itch.io

Thanks, sounds reasonable!

Here is the fixed version: https://lazyanttu.itch.io/the-unstable-key 
It still contains some bugs, but not the game-breaking ones (hopefully not any) present in the jam version.

My maps for of war did not update after moving (but did after resting, loading the game, etc.), which caused a major issue. I fixed the bug but missed the deadline by a few minutes :'D

Should I remove the jam entry and instead push a fix so random people on itch don't have to play through a major broken feature?

Made my first improvement and first post-jam devlog to https://lazyanttu.itch.io/wordless-war that I'm going to polish for this jam ^^

Should I submit this game immediately, even though I'm going to make further devlogs and polish improvements, or only after I consider it "done" for this jam?

Spot on! The game would have required informative animations to communicate what was happening. I consider adding them after the jam.

Thanks for playing!

I'll "humble up" and add a few words after the jam and improve the presentation. It was fun to try this as a challenge, but it was too hard to pull off! I plan to improve this game after the jam based on the useful feedback.

I think it has depth, with the 6 unique factions having different play styles; they are not just reskins of each other.

Yeah, went too ambitious!

The tutorial side was the weak point, and I am either scrapping it or improving it much for the future. The highlight point is good. I consider adding that post-jam. Thanks for the idea!

Thanks for the feedback! Animated icons, better symbols, etc., would have made it much better indeed. I'm considering if I have time to make them post-jam to improve the experience.

Thanks for playing! I will, in the future, improve the presentation and add some words and symbols with better clarity. I considered taking a game from a text-heavy, complex genre and tried to distill it into a wordless game, but it was indeed too hard to pull off under this restriction!

Thanks for the feedback, and glad that you liked it!

Yeah, it was not perhaps the correct jam to get inspiration for this. I focused too much on the "wordless" part and less on the "immediately understandable".

Thanks! Likely was a bit too ambitious.

I need to work on the presentation and make it more approachable. Nice to hear you liked the presentation!

Thanks for the playtesting video; it was very enlightening to see how it went and what caused the wrong kind of confusion! That helped a lot to understand the issues.

Yes, you are correct. I am actually planning to reskin the game with UI and symbol improvements, and some text additions. I will still keep the faction mechanics and strategies partially hidden (it is part of the puzzle to decipher what they do), but currently, wrong things are causing confusion, like "what happens in battles", "how to move units", and "what these are". The mystery should be at a deeper level, not at the surface.

Indeed, this game couldn't be "wordless", but the jam restriction pushed it towards elegance, where it could be "almost" wordless; by contrast, games in the 4X/strategy genres usually have very large amounts of text and symbols.

Thanks for the video!

Thanks for the feedback, the tutorial definitely needs rework or to be removed. Something I am likely going to do at some point.

I can give you a hint: the level of units depends on the faction. They gain a minor combat bonus from higher levels, but typically, each faction's different-tier units start acting in different ways, either in macro or in combat capabilities. They also gain typically more slots for attachments on higher tiers.

The highest can be an okay strategy; typically, you have 2-3 options to choose from. There is usually one with the most raw power, and some with utility value (such as allowing/preventing retreat, destroying enemy attachments, etc.). Going with the highest power is not wrong.

Do you mean attack in the strategic map or in the tactical map? In combat, there is no advantage to the attacker. The defender has the advantage that the attacker must select a combat tactic first, and the defender can see what the attacker chose. But no numeric difference. Some factions may have a tactic that is effective against enemy bases, a rare attacker advantage.

Thanks for the insights!

Yeah, the tutorial was the weakest part of the game. I will either remove or rework it in the future.

Thanks for playing, and I will try to make the symbols more legible and easier to understand in the future. Glad you liked the presentation!

Thanks!

One of the core ideas is that you can still win and plan effectively without understanding all the factions/mechanics and what they do. So that was a kind part of the presented puzzle along the strategy game layer!

Thanks for the feedback! You are correct: the icons need a rework to communicate more effectively. I am actually planning to make post-jam edits with some level of text. It will still not spoil what the factions are or what they do, but will tell you how to play and what the different results are.

My vision is a game where the mystery is what the factions are, what they do, and what strategy to use. Not what the UI does, what a symbol means, or what happened in combat, etc.

Yeah, the tutorial was really weak. I'm planning to get rid of it or improve it. Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the feedback. The tutorial was definitely the weakest part of the game. I'm considering either reworking or removing it. People who jumped into the game usually understood better than those who went to the tutorial. I accidentally created an anti-tutorial.

I will be adding some low-level text and reworking the UI someday.

Thanks for the feedback! I am considering developing it further, with a focus on clarity (but still not revealing what the symbols are verbally)

The camera occaisionally worked unintuitively or against what I would have expected. The overall mechanics, the squid boss and the whirlwind concept worked well. Audio design was superb. There could have been a bit more juice as feedback.

Excellent gravity-well puzzle. The difficulty progression was smooth, but in many levels you did not have to use nearly all your stars. Could have been neat if the game would have shown you the minimum number of stars you used to complete a level.

It felt polished and intentional.

I liked many things about this game. Everybody tended to lead to the worm. But managed to win! I was hooked the entire time.

The mute button did not work for me.

Very nice, perhaps my favorite entry of this jam. Won it, but I don't know if there was a way to lose it?

It never occurred to me what the different dice results on the cubes meant.

Final score 1100

Nice job finishing a game in 3 hours!

Base idea as a typical platformer works; you could have spent the remaining 75 minutes adding a second or third level.

Nice and very strong entry!

Towards the end of the first level, I had thought that "hey, this would be cool if there were shooting enemies", and was gladly surprised by it having the next level! And the third level was blast!

I think this game rewarded positioning, flanking, and flow control nicely. Would like to see a longer version with more to do!

Nice work!

It was quickly intuitive, simple, and engaging. I liked the variety of the binas; it was fun to see the tower looking so chaotic. Good feedback for the player in SFX and in responsivity.

There are two victories and one defeat, but actually, perhaps they all are victories :D

They are different conclusions of how you make choices. Perhaps better interpretation would have been that there are two endings where you "survive" and one where you "die", but manage to sacrifice yourself for something important. "Defeat" was perhaps wrong framing here, it is just one of the three endings.

Oh no! Thanks for feedback, there are 8 locations and 6 characters, but some get cropped out of in the non-fullscreen resolution. I need to increase the resolution on the itch settings. Thanks for finding out!

EDIT: I increased the non-fullscreen resolution, now all should be visible. You could try again!

Intuitive and fun initially (conlang-spirited, nice!), however, at some point, I started to expect either game victory or more mechanics to appear. The base mechanic itself overstayed its welcome at some point.

I think I got stuck in the screen where there are three boxes, and the crow looks at your cursor.

Intuitive and cool game, reminded me of Spore. The game feedback was not always intuitive about what was happening, whether I hit, etc., but otherwise a fun experience. Managed to eat the biggest dino.

Mechanics were indeed intuitive and self-explanatory, but it was quite long to win without providing additional challenges. The first time you had to use sheep-eating bushes to reach more sheep was great; the second time, it was a chore, for example. There were perhaps too many sheep / too large a map.

Also, it was unclear whether sheep could re-escape from the final area; there could be some sort of notifier to ensure that. Either the gate clearly has a one-directional arrow, or the sheep would graphically change upon re-entering the containment, etc.

Nice rule-discovery puzzle! It was immediately intuitive from the start.

The game was intuitive; I had a constant idea of what I was doing!

Excellent job! It was intuitive and had good difficulty. Lost first two attempts, and won the third. The night reveal was fun!

Cool mechanic, and it was immediately intuitive to me. Pattern recognition was a bit lacking at times, and feedback for not having enough mana/drawing left was a bit weak.

Solid entry!

The mechanics were spot on for the theme, as I immediately understood what was going on, and the puzzles were fun.

A few points that felt frustrating: If you had two adjacent boxes, getting them to separate via the red area was sometimes quite painful. Also, I didn't see the point of the energy system. Were there any puzzles that required it, rather than a tedious increase in artificial difficulty?

In the level 3 you can soft-lock yourself in, which is bit bad.

Initially, it started strong, it was immediately obvious that you could make progress by throwing the stone around to create stuff, but after that, it was very unclear what to do. It seems like the first step was intuitive, but not after that. I tried many different combinations but was quite stuck.

Thanks for trying!

The tutorial seems to be bugged in some browsers, I had other similar reports. That's something I will fix after the jam.  Sorry for that!