I'm glad that hearing about the Outer Wilds similarities brought you back into it. It's how I can quickly make the game make sense to others i've found out. I'm not entirely sure how I can alleviate this problem, since Outer Wilds even has it a bit with people often wondering what the heck they are supposed to be doing early on. Maybe I could make a larger hook right away to get to the upper door.
okAi
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Assign opposing roles to your constructs to solve puzzles
Puzzle
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Give the AI commands to control the level with your actions
Puzzle
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Nice little game!
This is a really unique take on the theme, and that goes a long way in a jam were I think there are a lot of overlapping ideas. Having such a simple mechanic works very well, especially when you use it a a majority of the levels.
Your level design is very good, every puzzle felt like a new way to use the mechanic, and I feel like I would've struggled myself to design many levels without having to introduce new mechanics. Each one added to the complexity, without jumping too much in difficulty. I'll admit that I didn't finish all of the levels, I got to the elevator ones, and was surprised that the game still had more content. This is a great amount of levels to have gotten out when you look at the polish of the rest of the game.
I do feel like the character movement can feel a bit weird. You seem to have some sort of grid snapping system, which I do appreciate, but you can also move freely. Because of the grid snap, I'd often try to just tap a direction and expected to just move one cell, and I wish that that could be a feature on top of being able to move freely.
There is also some (maybe intended) things that you can do with the loops that feel a bit weird, like on some levels you can slide on walls when holding onto a loop, and functionally make it smaller or bigger.
I was going to say that the music was rather repetitive at first, but then it kicked in on the first puzzle with a loop. I don't know if I just got really lucky with the timing, or you actually have dynamic music that kicks in once you use the main mechanic, and if you did bravo to you!
I'm also not sure if you ever tried to use them, but the WASD keys didn't work for me to move around.
I love seeing all the different Godot rep within this game jam, and I like seeing that this sort of style works really well within it!
With some extra mechanics, I could see this becoming a simple released puzzle game.
Nice work!
Thanks for the detailed feedback!
The boxes in the southern area are used for another puzzle down there, don't know if you solved that one (since you dont need to get every torch on the map), and it is probably one of my favorite ones despite being so jank. But, I can look into ways to make the lever more distinct, I actually had a bit of trouble spriting it and making it look nice.
I encountered that bug a few times, and I was able to get out of it by just shooting the hook again. But I'll have to add a priority system for when the hook collides with two objects at once.
I'm glad the hook was satisfying otherwise though, the audio really came through on making it feel good to use!
Thank you for the kind words!
I was definitely weary about the slow start, and the initial difficulty jump of getting the other torches before the hook or book. But I didn't know exactly what to do about it, Outer Wilds solves this by just having so much to explore, that even if you find "nothing" in your first loop you still feel satisfied.
I thought about having a tutorial section that would essentially force the player to loop to get out of it (like grab a torch in a one way door). But didn't really want to then also force them to pause to loop the world.
Nice job!
I like the creative take on the theme, I haven't seen any other games like this one, which feels like a rarity for this jam.
Ill say my hand is definitely feeling tired after a session of this, so I don't think it could be played for very long periods of time. But I think there could be some options to alleviate that. I think the main issue is having to keep clicking again whenever you mess up a circle, maybe having a key you could press that would act as you clicking could suffice. Or the game could automatically start drawing you a new line a little bit after you hit something. I will say I was tempted to get my drawing pad out and try it with that.
This does remind me of the Pokemon Ranger series, and I wonder if some elements could be taken from those games for this. Maybe some enemies or bosses require you to draw specific shapes around them, (and then move slower to compensate for the added time to draw).
I see in your Gifs you managed to get some pretty long loop streaks going, but I always found it pretty hard to get them going to more than 2-3 loops. So maybe having the trail decay faster so you don't get caught as easily could be a power-up you can get.
Im a sucker for the neon aesthetic, so Im happy to see it here
Good work!
Thanks! I do think that the game has a pretty quick difficulty jump after the first torch is gotten. Because, to most players, then you need to either do the lake box puzzle (which is jank in how I implemented it), or wait till the next loop to do the lake early on, assuming they are ready to go there. So I'm glad that so many people managed to get past that initial section.
The slow movement was me trying to make it a bit more 'cinematic', because I kept giving myself Titan Souls vibes when moving around the world and taking it all in. But you can roll in that game so maybe that's a difference. I did definitely keep giving myself the warp item with no cooldown whenever I was testing the map to move quickly ;)
Yep, that's the spot. When I go in I can barely move any further than the doorframe. It feels like I can almost cheese it by using momentum to get up to it, but I never got close enough.
I doubt it, but I wondered if it somehow depended on how close you were to the chain when you pick it up and it starts counting the distance, but I tried to cheese that and it still didn't work.
Cute game!
I like that I was actually thinking about which items I would bring with me, and that I needed to separate the good ones with the not as good ones so I didn't use all of them at once. While some items I don't really see a downside for, like the Halo, (in which I could only really see it being not that useful early on, since you aren't likely to pick the tooth early, so you might as well not use it to decrease the chances of the bot surviving.)
Personally, I would like to see some more elements or items that can help you deduce which teeth are aren't rotten, but I think that's just me trying to fight the natural RNG of the game, and that its just a part of how it works. But, I feel as though losing can feel a bit out of your control, which is maybe the point overall though.
I think my favorite item is the coin, since it is either really good early on, getting to be able to remove 3 teeth to lower the chances quicker, or only 1 later on will be beneficial. I think that the item that reveals where the tooth isn't should persist and stay, since the player might not be expecting to have to remember where it is, especially when there is a perspective change right after it shows you as well.
Maybe an item that resets some of the teeth, then moves the rotten one would be nice. Since it can help you raise your chances if there is only a few left. Or lead into a larger play with a coin.
I am wondering though, if the item that adds a rotten tooth is used, then the one that moves the rotten tooth. Are all of the rotten teeth moved? Does it reset the rotten teeth back to only 1? Does it only move the original? That one felt like it could be a tossup depending on how it was implemented.
The theming on this is great, and I love the idea of there being an entire gameshow based around this idea. The art and music really sell on it too.
Great work!
I like the more narrative take on the theme here!
Wrapping your chain between multiple rooms is a very cool concept, and I like how it works very well with backtracking to old rooms with more length so you can optimize their positions. I do wish that with this, there would be some sort of puzzle that depends on how arranged a room you aren't in anymore. Like maybe you loop over it (but not enough to do the whole planet), and so you need to arrange it in a way so that you can get past your own chain thats blocking your way.
You could also maybe implement some objects that you shouldn't break, (easy option would be expensive pots, but you could also do like a space airvent or something else), which would cause the player to be mindful in where the chains are going to end up, making some puzzles that are inverted from the hedges mechanic.
The hedges are a nice touch to add some variety to the levels, making a certain arrangement to get rid of them is a nice break from the general draw the most optimal line paths.
I wasn't able to get past the 3rd level. It seems like I should be able to grab the chain extender in the first left room, but I am just out of reach. Maybe this was a design error or something else, but it seems like a small fix.
Visuals are nice and cute, but some audio would help bring the game together.
Nice job!
Nice game!
This one is really fun to play, and I like a creative take on the theme.
I like how throughout the bosses, you eventually learn their patterns and it'll help you know what you need to do within the new loop variant. Especially with the dark modifier, you already know what to expect from the bosses, so its not much of hinderance later on.
The polish on this game is also great, good use of squash and stretch and everything feels very satisfying. For a game in which you don't really do a lot differently content wise, it was still very enjoyable to throw the boxes at the bosses.
Obviously there is a lot of potential here for more designs, either having more bosses that get rotated in, as well as different loop modifiers. I think there would need to be some amount of structure to the fights to make it work outside of a jam, but nothing a little bit of tweaking cant do. Maybe each boss is its own level, but I do like how it switches between the bosses as you go.
You thought of a good idea for a short jam like this, since you can technically just keep adding loops on top of it for as long as you'd like until the time is out, and no matter how many you have the game isn't left any less unfinished.
Letting the player choose to have more health and different assist options is very good, since I think the most important thing to have for a game jam game is the ability for players who want to play your game not get stuck by not being able to. And these are nice additions to a game that can't really give out level skips.
Portrait mode seems to maybe sometimes make the snake one impossible not to take damage? Maybe I'm wrong and just bad at snake, but I think it'll cover the entire wall sometimes and you are forced to walk through.
Made it to loop 5 on my first try, is there anything big I'm missing?
Great work!
Nice game!
This reminds me a lot Floating Point, and a random game called One More Line for IOS which I used to play a ton because they were just satisfying, so you managed to bring back some nostalgia for me with this game.
While I like the idea of being within an enclosed room and getting collectibles, I wonder how this game could expand if the rooms were opened up more. And maybe the levels were across larger distances? One of my favorite things to do in those games were get fast and launch across the rooms (only to hit something far off)
It could also be fun to mix with some other random elements for certain levels, like having gravity, all orbs pull you in, etc. Just some random gameplay mixups to vary it up.
If you were to go in more with the theme, I think there could be some benefit to looping around a point. Since as it is right now, you really only loop when trying to time a launch, and not for much other reason. Maybe you could try having the red dots themselves be collectibles, and you need to loop around them so many times to collect them. Then navigating the room may look different since you need to plan out what dots you get rid of in what order.
I like the visual theming, but I am also a sucker for neon lit games.
Good job!
Nice simple game!
I like the unique ability to able to swap between colors and shapes within the same line, it can really open up a lot of new routes that usually wouldn't be possible, and honestly creates a good skill factor, since I've had to have missed a lot of them because my eyes just cant do it quick enough. Although, the moving of the shapes make it really hard to find patterns, and it was quite frustrating to work around.
Also, it would help a bit to have more of than explained within the game itself, since I only learned that by messing around. It took me awhile to also realize that you cannot connect them via diagonals, since that is a very common feature of many match 3 style games.
The idea of making loops to get triple points does work to change how you view and setup the board, but I wonder if there is more available to work with the idea of looping. A simple (but maybe complex mentally) idea is that the tiles within the board never get cleared out, and simply drop down and when used, go back up to the top and fall within their column again. While this might lead to some infinities, I think just adding some other guard like cant use the same color / shape twice in a row could prevent it.
The art style is very clean and nice, I like the look of the game a lot.
Being able to switch colors is a nice touch, maybe being useful to catch different types of color blindness, but its also nice to use as a new way to look at the board if you cant find anything quickly.
Nice job!
I think a gambling addict wouldn't be so mad about being forced to gamble for eternity...
I like the loop take on this one, where you are using the information you made to give yourself an advantage within a card game. Although, I think it can be kind of hard to remember everything, especially when you can sometimes just autopilot blackjack, and only really look at the card totals, and not the cards themselves. Because of this, I think it could be nice to show the player things that they should know. Like what cards will be drawn on both sides if they have seen it before. Since this just removes a layer of remembering the player needs to do, (and could do themselves via pen and paper), and focus on how to change the outcome of it.
For a game with eternal gambling, I think that only having 2 resets is quite small. It's definitely one of the more interesting mechanics of the game. Either raising the amount that you have from the start, or making it purchasable with souls would help.
I like the idea of having modifiers to change how your hand is drawn, and I think it would be interesting to keep seeing if there are any other routes you can take for deck modification. Of course, there is the basic +1 -1 to next card drawn and basic number changes, but I think specifically playing with the knowledge you may have of your deck is more interesting. Like a peek a the first card, or make the next drawn card a guaranteed number.
But, if you work in more elements like this, you'd like need to make the devil respond accordingly and make the game harder. And then were getting into roguelike territory, which is a whole other ordeal.
I like the presentation, and the narrative / setting is pretty interesting. Good work!
A classic die and use your death as tool puzzle game!
I really liked the visuals on this one, while I think being able to move around the level via mouse adds a bit much to it, where the designs for the puzzles could all just being a singular facing edge. Playing around the idea of larger puzzles that you need to mouse around sounds cool, something akin to Captain Toad.
The puzzle difficulty spikes up pretty quickly after the first few, where I felt like it was a breeze then I got stumped. I couldn't figure out the one (maybe around level 6-7?) where there is one dirt, and the whole level looks like an egg. I thought I had the solution by becoming stone at the starting point to get to the higher surface (And if that is it, I think that idea is really cool!) But I couldn't figure it out. I always think its important to add some sort of skip feature to game jam puzzle games, since some players might find certain levels way harder than others. At you mostly just want people to play your game, so letting them continue on if they want to is better than forcing them to figure it out, or quit.
I think there is a good amount of potential here for more level designs, especially ones that don't get too deep into the "Can you move around this small grid in the correct orientation" kind of puzzles with games like these. It could maybe be interesting to have the players death affect the world in different ways. Where maybe there is a lava tile that can only be blocked by the stone for so long. Lots of ideas available.
Having an undo only for a single life could help the troubles, since having to remember replay every action you did, when you could've died to a mistake is annoying. But thats mostly a quality of life feature.
The transitions of levels are a nice touch, and always good for a jam game. Although some form of music would've helped the experience aswell.
There are a few random bugs I encountered, one of which is if you try to move onto a tile that is on a plate, you will deactivate the plate even if you didn't move onto it.
Overall a nice game! Good job.
Ooh, I've made a game like this before!
Hearing it from the description, I thought it was going to be a lot like mine, but Im glad that you took it in another unique direction. Being able to switch between multiple loops is very interesting, and can lead to a lot of combinations of actions happening to solve some likely insane puzzles.
Although, I think with that, the mental tax put on the player to remember all of these things, on top of the key presses needed to make it happen is very high. I think a bit of a rework to the UI of the game could help this out. Im not entirely sure what it would all be, but here are some quick notes / ideas:
- Having recording be more obvious, I would sometimes not realize I was recording, or think that I was then realize I wasn't when trying to play it back.
- Switching between 1 2 and 3, I would have 3 entirely different icons for each one. Then show if one has already been recorded, or is currently playing aswell.
The level design on the first few levels is actually really good, I think they taught the mechanics well, but I got stuck on the two boxes level, and everything after that looked very difficult. I think a slower curve could help get the player going. I took a look at the last level, and while I am new to the game, it just looked like a lot going on, and even beginning to discern it would be hard. Possibly breaking it out into sections could help, where the puzzle is the same, but its easier to digest in pieces, like Portal's chambers.
I will say, that having the door move to the right on one of the first puzzles is a very clever solution to not letter the player accidentally kill themselves. Its such a simple way to avoid it, but I don't think I would've thought of it, and having the player "lose" that early on in the game can be pretty harsh for retention.
I think that the player jump is a bit floaty, but I can see the value in it not being specifically a platformer game, and you'd want to give the player more control of where they are going to land. But maybe fix up some of the values a bit.
Overall great game, I love that the cranes pick the options buttons in the menus :)
Nice work!
Definitely an interesting take on the theme.
Usually Im not a big fan of slideshow tutorials, since I think an ingame one can be much better suited, but sometimes they are necessary with limited time vs no tutorial at all. But I thought this one was funny and simple enough for it to work out.
The gameplay itself is rather simple, and it makes me think about what other possibilities you could have for a game like this. Rather having the only way to fix bad vibes being a music gun, what if there were reasons for the bad vibes to be happening? And thus, you need to solve those problems instead. Here are just a few random ideas:
- Person A doesn't like Person B, so you need to separate them
- Or the inverse, A wants to be by B, and if they are not then they get bad vibes
- Some spilled drink causing the floor to be dirty, you need to clean it
- People who need a break from the party moved into a quieter room
I think developments like this could make it a lot more interesting. It could also be cool if the bad vibes could spread, and you need to deal with keeping it away before it becomes unmanageable. Perhaps you could have the goal to be spend the night at the club, and try to have as little as bad vibes as possible, and the revenue is based on how well you prevented it.
The art is great, and all of the loops work well.
I think the audio shouldn't be muted on startup, since I didn't even realize the game had any until I went back to the menu. And all I was thinking was that some music would've really fit it. Although, I would either reduce the volume of the crying, or make them not stack together when there are multiple near you, since it would be rather loud.
Just a couple of thoughts on a simple game, nice work!
Nice idea!
I really like the concept of this, where there are various related hand gestures that related to different movement patterns, it creates a very unique theme and aesthetic for the game. I can image other hands that could be translated into movement, like a Halt for stopping the players movements.
Although, I think that this game could benefit from some finer tuning of the controls. There are a lot of things that can be learned for making fluid and good feeling movement for 2d platformers, and most of them aren't that intuitive unless you already know they exist. There are obvious ones, like there being a strange delay for the jump, but other things like coyote time (letting the player jump for a few frames after they've left the ground) and input buffering to allow early inputs still be allowed can go a long way for fluid movement.
I also think that the flick hands should be consistent in the direction they throw you, rather than the direction the player is facing. Since it would be hard sometimes to consistently use them, but when they do work they are very fun to chain together. You could also repurpose another hand object into having the players facing direction considered for its launch angle.
With mechanics like these though, I think this game could benefit for a more level based style, where the player goes through a series of challenges to beat a course. Similar to how Celeste works. Then you could rank up the difficulty without the player getting frustrated by having to get all the way back if they fall down.
The pixel art is very clean, but it could still use a bit of touching up. I think namely the player could be re-sprited a bit since it is close to looking like its on a different pixel ratio than the rest of the game. The ground texture is also on a higher ratio than the rest. But this is all nitpicking.
Good work! It would be great to see some post jam versions of this!
Cute little game!
This one has a unique concept, and I think it could definitely be fleshed out a lot more into a pretty tricky puzzle platformer. I think there are a lot of ideas that can be stemmed with the idea of moving flowing water around a level, like maybe there is a strength of water which can affect how high a sprout a sprout goes, and possible routing water around a level to get it into specific spots.
The movement can definitely be a little bit hard, but if that is intentional then it can work, similar to hard platformer games like Jump King. Although, i'm not sure if your goal is to make a rage based game like that, but I do think that you should at least pick a side on which you want to do than rather be in the middle of annoying / difficult movement but not leaning into it.
I do like the other feature you have where the player slows down a little bit before falling when entering a new room, since I feel like this could easily be overlooked, but you took the time to implement that so players can get a sense of their surroundings before being thrown straight into the next challenge.
Nice work, It would cool to see it be expanded upon :)
It can definitely take awhile to get used to, but I think it works well once you know it. I'm glad you got the hang of it.
I do plan on adding some more QOL features to make understanding and mastering the mechanic a bit easier, or a more in depth tutorial to gradually teach the mechanics.
I did try to at least have one good shortcut within each level, so going back to get more time for the later level could yield players finding them.
It can definitely be punishing, but the intent is that you basically never stop jumping, I wanted to mimic the feel of bhopping similar to source games. (And another bhop based speedrunning game Hotlava) Although, I did try to tune it to have a lot of leeway, maybe I need to look into adding more of it but less rewards for mistimed jumps.
Interesting idea!
I like the concept of basically being forced to move where you are attacking, or needing to double down on a direction after attacking. Although, I do wish the sword either did damage quicker or there was some other form of damage, since there would be times where I would just want for my sword to do damage so I could dash to it again.
Speaking of other ways to do damage, I think the dash itself is an easy way to add some more. Then it would be a pretty simple 1-2 combo of throwing the sword, then dashing to it for an easy 2 damage. And you can still have the waiting be for larger health enemies. I do think the game is the most fun when the player is allowed to dash multiple times in quick succession, and right now it feels like a lot more waiting around than dashing
Some of your hitboxes could have some tuning aswell, I would find that even though my sword looks like it has fully crossed a pit, it would still drop me into it. Which can be unsatisfying as the player unknowing how far they need to go.
It could also be interesting if the projectile rather could go an infinite distance, and you needed to time the dash to it to whenever you wanted it to be. And if it went too far, you would need to either retrieve it or wait until you get another one back. I think this could lead to a lot of interesting movement and attack designs.
Pixel art looks great as well.
Nice job!