Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags
A jam submission

PuzzledpaineView game page

"The Dark Souls of puzzle games." - Absolutely nobody
Submitted by JePaCa — 17 hours, 44 minutes before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

Puzzledpaine's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Presentation - Graphics and Sound#23.3953.667
Overall#32.8293.056
Creativity - Use of Theme and Originality#42.7773.000
Fun Factor#42.3152.500

Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

What country do you currently reside in?
Canada

Are you a part of the Caribbean diaspora?

Yes

You were born in the Caribbean or your parents were born there

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Host

So I read the instructions on the page (I’m trying to be a good gamer haha) and I had no idea what was happening the first time I played. It could be me, but it wasn’t obvious that I needed to place the puzzle pieces on the grid location. I thought it would be moving puzzle pieces around because there’s a command to “shuffle” pieces, which I assume means switching the position of a piece.

That was frustrating to put it nicely. Once I figured it out, it was pretty good! Place puzzles, roll away, rinse, repeat. Simple fun after the rocky start. Nice visuals and audio as well!

Submitted

don't know what I am doing wrong but every time I have one piece left in the puzzle, when i place it the game crashes

Developer

It's not you at all! I'm not sure why at the moment, but seems like there's a pretty common thing that causes the game to crash instead of showing the victory screen.

Submitted

Honestly, I found this game kind of frustrating to play. It took a while to figure out the controls, then longer to figure out what 'place right piece, place left piece, shuffle right piece, shuffle left piece' actually meant, what I was supposed to do, and the overall objective.  I also had such little health and too many enemies, two hits and I was out every time. On the plus side, I loved the graphics and audio! Great presentation.

Developer

If you have time to say more, what was it that you had to figure out about the controls? Like, what pieces were or something else? (There is definitely a paucity of proper teaching, in terms of the aims of the game)

Submitted

Part of it is that I’m more used to moving with WASD, so using the arrow keys was an adjustment for me, but most of the confusion I think had to do with not understanding the mechanics or objectives, so I didn’t understand what I was supposed to be accomplishing by hitting certain buttons. The biggest examples I can think of right now are 1) not knowing for a while what the numbers on the tiles meant (I thought they were attacks/abilities and the number was how many times you could use them) and 2) thinking shuffle tile meant that after you placed a tile you could push them around the grid

Developer

Ah, I see. Thank you for your feedback!

Submitted

I definitly have a bit of an opinion of this game, you basically have to figure out how to even start the game with the controls being all over the place, next time you can put the controls in more reasonable places, such as WASD as movement, E as shuffle right piece, Q as shuffle left piece, etc..

Actually beating the game was actually fun besides figuring out that the numbers were where the piece acutally was, running away from the enemies while putting the pieces down in a chaotic manner, seeing the puzzle come together is satisfying besides the fact that it abrubptly cuts off as the puzzle is complete.


The graphics were interesting to say the least, the environment and other objects didnt feel like they can go together. The lack of sounds can be easily forgettible since you are paying attention at the enemies.


Overall, its a good game but it has alot of room to improve

Developer

Thank you for the feedback! For clarity, you didn't have any sound when you played the game? No music, no enemy SFX, no player SFX?

Submitted

I had sound, its just that I found there to be a lack of sfx used, maybe a music track in the background would have been nice

Developer

Oh, there should be background music and SFX on things. Walking, rolling, enemies, enemy attacking, placing pieces, etc. I'll take a look in case something broke, but that's pretty strange. Thank you for the feedback!

Host

Can you put a screenshot or alternative image for the game’s cover page? Makes it nicer when sharing later. Also, maybe add controls on the game page? Definitely add credits for any assets that you’ve used. Resurrecting my Windows machine to actually try it out lol.

Very Dog, much puzzle, wow.

(1 edit) (+1)

The controls were confusing to understand at first (I blame my own lack of ability to read simple instructions place right in front of me 😅), but once I got into it it felt so good to move around, dodge, juke enemies, and just control my character in general! My goodness, you got the controls for the character down really good, to the point where if this was an actual 2.5D style Souls game, it would feel so good to get back up after a death and go fight that boss again, only to die for the 40th time. 

And that art style, my goodness that art style! It looks really good with the character, the enemies and the actual room. They seemed to not fit at all with the pictures being made however, to the point where it is very jarring to see the picture being made in this setting. I get that you wanted to make it like a jigsaw, so you used jigsaw-like pictures, but it just doesn't sit well in my eyes. I noticed a couple of issues with the rest of the gameplay aspects too.

The placing down mechanics was pretty confusing as well, till I realized that each piece is numbered so you know exactly where to place the pieces. But then the question became "what is the challenge behind placing the pieces?" It took me a while to realize the enemies had just not been aggroed onto me, so I replayed the game with all the enemies aggroed on me first before placing the pieces. Still, placing the pieces felt like there wasn't a challenge to it, especially when enemies would try to attack me, leave, and just never come back. Even after trying to aggro them, they would still just leave and even disappear entirely at some points. In the end, it felt like you had the start for a really good action-adventure/dungeon-crawling game with mechanics shoehorned in for assembling a jigsaw puzzle. If you do wish to work on the game in the future, I would personally like to see you lean more towards the mechanics and aesthetics you already have in place, or to revamp the puzzle mechanics more to better fit with everything else you already have. Please, whatever you do, do not throw away your current movement coding. It feels so pristine, I kinda wish you would use it in any future games you make too.

Also, a small side note, it was kinda weird to be kicked out very suddenly after finishing the puzzle. That isn't a good or bad thing that changes the ranking of your game to me, it's just a thing I noticed 😅. 

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks for the detailed comments! I agree with basically all of it, haha.
EDIT: I misunderstood part of your comment before. Watching my wife play through it, looks like there's a bug with the victory screen sometimes where the game just...ends instead.