itch.io

I love the basic premise--it's a nice little logic puzzle and there's a real satisfaction in revealing the picture.  (I'd recommend not titling the levels; I didn't notice them at first and tried not to look once I knew they were there.)

The presentation could be a little difficult though.  It was sometimes hard to see the removed lines, which made it harder to use information like "(non)consecutive)".  It could also be hard to tell which lines were borders of regions--specifically, when mousing over a number in a region, the color change made it clear which possible lines were borders, but not always which already-set lines were.  More than once I moused over a 3, saw three possible lines, and started clicking them without having noticed that there was also an already-clicked line that also bordered it.

But as prototypes go, it's quite nice!

A little short, and a little anticlimactic (why would you even make that trade!?), but pretty good up to that point and I love having to buy the start button.

Actually, same problem (Firefox, Windows).  Bought a second card, first card keeps flipping, second is just an empty space.

Also: what is the deck codex?  It keeps alternating between being blank and having the eight through ace of diamonds.

Disclaimer: I have a doctorate in linguistics.  My experiences reading an unfamiliar language in a game may not match anyone else's. :-)  (But yes, I totally played Senaar in hard mode.  And was extremely entertained by the game's translations of words that we had very, very differently.  "Hippie" comes to mind.)

For this, rather than replacing, I could imagine a mouseover/tooltip thing, though since it's already the case that mousing over a Trevosan word has an effect on it, I don't know if that would work (I am not a front-end programmer, not since the Rounded Button Incident).  Though that would be tricky in its own right, since you either [rot13 spoiler for morphology] lbh'q unir gb ragre lbhe tybffrf sbe gur -b-/-nv-/-r- sbezf bs rnpu jbeq, be ryfr gur vagresnpr jbhyq evfx tvivat njnl gung gubfr ner sbezf bs n tvira jbeq.

(Speaking of which...there was one point where i ended up finding a document by gnxvat n jbeq V unq--fbeel, ybfg zl abgrf, V guvax vg jnf gur bar V naabgngrq nf "thneqvna (a.)"--naq punatvat vgf ibjry gb nabgure ibjry gb, V guvax, gel gb svaq qbphzragf jvgu "thneqvna (s.)" va gurz, juvpu vg qvq.  Ohg V'z cerggl fher gung vg nyfb ghearq hc n qbphzrag jvgu gung jbeq V nyernql unq, juvpu zrnag V pbhyq unir whfg pyvpxrq vg.  Juvpu znqr zr guvax, "Jbhyqa'g vg or pbby vs gurer jrer n obahf qbp gung lbh pbhyqa'g trg ol pyvpxvat, bayl ol frnepuvat ba n zbecubybtvpny inevnag bs n jbeq lbh nyernql unq gung qvqa'g nccrne va nalguvat ryfr?"  (Ohg gur nafjre gb gung vf cebonoyl obgu "ab vg jbhyqa'g" naq "tb jevgr lbhe bja tnzr".  V fubhyq tb jevgr zl bja tnzr.  Naljnl, guebjvat gung bhg gurer.))

Long story short: cannot wait for more Jamwitch games. :-)

I would like an option to replace a word with our personal translation of it

I actually really liked it as it was.  That's certainly an immensely helpful tool in many games (Senaar, Heaven's Vault, Epigraph), but those differ from this one in a few ways.  First, those have entire grammatical structures to parse, and this one is only the vocabulary, embedded in English; second, in all of those you're annotating rather than outright replacing.  (I think that was true in Senaar?)

In this case, though, the first third of the game was spent switching back and forth to my notes going "talo, talo, oh, right, that means that, so ok, back to the text...", and by the last third of the game I was reading the text without notes and talking back to it: "mmhmm, right, right, of course you don't respect the beelon, I--hey!  That's your leevaith you're writing to!  Show some respect for her oleth!"  I thought it really helped the immersion that you're absorbing the language.

Anyway, just an alternate take on the mechanic. :-)

You had me at "inspired by The Roottrees".  Or maybe at "language deduction".  Or probably at "new game from jamwitch".

Really excellent and engaging.  I was so genuinely sad to learn how "the Clipped Wings" got their name, and only really frustrated that "the Ultra-Snarky" wasn't available as a sobriquet for either of the sisters.  But seriously, so good, so rich in detail.

Oddly, I can jump...once.  After that the space bar doesn't do anything.

For the record: have returned, have finished, have loved. :-)  I don't know why it feels so atypical--you'd think a lot more IF games would involve research rather than exploration--but it does feel like a fresh take on things.  With a whole lot of backstory.  Nicely done.

Man, Inform 7 is like magic, in that who even knows how it works.  (Obviously not true.  I even know people who know how it works.  Still: magic.)  Glad to hear it was eventually debuggable, and I look forward to getting back to this!

Hey, so, very intrigued, but the game froze for me at one point.  So I downloaded the zip version and ran it locally and it froze at the same point, which makes it look more like a bug than a browser problem.

Sadly, since it's frozen, I can't paste a transcript or a command history, but roughly speaking what I had done was:

• Attach an antler to a black blade, and label it T5.
• Repair three shards to make a bowl.
• read list -- this is the command where things freeze.  (read list at any point before the latter repair is fine.  I didn't dive deep enough into debugging to find out whether it freezes even if you don't do the knife first.)

I have no idea if this is helpful.  (I did check the browser console to see if it reported anything useful; it did not.)  Looking forward to getting back to this, though!

It's a cool concept, though it's also tedious to click on letters when decoding rather than typing them.

But...I have to admit I gave up when I hit "My name is Ash. I'm inheriting his work", not because it's too hard a puzzle, but because that's a lot of letters to have to type one by one while looking at the code and retyping if you get anything wrong.  Especially without a backspace.  It took me three tries just to get through "This isn't Caleb" in part because when I accidentally put in a space in the wrong place, I had to hit enter to start over.

Honestly, for all the paper puzzles I've done (which is a lot), I don't think I've ever seen mirrors in nonograms before.  This was fun!

The text is very small.  And...does the description of the mirror say it's one-sided, and the other side absorbs?  Because that's clearly not true.  

Alas I did not--I didn't look to see if there was a way out of the loop, and was already feeling, to be honest, a little frustrated by the lack of clarity on what the chests were even doing.

On my browser (Firefox, Windows), in fullscreen mode, things cut off at the right side.  Which I didn't realize until I had 2/3 active idols but only two idols visible in the lower right.

It's intriguing, but I feel like it could use a little more guidance.  The red symbols were clear enough from experimentation, but I didn't really understand at all what the treasure chests did.  (One of them moved me two spaces.  Sometimes?  Very confusing.)

Unfortunately, after the second set of--fireflies?--I stepped on a chest, and it moved me two spaces north onto a red symbol, which moved me two spaces south onto the chest, which moved me two places north...and I was stuck in a loop.  Presumably unintended!

May well come back to this.  Curious to see what's going on here.

> I had a ton of fun making this, even though it's unfinished

Hey, games are hard.  Xenolinguistics is hard.  Getting anywhere at all on either one is impressive!

I hope you decide to return to this.  I've felt for a while that game jams are great if they give creators a sense of urgency to make something, but they run the risk of encouraging people to dump what they have and forget about it.  If you had fun making this, I hope you find the time to make it more complete!

Short, but incredibly cute.

I hear you.  I'm a month behind on writing Enigmarch puzzles because I can't seem to make whatever, and I keep turning ideas over in my head and not getting them quite right and then never getting to them.  Kudos on getting this out there.

Anyway, solved it; it's a doodle, but it's a fun doodle.

I like the concept but...the words I went out on were ABYRENE, AURILLIAN, and IMPASIVE, which as far as I can tell are, you know, not words.  I guess they could be words in a way that CKOFUTAU can't be, but still, it's a little weird to be playing "identify the fake word" and lose because you identified fake words.

EDIT: when I restarted, I was given WORRY, USURP, ESTOP.  Which is unfortunate because all three of them are words...

OK, works now. :-)  Was honestly surprised that almost everything was additive, i.e. I could just throw in another word or punctuation mark.  (On a second run I got "can't contain an N" and I had to change "king" to "rook" and then I had to change the initial "G" to "K", but pretty small.)  I was prepared to need to use "saturn" so that it could also satisfy the day-of-week rule, because a length limit would pop up.

Still, brief but entertaining. :-)

I have to say, having the rule cut off below the bottom of the screen does add an interesting challenge...  (Windows; Firefox.)

OK, this is outright amazing.  I haven't read it all the way through, but just the parts I read are so good.

Honestly it makes me wonder if I can even find the files I copied from my CURSE floppy disk back in 2001.  The last time I tried playing it was like 2007, and I thought maybe I just had a buggy version, but I cannot believe I didn't think to reread the stupid arch inscription.  I feel like just knowing that will be enough to get me through if I try again!  (Yeah, yeah, I know, it won't be.)

A few thoughts:

• There's a real conceptual conflict between "if you position the cursor over the right set of items, they'll be worth more" and "this set of upgrades speeds up the cursor and gives you less time to position it correctly".
• The skill tree could really use clearer distinctions between "too expensive", "able to be purchased", and "already maxed".
• I personally found the cutting tool very hard to use (on a laptop)--not easy to position it or to move it at exactly the angle I needed.

Have you missed something in the pictures?

I mean...I must have?  For one thing, the cat and the badger are standing together on the balcony before the body is discovered, so if the badger is guilty, he must have...committed the crime much earlier?  But we saw her leaving with the rabbit (and she had the rabbit's scarf, which I guess was meant to frame her), so when did it happen?  What is there in the last photo that indicates who the killer is?

I love the gameplay, the illustrations, the atmosphere...but I don't understand the evidence.  (I had to play through it three times to get the right answer.  I get what the murder weapon was, and I get the envelope she's holding in the first image, but how does the evidence show who the murderer is?)

This game is an affront to all that is good and right in the world.  That is not a complaint.  ("The blue and yellow level with the fireballs is too hard" is a complaint, but that just means I need to come back to it.)

Black bars everywhere?  Absolutely obscene.  I am reporting this to my local F.A.C.I.A.L. (Family Art Council Investigations of Art Licentiousness).  Prepare to get F.A.C.I.A.L.ed.

Eh, I've restarted worse. :-)  Thanks for fixing!

EDIT: Aaaaand done.  (I ended up having to open the frame in a new tab...computers were a mistake.)  Delightful as always.  I think I even spotted a few of the Enigmarch prompts!  (I'm working my way through it...very slowly.  Working on an idea for Day 12.  Over at Dreamwidth; feel free to check out, or ignore, as you see fit. :-) )

oh no!  I was (ironically!) in the middle of talking to Harrison--he'd just told me about his childhood, which is a weird thing to type in the comments on a game about a puzzle app in a grocery store--and I got:

An unexpected error has occurred
Go back to the previous passage.
Hard restart, clearing all progress and beginning from the start.

If it helps, the console is telling me "Uncaught ReferenceError: hints_discovered is not defined".

The dragging and the village card are definitely better.  There's still the problem that the village card says "6 items" and I can't seem to get them out.  (One being the map to the goblin dungeon.)

I didn't really get any farther than about level three, with a level-0 pet, when things got stuck.

(Also,I'm on a laptop, so I don't have a mousewheel.  I can zoom with the trackpad, but "mousewheel click" is probably not possible.)

I think something got stuck: I can enter and exit the village, but I can't move its card (which was really annoying when my pet wandered behind it), and now I can't take items out of it.

Also, is there a way to pan?  I can zoom in and out, but I can't move the area after I zoom in, which is irritating when cards spawn just offscreen.

I was completely unable to jump up from the first marble you encounter--or I could get on it, and jump, and it took me exactly as high as the 6-domino square, but not high enough to get onto it.  Is it just me?

Things I love:

• The entire concept
• The physics--the tactile sense of falling word tiles and of rearranging them
• The proverbs (I played five or six rounds and at no point did I say "what is that supposed to be? That's not real")
• The distractor words (which are well chosen)

Some very idle thoughts about next steps, if you decide to go further with it (people don't always, for game jams, but it's such a neat idea!):

• It'd be cool if the words indicated whether they were "on" or "off" the white stripe--slight gray background if they're not, maybe?
• Proverbs are, well, familiar by definition, which cut down on the challenge for me.  I wouldn't want to try this with things I didn't know at all (you could use Japanese proverbs in Japanese, and I'd just be moving tiles around with no purpose), but I could imagine using phrases that can be put together through logic but aren't entirely apparent.  Morals from Aesop ("Change of habit cannot alter nature")?  Shakespeare quotes?  Lines of Emily Dickinson poems?

Anyway, this was fun!

noooooo Sebastian is a good cat!  (He didn't break anything!  It was just a cardboard box.)

The only problem, really, was when my cat killed some of my chickens.

(He knocked something off a shelf in the back room.  By the time I got back from making sure nothing broke, six or seven chickens had starved.)

Totally charming.  (I'm a sucker for a talking magic rabbit.)

Aw, that's charming!

Certainly I had fun shooting balls around the table and making red squares go boom.  But there are also mechanics I really didn't understand, like

• Why, once my damage-per-ball is high enough, do some squares die on the first hit, while others don't?  Do identical-looking squares have different health levels?
• Does my health just go down over time, or is something causing it that I should avoid?
• It doesn't look like anything is attacking/damaging me, so what is the "shield" upgrade for?
• "Prestige 1" seems to give $2 instead of $1 per enemy...but the enemies seem four times as hard to kill, which means there's no real incentive to play at that level.

It feels like there's a lot going on that could use more in-game explanation.

(Also, if you don't mind a couple of quality-of-life suggestions: it would be nice if there were a graphical distinction in the skill tree between things you can afford and things you can't.  And it might be nice to see what your current stats are--damage per hit, radius size, ball speed, etc.--so that things like "+1 durability" feel less abstract.  If an incremental game is all about Numbers Going Up, I want to see the numbers go up. :-) )