lol! So obvious in retrospect.. cool game!
maladroit
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I'm pretty stuck on this level — is there a mechanic I'm missing with the small box in the bottom left?
As far as I can work out, I need to be able to reset the red stopper in the bottom right in order to exit the level. The assumptions I'm making are:
- The red, blue and green blocks can only move left and right, not vertically
- Once I'm round the corner, next to the exit, there's nowhere I can move the red blocks.
- The block in the bottom left can move anywhere in the bottom half of the level, but it can't go down a 1x1 corridor, which means it can't get into the top part between the red and blue blocks, and it can only block the right-angled corridor in the bottom right.
Confused!
That was very cool — I ended up freestyling my way toward the solution but once I found it, the aha moment resonated backwards and made everything seem retrospectively obvious. Which I think is always a real design achievement in conceptually fiddly puzzles like this one! Aaand makes me hope you might explore the idea further in the future :)
I didn't use the top left section at all. Curious what the intended use of that bit is!
Lbh pna perngr n oevqtr npebff gur tnc gb gur ohggba ng gur gbc bs gur znc. Gura lbh whfg arrq gb trg gur oybpx va gur gbc evtug bss vgf yrqtr naq vagb gur oynpx G funcr. Gura lbh pna chfu vg hcjneqf naq npebff fb gung vg snyyf bhg bs gur G naq pna or chfurq npebff gur oevqtr ba gb gur ohggba.
This is one of my favorite games you've made -- really fun to figure out and the puzzle felt very handcrafted!
Gur bar guvat V jnfa'g fher nobhg jnf jurgure V tbg na havagraqrq fbyhgvba ol oevatvat n yrsgbire oybpx sebz gur zvqqyr ebbz vagb gur svany gjb ebbzf. (Vs gung vf gur vagraqrq fbyhgvba gura V guvax vg qbrf uvtuyvtug ubj gevpxl vg vf gb pbzzhavpngr snvyfgngrf va guvf fbeg bs zhygv-cneg chmmyr!)
I think you've made some changes since I first played it, but the only ones that now seem to force using that mechanic are the level that introduces it and 'Out of the way'. Even so, the puzzles are still super fun!
I hear ya on the limitations of puzzlescript text, but maybe something like 'Press X to push a crate along an ink trail' communicates the idea better?
I see that you've modified level 5 to force players to use the intended mechanic (I also got through the whole game without using it!)
Maybe you could adjust the inter-level message to better introduce the idea? I didn't realise that "Sending ink trails (X)" meant I could push crates along ink trails.
It's a really cool little game, hope you keep making them :)
The visual design is beautiful, but the mechanics don't mesh very well. The timer feels a bit arbitrary, as you have such limited control over the character that it's not really speed-dependant. And that means that the level designs either make the timer irrelevant or just unfair if it slows you down right as you've got to the end. The point is that the gameplay challenge is click-jumping at the right moments, which doesn't really have anything to do with racing against the clock in the way you've designed it.
On all levels with moving things or blinking platforms, it seems like it would make sense if player death reset the level to the same starting state. It feels frustrating when you're stuck in a bad cycle and have to try to kill yourself at the right time to get into a good cycle so you can actually finish the level. Other games with this sort of mechanic are much more deterministic.
I think the puzzles are pretty cool, and I'm intrigued to explore the mechanics. I love puzzle games that trust the user to discover interactions, but I think a few of the levels I've encountered so far end up making the solution space large enough that figuring out what the new mechanic does is quite daunting.
For example, Popsicle Stick appears to be introducing a new type of wall block in the top right, but a similar level without that addition would already be quite fiddly to solve. What ends up happening is that it's tricky to even get the blocks into position to explore what that new block might do — I still don't know! — and I'm simultaneously wondering if it's not actually a new block but just a design element that's not part of the solution at all. In the end I figured out how to solve it by moving the blocks around each other, but I still don't know what that red square in the wall was supposed to do, if anything.
Compare this to something like Bonfire Peaks, where new mechanics are often introduced with a level that contains a very small solution space based on what you already know, so you realise quickly that the level is going to be impossible unless you there's a new interaction you've not considered, and then the level design is constrained enough that the possible-but-not-previously-considered interactions are limited. Once you know the mechanic exists and what it is, the game then starts riffing on it and complexifying it.
There are a lot of cool ideas in your game so far and I want to work my way through it, but the introductions of mechanics are acting like roadblocks at the moment.