip to the open sprite and the robot would freeze halfway through and require resetting the level.
- It was possible to grab the hanging switches from a distance, which sometimes meant that if there was an open space, a vertical wall, and a hanging switch recessed behind the wall, I could jump against the wall and hold the grab button and my little robot arms would stretch through the wall to grab it. Which occasionally got me stuck on the wall.
- The throw targeting dots seemed to remember their last position and would start the next throw in that direction, regardless of the direction I was holding. So if I threw the magnet left and up, then picked up a new magnet and hit the throw aim button while holding to the right, the indicator would start pointing up and to the left and only change to indicate the new direction if I clicked the throw button a few times. Often I would try to throw the magnet and instead just drop it at my feet (er, wheel I guess).
- Throwing a magnet horizontally so that it lands between two one-way platforms would result in it becoming trapped and the level needing to be reset.
- When standing on a one-way platform that had another platform above it, moving sideways, jumping, then immediately moving back and forth rapidly (eg, moving right, jump, start alternating the movement keys left, right, left, right, etc) occasionally resulted in the robot slowly zigzaging his way up into the air. Coming in contact with any over surface would immediately cause the robot to start obeying the laws of gravity again.
All that said, this was very fun to play and honestly really impressive to me. It's super cool that you were able to put this game together and get it out there for other people to play. I kinda hope you keep working on it because I would play the hell out of a longer version! Keep up the good work!
