itch.io

One improvement I'd love to have here would be treating same-color background as transparent. That is centering in this situation:

Resulted in this:


Regardless of that I am getting a lot of mileage out of this :)

Took me a while to get back to it - made some nice progress and enjoying the game a lot!

I can confirm the game seems to mostly work on Ubuntu with some caveats.

I've tested it on Ubuntu 23.10 on wine 9.0 (Downloaded via Wine HQ repos). It runs, though proceeding past the intro/loading a save takes long enough for "Program is not responding" window to appear. The main issue is that if you ever alt tab from the game and come back you can no longer click on anything - there's a sound effect, I can drag any opened window but can't interact with anything else.

Any chance for a native Linux build given that it's made in Unity? :)

Oh gosh, there are debug options under some secret keys but they all should've been disabled for this release. I can't really help you at the moment but I'll add a few changes for graceful handling of fatal errors and come back to you once the game is updated.

One thing though - if you could get the error to happen again, open the developer console (Usually F12 or Ctrl+Shift+i), then open the "Console" tab and make a screenshot of the whole error message with the stack trace, the whole red thingy that will appear.

Otherwise you'll probably have to clear the save (which can be done in the aforementioned console by running the command `localStorage.clear()` and refreshing the page) but until I come up with the update you'll have to play the early levels again... And avoid pressing any curious key combinations :).

That's a tough one to give a generic hint to. It's an open-ended level, there are at least two fairly distinct approaches that I am aware of. I can offer these two general hints:

• Keep in your mind how to change connections for Low Voltage Nodes (that is, the change must come from the other end and when you connect the path to the LV node it must be fully valid)
• Try to leave yourself enough space to move paths around wherever possible. You can easily get yourself into a dead end if there is no way to relink a connection.

And one very specific regarding the last node, encoded with rot13:

Gur qrirybcre-vagraqrq fbyhgvba gb gur ynfg pbaarpgvba vf gung lbh arrq gb eryvax gur oynpx cngu gjvpr va n ebj. Gur svefg eryvax vf gb tvir lbh fcnpr sbe gur frpbaq eryvax. Gur frpbaq eryvax vf gb jenc nebhaq gur plna (tbvat ol zrzbel abj, V pna'g npprff gur tnzr evtug abj) abqr gb perngr n cngu gb gur gbc-evtug bar.

That's a lovely idea but very, very, very unlikely for two big reasons:

• It would be additional development time that I doubt would pay back
• I still haven't figured out a control scheme for this game that would work for playing with a finger on a phone

Thank you! I would never put my storytelling anywhere near Clarke's, but I appreciate the remark nevertheless!

There doesn't seem to be a way to post spoilers in here so I used rot13.com (If you're unfamiliar just go to the page and paste the encoded hint) to protect the hints:

• Gur ebbz vf sbe fher fbyinoyr naq vg vf gevpxl
• Znxr fher lbh haqrefgnaq gur ehyrf sbe ybj-ibygntr abqrf - YI abqrf ZHFG ABG or pbaarpgrq gb nal cngu gung vgfrys unf n qrnq raq be n sbex.
• Sbexf zhfg bpphe ba gur abqrf vgfrys sbe YI Abqrf gb or unccl. Va bgure jbeqf, YI abqr vgfrys pna unir 3 be 4 cnguf pbaarpgvat gb vg, nf ybat nf abar bs gur cnguf gung pbaarpg gb vg unir n sbex be n qrnq raq.
• Guhf, abar bs gur zvqqyr 6 abqrf pna pbaarpg qverpgyl gb nabgure bs ugr zvqqyr abqrf.
• Fb nyy gur zvqqyr 6 abqrf zhfg pbaarpg gb gur bhgre 4 abqrf. Naq gurfr 4 bhgre abqrf zhfg pbaarpg gb rnpu bgure nf jryy, orpnhfr nyy abqrf bs gur fnzr pbybe zhfg or pbaarpgrq vagb bar ovt fgehpgher.
• Lbh bayl arrq bar cngu gung pbaarpgf gur yrsg rqtr jvgu gur evtug rqtr.
• Rnpu abqr unf cnguf pbzvat bhg bs nyy ninvynoyr fvqrf.

More spoilery hints coming here:

• Gur yriry npghnyyl fbyirf vgfrys vs lbh ernyvmr fbzrguvat sebz gur nobir uvagf.
• Gur fbyhgvba unf ebgngvbany flzzrgel - gung vf vs lbh znqr n qvntbany yvar guebhtu gur yriry bar fvqr jbhyq or n 180° qrterr ebgngvba bs gur bgure.
• Gjb hccre abqrf pbaarpg gb bar fvqr, gur guveq bar pbaarpgf gb gur bgure fvqr
• Gur yrsg naq gur evtug fvqr ner pbaarpgrq ol n qvntbany cngu.
• Gur gjb yrsgzbfg abqrf pbaarpg gb rnpu bgure ol gnxvat gur cngu nybat gur cvgf. Fvzvyne ba gur bgure fvqr.

Good idea, thanks!

Thank you! I must credit Alex Diener's gamedev videos for introducing me to the idea of seamless transition between different controllers. Without it I am pretty sure I wouldn't have bothered to add non-mouse controls to the game at all!

Sorry about the `z/x` confusion, I only noticed today that they're in the help file but don't actually work. Got it in my todo though! 

(Btw, that earlier report you made about hud buttons getting pressed in weird places is fixed and will be released in an upcoming update)

Nope, sorry, it's meant to subtly-but-confidently signal it's impossible.

I guess it only took 9 hours, the steam page for the main game is up and linked in the description :).

It must be related to Chrome! I couldn't reproduce it on Firefox but did so immediately on Chrome, thanks a lot for all the information, now that I can reproduce it I should hopefully be able to figure out what's causing it.

Thanks! That's pretty bizarre, but I think I have a clue what might be wrong, I probably just wasn't persistent enough to reproduce it.

Very soon. The exact date will be announced in a day or two, as soon as I can get the steam store page up and running.

Interesting! I can't reproduce it at all so a video would be very welcome. Please send me an email at maurycy@evidentlycube.com (probably best to not attach the video in the email but upload it to a cloud storage/YT, I am not sure if the spam detector won't be overzealous!) Or DM me on twitter @EvidentlyCube

Thanks for the feedback!

The hud/menu option should be solvable to an extent, make it not appear when the mouse is down.

You can also play the game with a keyboard, it's usually a bit slower than mouse but I think it beats touch pad by a mile.

Hi! Glad you're enjoying the game. I'll reply to all your woes here :).

First of all, if you haven't already, you may want to read the post mortem I've written. I might say things that are already covered in there.

In the defense of the level design the game was written in a week, while I also had regular job and a fresh toddler at home, which left no time to get tester feedback on the progression. Also most of the later levels were made at like 1-3AM or something so... haha.

I tried to make each level either require figuring out a single rule or reinforcing a previous rule or reinforcing multiple rules at once. It's impossible to have a single campaign which caters to everyone, because for some people there will never be enough redundant levels and others may figure things out correctly immediately. Which is why I tried to go for the least amount of stages without skipping any steps in-between. Essentially what I did was write down all of the rules for each element, then try to dissect them even more and finally create a stage for each one.

Obviously I failed (I agree with your criticisms), the chameleons and brackets are the most obvious examples, but I am not too hard on myself. The game was fun to make and everyone who played it and gave me feedback was positive about the experience :).

I think a better game would be where you had the output and had to create the input!

Btw, check out Alex Diener's LP of the game, very insightful to see how others approach the same puzzle.

I like the idea and would certainly like to see it expanded to a bigger game. My only suggestion would be to make the movement 8 directional so that moving up moves you actually up, because I always have a problem with this movement scheme that is currently in the game :)

It's a bit late, but for Machine at the Heart of the World you can use Numpad instead of QWEASDZXC. I figured I'll advertise the letters for people who have keyboards without the numerics but that might've been a slight mistake :)

Mostly time limitations and the fact that gamepad controls for a game like Machine at the Heart of the World tend to be confusing to average person and there was no time to make them easy to understand.

Is there anything in this game other than moving the pencil past the right edge of the screen?

Ah, good old Yerzmyey. I had a chance to see him I like the concept and would totally like to see this idea expanded and polished. The controls were pretty confusing at first and unwieldy later when things became hectic, but in general a really fun game.

I liked the idea and I think it could be expanded into a really fun game after the jam.

Thanks!

No, I kind of gave up on level 4, but if you're saying it gets harder later I'll give it another go before voting ends!

I mean currently you can fluidly walk between the grid tiles and stop anywhere you like. What I prefer (and it's mostly personal preference) is that one press in a direction will move you all the way to the next tile.

An alternative I'd also be cool with would be to just make it possible to walk diagonally or walk over the corners :).

And yea, I figured out that's the reason for the first levels being simple, but being a kind of a hardcore gamer myself I usually like to skip the fluff and go right away into the action.

That was pretty amusing!

I like the idea, although personally I'd have preferred faster movement and/or even complete grid-locking so that it made the easy levels faster to go through.

Glad you liked it :)

Oh gosh game I think you're cute too *blushes*

Thank you!

•  Think for Yourself
• Fixing the World
• Everything Stops

Now to be fair, I have an idea for a project that would fit all/any of the themes I just listed :). For that reason I'd also be totally fine with no theme (or multiple themes to chose from), because I would like to do that project and, also, to allow others to have a stab on something they are more excited about.