itch.io

Made it available again now!

https://olafmoriarty.itch.io/nomen-nigmas-last-will-and-testament

Since very few people were playing it, I decided to unpublish it and instead re-use the English version-specific puzzles in my other game, "The Time Traveler's Witch Trial". So if you play both, there's some puzzle overlap, but if you want to play this one, I guess that's okay!

Thanks for the feedback! Not sure if I'll develop this any further, the typing gimmick is probably just annoying and cumbersome outside of the game jam context... But I had fun making it, so who knows.

I was actually thinking of implementing T9, and in this case that would probably be pretty easy (since every room has a list of valid commands, it would be easy to check the current input against all valid commands and figure out which one you're after), my main reason for not prioritizing it was that I couldn't decide on the best way to swap between t9 on and off. 

I wish I'd had more time for adding odd options! It was not just for fun, it was partially to avoid the player getting "invalid command" every other sentence, but also to fill up the list of commands shown by the help command so that it doesn't just give away the correct options.

Thanks again for a helpful comment!

Hey, another mobile-friendly game, awesome!

The menu is really nostalgic. And when I remembered you could zoom I even managed to complete a level. If I'd had this game twenty years ago I definitely would have played it to the end. Good job!

Cute protagonist, very nice puzzle gimmick and great use of sound. All in all a very enjoyable game. 

Very interesting and fun concept.

l kinda wish the map was a bit smaller, it feels like there's a lot of empty space, The very wide corridors makes it hard to see the walls and figure out if you're walking towards a door or just towards a brick wall. I also wish you could hold more than one item at a time, but that's more a personal preference, I'm sure many others enjoy the added difficulty of not carrying more than one object at a time.

Wondered the same thing and figured out by trial and error that it was X.

Yeah, a constant loop could get annoying. Maybe it could have worked if you played it on a constant loop, but paused it whenever time was frozen. But I'm happy you put it at the beginning at least!

Great interpretation of the theme! Being able to control the environment but not the character is always fun when done right, and it's definitely done right here. Also, using Bach's Badinerie for the menu music gives you so many nostalgia points. That WAS my Nokia ringtone!

I'll admit I first thought this game looked a bit boring, but I had to try it to find out how you could possibly have 5000 levels, and it was surprisingly fun!

I would have loved to see more variation in hazards (though I'll admit I only played the first 1600 levels or so), as the game turned out a bit repetitive - but it was enjoyable none the less.

Wait, THIS is your first game? Seriously?  It's excellent in every way. I love the puzzles (with my main problem being that I wish there were more of them), and the art and sound is both gorgeous and work really well for this game.

I'm crossing my fingers you keep working on this idea after the jam. If it wasn't for the jam restrictions, this is a game I could imagine playing on console for hours.

Great game, love the concept! And since everybody else have already told you how great the controls are, let me instead compliment the amazing music, which will definitely be stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

Finally got around to trying this, and enjoyed it!

I definitely love that you use the numpad layout for controls, but I think it could be done a bit smoother - it is a bit confusing that the "continue" button in the customer dialog is the same as the "up" button in movement mode. I think an easy way to fix this would be to scrap the movement mode and instead dedicate two buttons to moving through modes (like 4/6). Then in each view 7/9 could be left/right so that flipping through the index, selecting an ice cream, selecting extras and selecting a price used the same two buttons everywhere, and 5 always meant confirm selection.

I enjoyed your graphics and sound, and applaud that you chose a font that was actually readable!

Thank you!

The "hardware" part actually happened almost by accident, I first intended the game to be played by keyboard only. But I want my games to be playable on phones and not just on PCs (and I had no idea how uncommon that was in this jam), and while I quickly found a way to display the phone's built-in telephone keyboard, it came with some challenges I couldn't quite solve (like how those keyboards have different layouts on Android and iOS, and how you have to enter a submenu (at least on Android) to select the * and # symbols), so in the end it was just easier to build my own keyboard instead. And I first intended to hide it in desktop view and only show it on phones, so that desktop view could show the display in full screen, but when I started scaling up the display, I realized that for a game almost only containing text - and in a quite large font, too - anything larger than 420 x 240 pixels felt way too large. So in the end I just kept the keypad in in both views.

Let me know if you need a walkthrough or something!

Thank you! Yeah, numbered options would definitely be a LOT more user friendly, but I'll gladly admit that for this game I prioritized gimmick and nostalgia over user experience. The moment I got the idea of making a text adventure game played on a Nokia, I knew that it sounded absolutely stupid but also that I *had* to try making it. Just picking options from a list would also be very similar to games I've made in the past, and I wanted to do something different enough to do a couple of things I've never done before - like a simple text parser.

Glad you liked the help menu! I intended for it to be very optional, so that you don't actually need it, but you can use it if you're stuck.

Thank you very much! I haven't seen any other jam games with this input scheme either - let me know if you find one! I played a game from an earlier jam which used key combinations for control ("type 522 to go up" and things like that), but that's not quite the same either.

Truly excellent. This is the kind of game that's so good it makes you forget it was made with some very strict restrictions. Love the art and the music, and the gameplay is REALLY fun so far - giving a vibe reminiscent of quite a few games I played in the nineties (although with a better checkpoint system). I've only played a short stretch of it for now, but will definitely want to complete it when I have the time for it!

This is adorable! The natural time limit of the falling snowflakes makes for a creative twist on the match-two-similar-items concept, and in a way that matches the theme, too.

Thank you very much 😊 Not sure if you were trying to write that it was "nice" or "niche", but I consider both of those to be compliments!

Fun concept, gorgeous animations and graphics overall. And surprisingly difficult!

This was really fun! In the levels I played you used various aspects of time freezing very well, and the 15 second limit added a fun strategy element to an otherwise interesting puzzle game.

Does alternative key mappings count towards the twelve control limit? If e.g. my game supports movement both through arrow keys and WASD, but these are functionally exactly the same controls, does that count as four controls or eight controls?

Hi all,

my new game, "The Time Traveler's Witch Trial", is now released!

The game is presented as an advent calendar where each chapter is part a visual novel-style story, and part brain teaser puzzle inspired by puzzle hunts.  One chapter is released every day until December 24th. The game is available in English and Norwegian, played in the browser, mobile friendly - and it's free.

If you like cracking puzzles of a certain difficulty level, I hope you check it out!

Got it, thanks! It is indeed a save game issue, but as long as the migration happens before the end of November, it won't affect me at all.

Hello,

I'm working on a free-to-play, pay-what-you-want browser game. I like the "pay what you want" settings on itch.io and will be using them.

I have a small problem, however. My users are mostly Norwegian, many of them are unfamiliar with itch.io, and in the feedback I've gathered after my previous game and in preparations for the next one, I know that they will be *a lot* more willing to pay for the game if I allow them to pay using Vipps instead of credit cards / PayPal.

Obviously I don't expect itch.io to implement a Scandinavia-only payment method. I could, however, implement and host it myself. But if I do, the question becomes: can I do that without breaking itch.io rules?

Specifically, what I want to do is have a "Pay" or "Support" link in the in-game menu. When clicking that, a dialog box shows up with a short text encouraging them to pay for the game if they like it, and two buttons: one to pay by Vipps (which sends them to a payment form on my own domain), and one to pay by card (which sends them to the default support page on itch.io). The Vipps button will only be displayed if their in-game language is set to Norwegian.

I can't find anything specifically about this in the quality guidelines. I realize it's not an ideal solution, as users paying by a secondary payment method wouldn't be covered by Open Revenue Sharing, but practically my choice is either offering this payment method or not get paid at all, so I'd love to implement it if something like that is allowed in itch.io games.

There is. In you account settings, select Publisher > Payout mode, and set it to "Collected by itch.io, paid later".

Hi! Is this change still scheduled to happen within 90 days of the original post? So if I release a game December 1st, my game won't be affected as that's after the change?

Hi itch.io! I just released the English-language version of my puzzle mystery browser game Nomen Nigma's Last Will and Testament.

https://olafmoriarty.itch.io/nomen-nigmas-last-will-and-testament

A young widow knocks the door of your office and asks for your help. Her late husband, an eccentric billionaire, has hidden away his entire fortune and created an intricate breadcrumb path of puzzles that must be solved to find it. Do you take the challenge?

The game is inspired by visual novels and puzzle hunts, and to progress through the story you must solve eight brain-teasing puzzles. The game is made in Javascript using React and Ink/inkjs, and should work both on desktop and mobile screens.

The game was originally released here a year ago in Norwegian only as my very first itch.io project. A couple of the puzzles included were very untranslatable, which is why the game was not available in English back then, but with this release it is finally available in a language most of you understand :-)

(Any and all feedback is appreciated, of course!)

First, I love the concept. Can't remember seeing something quite like it before, but this feels like it could be super addictive. A bit easy at times, but I only played the first ten levels, so that's not a problem. Also, the first couple of levels worked really well as a tutorial

One thing that annoyed me was that whenever I finished a level and I just wanted to keep playing, I had to move my hand from the keyboard to the mouse to click a button. I would love it if you had keyboard shortcuts for starting the next level.

But that got me thinking, and I realized that the one problem I *really* have with this game, the one thing that stands in the way of me getting completely addicted to it ... is that it's not a mobile game. If I had this on my phone, I could definitely see myself sinking a lot of time into this. Make the floor tiles surrounding the sticky cube clickable/tappable so that I can control the whole game with my fingers, and this would be a ton of fun.

Two character mode was okay, but I don't really see the point of making it a separate mode. It's not a two PLAYER mode, so it's not THAT different from the main game. In my opinion it would make more sense to use the two player gimmick as an additional puzzle element in later maingame levels. It should be more self-explanatory, though, so I don't have to read how the level works. I'm guessing these are temporary graphics, though, in which case the final graphics should do a lot of that job for you. If there's a big flashing button that looks like it can be pressed, it will be tempting to press it, and if the other blue box looks more like a closed door or a set or iron bars or something, it will be immediately intuitive that "I have to find a way to open that - maybe I should press that button over there and see what happens".

While I love the casual aspect of this game, it could be interesting to see what would happen if you added a couple of more "stressful" levels. Like a level that has to be completed before a timer runs out, or a level where an enemy is following you and trying to eat you (either turn-based or time-based), or levels where parts of the floor crumbles after passing over it once. Probably best not to overdo it, but if every fifth or every tenth level was a challenge level, it would definitely make the game a bit less monotone.

The one "bug" I found I assume you already know about: Clicking "Credits" takes me to a blank screen with no "Return to menu" button.