itch.io

spikes could use some code.

Very meditative. At first I tried to avoid the arrows, then later to collect them all. could use with a fast-forward button when you get bored tho.

dev log https://alanrobinsondev.itch.io/digital-artifacts-a-tileswap-puzzle-game/devlog

seems like it would be handy if the submission form had a spot to link to the devlog?

I'd be interested in playing this more except that coin pickup sound is just the most hideous thing to hear more than about 10 times. And I can tell that 10 is a very small version of what I would actually end up hearing if I played anymore.

ah, ok. never mind then. 

Review/commentary: There's a lot to like in this game. I love the visual style, the exploration, and how open ended it is. and It feels easy to get lost in a good way; but eventually you become very familiar with nooks and crannies. I also love the emphasis on figure it out for yourself rather than being spoon fed.

However, (isn't there always one?), It turns out to be a lot more a precision platformer than I was looking for. In good part I think this is because the isometric perspective makes it very hard to make precise jumps and some of those are definitely needed.  From what I've seen it's not a big part of the game but it's absolutely necessary making it kind of a blocker if you are not into that. To be fair to the game its description does mention that difficult platforming is part of the deal. 

This isn't really criticism, after all you can't make a game that everyone will like! 

Hi I've been working on my game for over a month but I did release it after the jam started. Does that qualify?

Thanks for the honesty AND kind words. ;-)

The animation is really good. It's a little bit more of an interactive movie than a game . But as such it focuses on telling about the story than most games .

If it was me I would lead more with what the actual gameplay is like. At least a sentence or two. I have no idea from what I am reading although I am guessing maybe RPG action or not who knows.

Interesting. I found it a little harder to control my mouse cursor than I expected but then I'm playing on a laptop so I suppose it's really more of a criticism of the touch pad.  Historically this sort of game would have a lot of momentum built into the cursor so that you had to anticipate a little bit rather than moving just like an actual regular mouse cursor would. I don't know which is better, But more more momentum would make it feel more like an actual game and less like a novelty. 

I think I'd like this better if it wasn't a Pico 8 game. In particular the fact that you have to open and close the library constantly is kind of a drag especially given that there's plenty of screen space to show both the library and the playfield simultaneously at least on my computer that has a slightly better specs than a "real" Pico 8.

Thanks!

I tried it, I managed to pass the first level, and then couldn't tell what I was really trying to do. Oh well, moving on.

My review: 

This is a pretty good puzzle game and in a somewhat unusual move actually has a pretty interesting storyline that goes along with it. At his core it's a game where you have to sweep over every single cell on the level visiting each once. To this several elaborations are added that make it new and interesting. 

The unfortunate part in my mind is about halfway through the puzzles switch from being the sort that you can puzzle out to being the sort you kind of need to brute force because too many of the interactions are hard to predict . Thus I got tired of playing it around the 2/3 point and never got to see how the story ended, although I have my theories. ?

Presentation is excellent as are the controls and quality of life. And, full touchscreen support!

Hi everybody! After discovering how hard it was to get noticed on Steam despite having to pay the $100 submission fee I decided to move over to ITCH and give away my work and at the same time not have to pay to do it! my My first game here is decidedly casual and you've seen things similar to it but definitely not the same. At least I hope so. It's a unique variant of the jigsaw tile swap genre. Instead of swapping individual pieces it uses a sliding mechanism (no hole required!) to shuffle parts. To be clear, it's not a 15 puzzle; you can move any piece in any direction.   Give it a try and let me know what you think! Also, if I made any mistakes in how I've set up my itch page I would appreciate hearing it.

PS. All of the images used are mine. I took them. No AI image-gen here! Of course it's possible that stock photographs or AI generated imagery might be A Little Bit More Exciting. But I hope you appreciate the human touch.

seems to be missing vsync. adding a frame limiter really helped my laptop from melting. please consider fixing, it's one line of unity code.

for such a low fi game it's clear the dev never considered the ability to play on a laptop / touch pad, this absolutely will not work without a 3 button mouse.  

Also, it seems to soft-lock on the first level after achieving all the goals.

Fun "meta" game. Or is that "fun" meta game.  Depends on your tastes I think. 

visuals are fantastic; storytelling and gameplay are just OK. Still, worth playing. 

Yeah, makes sense. Easy enough to fix manually, of course.  

what's the control scheme?

there are some small errors in the demo scene - the bundled postprocessing settings aren't applied, and you've left a (presumably) orphan script reference attached to the scene camera. 

Don't BUY! Crashes on startup (win11)