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A member registered Aug 22, 2019

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life changing

That's a very cool solution! In one of the videos in Mark's dev log for this game he said that, due to mixing skill and puzzle based gameplay, the original demo had issues with people trying to do puzzle sections via platforming / skill, and platforming / skill sections via puzzling, and that moving forward he would stick to puzzles much more to avoid this.

This level seems like an example where perhaps the open endedness results in that problem reocurring. I did it a similarly time sensitive way, which I posted a video of in my comment. 

You have the middle block be in the up position, then switch the L gate with the magnet so that its in the way of the block's path down. Then you make the middle block fall, so it's resting on the L gate, and finally you set yourself up a bit right of the middle block, change polarities so that the magnet moves the L gate and middle block starts falling out of your way, and then time a jump across the gap really well so you can make it before the middle block hits the button and makes the left block fall on you.

(2 edits)

First off, the game feel is great. I found myself hopping in the hubworld instead of just walking because it felt nice, and I Iove the way you can drag yourself up an edge with your wheel to just barely make it. Tossing the magnet with quick toss is satisfying, and aiming is too when precision is required though the aim dots seemed to move a little choppily if I moved my stick quickly (which may be a me thing as I use an external program to turn switch pro input into xinput, since I played with an official Nintendo Switch Pro Controller). Changing the magnets polarity also felt great; manipulating it from a distance to manipulate the level is neat, and using it to pull yourself is a cool and fun mechanic due to how smooth the pull acceleration is combined with the rumble of snapping onto a polar wall or ceiling.

However, one thing that doesn't come up often, but does hinder game feel when it does is that picking up the magnet while jumping cuts your jump arc short, causing you to start falling immediately, removing some smoothness to the movement capabilities. Also, when in that situation, since I'm already holding jump, I tend to hold the throw button after picking up the magnet as well, causing me to unintentionally go into aim mode. Using aim mode toggle fixes this, and I'm thankful it's an option.

One interesting thing about the controls that came up is that if you are stuck to a ceiling while holding the magnet you can use jump to let go, rather than the throw button, however when not stuck to a ceiling, you can not use jump instead. it makes sense to not have a midair jump input always let go of the magnet, but allowing it to do so when hanging made me correlate the jump button with "let go while being pulled" and i found myself multiple times trying to use jump, rather than throw, to let go while being pulled up to where I needed to go.. In this case the character doesn't let go, and the first time this happened I had a moment where I tested the controls and found this all out.

Furthermore, when hanging from the ceiling, using throw to let go only works if the button is tapped, if the button is held, the magnet is not released upon releasing the button, which I dont think makes sense for gameplay purposes. I assume this is due to holding causing you to enter aim mode, rather than quick throwing, since when aim mode toggle was on this did not happen, and releasing the button let go of the magnet no matter how long it was held.

Using the throw button also feels a bit less snappy due to the throw happening on the release of the button rather than press, and I understand why this is, as usually the game needs to wait to detect if the player intends to hold in order to enter aim mode, but it does create a minorly less responsive feel. Even with enter aim mode toggle activated, tapping throw still throws on button release rather than button press, and I think it would be nice if it happened on press when the toggle is being used since the hold is no longer needed. It's not a big deal for a game like this, especially since the difference is minor, just a personal pet peeve of mine.

Also, while I get why it's there, as to avoid confusion with skill based vs puzzle based play, I wish the delay on how frequently you can switch polarity was just a little shorter, as to make quickly using polarity to get up to a ledge more smooth. A good example is in the second to last level, where, on the right side of the screen, if you start by standing on the ledge under the polarity beam with a blue magnet, you can't shift the magnet to red then back to blue fast enough to get up the ledge without slamming into the ceiling, and while slamming into the polarity ceilings and walls feels good when you intend to, it's more fun for me to time a shift well in order to use that upward momentum to have a smooth parabola of motion up on to a ledge. It also would be nice if, at least as a toggleable option, there was a visual indicator for the polarity shift cooldown.

Another random thing about the controls: If I mashed my dpad around while spamming jump I could sometimes get it to where holding up or down + a horizontal would contiuously move me in the direction opposite to the horizontal I was holding. When I let go of up or down, though still while holding the horizontal, the character would begin moving in the correct horizontal. I'll link a video of it happening at the bottom of my comment, including me fumbling around mashing jump and my dpad trying to get it to happen. The part where I start moving contiously left, I'm actually holding down right. I tap jump while still holding down right, and when my character starts moving right again thats the moment that I let go of down.

[After typing the above paragraph and making the video, I discoverd I can also make it happen just by extremely quickly, like as fast as I can, moving my dpad input from right > down > left, and in this case while holding left the character moves right. Doing it this way I do not jump at all, so maybe that has nothing to do with it.]

Another controls oddity. I was able to get a jump buffered from midair to be much smaller than I could make a normal jump even when pressing the button as fast as I possibly could. I'd assume this is because it only counts button held time starting from when I hit the ground even though my input happened midair.

Final things about controls. In the options menu, I didn't inherently get that LT and RT were used to change menu, I just assumed I had to use keyboard and mouse for that until I had finished the game and investigated deeper. I also had some confusion getting the enter aim mode toggle option to work. When toggled off (which is the default) the controller menu lists a bind for "enter aim mode" which doesn't do that because aim mode toggle is off, but because it said that's what it should do I just assumed it was broken. Conversely, when aim mode toggle is on, the controller menu lists this bind as "cancel aim mode". It seems these labels got reversed. It would also be nice if the mouse wasn't visible when using controller input.

In terms of the puzzles I think they were pretty well designed. I had a few aha moments for sure, with level 3 being a simple one when I realized I could use the polarity block as an elevator, but there were a few more throughout the demo. Running through the logic of the puzzles step by step was also enjoyable. Sometimes I do puzzles by a cycle of trial and error, then thinking, going in without much preplanning, just testing the waters to see what works and what doesn't, then, after finding a problem, and doing some thinking, I go in with that new information on my next attempt (or just continue, if a restart isn't required). In doing this I could feel the steps of the puzzle unfolding which was great. I remember having one of those "that's how they get you" moments where I thought i had completed the puzzle, then started to head back towards the key, and realized it was inaccessible, which is a good thing, as I'm being forced to think.

Two things worth mentioning though, is that in the second to last level i found the solution completely accidentally, not in the "I did trial and error, found an issue, and was forced to think" kind of way but more in the "thoughtlessly stumbled upon it" kind of way. I never realized that the lip of the L switch gate would reach over a little bit into the polarity block's path until it happened by accident. I also first found a seemingly unintended partially skill based (rather than puzzle based) solution before the intended one, which I'll link a video to at the bottom.

Finally, the only visual problem I encountered was the floor and ceiling flashing weirdly from darer to lighter gray in the right side of the "thanks for playing" area when walking around it. I was playing in full screen when it happened, on windows.

Overall though, the game was a good time. I can see this coming out to be a pretty cool game with interesting and enjoyable puzzle mechanics wrapped up in a great movement engine.

Videos: https://imgur.com/a/3pfd2pQ

Edit: I've seen some sentiment that the whole "try, find an issue, think it through" playstyle I mentioned is not a good thing, but I don't think I agree. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for a puzzle game's levels to, instead of being a roadblock followed by one all important insight, be solved in a more step by step way, with critical thinking required at each step, so long as said thinking isn't super easy, and while I wouldn't say this demo was hard, I never found it to be boring. 

Edit 2: Forgot to mention: It's probably not worth putting in, but allowing the right stick to be used for a directional quick throw might be cool. Also, I agree that throwing up the magnet to get into levels was kind of off putting, partially because throwing the magnet up didn't feel as smooth as side to side.

Great game! The graphics, animations, and sound effects come together perfectly for an adorable aesthetic. Love the panda <3. With more levels it could totally sell on steam if you want to go that far. If you want you could put levels where certain actions have 2 or 3 uses so the puzzles can get complex. Also key binding would be cool. I like to play with one arm and relax my other hand if I can when playing games, and restart on enter means I need to move one my hands. I know... I'm lazy xd.