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Brandon JS Lea5 years ago

This was a really great game. Watching this little system of moving blobs is incredibly satisfying. The music and minimalist art go together in building this mysterious atmosphere.  I love how each blob type feels very distinct from each other as well.

Criticism wise I have a lot more to say, though I'll specify now that the game is great, it's just much easier to think of criticisms than compliments and I imagine more helpful. 

  • Having a separate square for the number of blobs and actually spawning one feels off, especially since all other units have the number next to them. I'm guessing there was a reason for this but some distinction between the counter and buttons would help to alleviate this quirk.
  • Some polish with the "buff blobs" would be nice, such as having selected boxes glow and being able to right click to disable a blob. I know in terms of practicality, having a blob on the end of your cursor doesn't change anything but it feels off having it stuck there until used.
  • A couple of the levels (marathon or something like that) felt un-puzzly, more just a case of the solution was obvious but I needed to execute it. This the exception rather than the rule however so its not a big deal. 
  • After a while, the green blobs built up on the final level and stopped spawning. I'm guessing this was more of a fail-safe than a feature but it felt quite exploitable. 
  • Some blobs acted inconsistently IE making jumps sometimes, other times not.
  • The stop signs felt a bit weak compared to the other powers. I only used them when they were introduced and necessary. They felt quite arbitrary and unpractical.
  • Blobs went up off the top of the screen but never came back down. I'm guessing this was deliberate but it felt off for them to just vanish. 
  • Finally, my biggest issue. Not having the ability to in anyway delete blobs or undo your mistakes can be very annoying and tedious. I understand this could be exploitable but perhaps having the ability to delete a unit one time would be the best of both worlds. As is, having to restart the final level over and over because my timing was slightly off on clicking a fast moving blob felt very unfair and I almost gave up at that point.

Criticisms aside, even with the inability to undo mistakes the game still holds up really well.

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Joqlepecheur5 years ago

Hi there. Don't worry about it, your criticism is always constructive.

  • the reason for this is I wanted to emphasize that you had a choice between spawning, or transform current blobs. I will distinguish the 2 further as you suggest. I will probably go with low effort and simply put a different color for available points. I won't allow to disable current blobs I will go into this later.
  • I will adjust this a little after jam: add an outline to the buff sprite, and allow unselect with right clic.
  • I will try to think of a small additionnal puzzle element to "Olympic games" ;)
  • It is indeed a fail-safe so that performance don't drop with too much blobs. If you find a wait to exploit it I think I will leave it for thinking outside the box.
  • I am puzzled about inconsistency, behavior should be the same. If you can remember a bit more about this I would be curious to know. I performed multiple playthrough and didn't notice this.
  • stop sign are a bit underwhelming indeed.
  • blobs disappearing on upper screen is a bug that slipped by, thanks for letting me know. I will fix after jam.
  • I understand your annoyance about not being able to cancel. The initial goal was to fit as much as possible in the theme "sacrifices must be made". If I had to expand on the game, I would rather add a power to self destruct the blob, at a cost. As for the last level, you shouldn't need to restart a lot: there are 15 spare points when doing the designed solution.  My guess is you probably went for a bit more difficult solution execution-wise. There are spare points in every level, if a level is too hard on execution I would rather go with more spare points. An alternative if I expand on the game would be a pause, but to be honest I will probably invest my time in another title I am currently working on ;)

Thanks for your detailed feedback !

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Brandon JS Lea5 years ago

Lacking points was never an issue for me. It wasn't a lack of blobs but more that they'd get stuck in awkward places. The "power to self destruct the blob, at a cost" sounds like it would be a good solution.

As for the  inconsistency. It only happened on the final level, though twice in two different locations. Both times I'd send a single test block, who'd succeed, following which I'd send a bunch who all do some alternative (miss a jump or something of the sort). I think I might of just realized the issue. When I sent one blob, everything's fine. But multiple meant there may have been a subtle performance hit, adjusting certain stats in some ways, ergo leading to a different output. Furthermore, each time this happened they were all sped up, my guess is that when sped up there's a lot more room for the math to vary since it's working with bigger numbers. The final level is also very crammed with variance in level geometry and stuff  so there's more chance for this sort of thing to occur. 

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