itch.io

I...feel like maybe it could have used some words after all.  I admit I'm intrigued and I'm enjoying clicking on the funny little circles, but I can't really tell what I'm accomplishing.  (Are my numbers going up?  I don't even have numbers.)

Not giving up on it yet though.

There's a lot here that makes no sense:

• Conveyor belts carry you one space, but there's nothing to indicate which direction.
• On almost all of the levels (well, through #9, which is when I lost interest), you can succeed by unfolding and just walking across.  Like level 4 is called "carry lesson" and you can do it a move faster if you fold/carry, or you can just walk over to the blue square.  Same thing on level 5, where it says that "the obvious route fails" but, no, you can obviously just go LLULUU.
• Level 6 tells you to "plan the landing", but (a) as noted in the first point you can't really plan anything and (b) there's nothing to plan, you just step onto the conveyor, which is your only move, and then walk to the blue square.
• Level 7 tells you there is no path.  There is.
• Level 8 tells you to "time the fold".  You just do it at the start and walk.

I feel like you're missing something fundamental here.

Clunky, yes, but kind of interesting!  I can see things I'd improve (I made it to the second level before dying, which kind of undercut my original "it's kind of easy, isn't it?" comment), like possibly different-colored floors for adjacent rooms, specifically to help visually set apart multi-space rooms.

The "it seems easy" comment came from "oh just get the skeleton one space behind you and then it'll follow you but never reach you", which is great if it works, but it didn't particularly work by the time I got to the second level.  I did get into a kind of stalemate, where I was in the fourth column and the skeleton was in the third, so I'd move up or down a row and it would move up or down a row to match me, so I was a move ahead of it but it blocked me every time.  (Maybe I should look again with a little more attention to door-locking.)

But I think there's absolutely the core of an interesting game here.

see, for me, it was more like "Mister Mayor!  Please stop building factories and apartments on the east side of town!" "Oh, OK, I'll put in some more parks and cafes on the west side."  It felt very real.

This is intriguing!  But there seems to be a restarting bug where, if I die (or, really, "when", because I'm dying a lot), my luggage starts with fewer empty slots--as if it remembers "I had two things in here, so I'm now at 3".  (And then eventually at 0.  It's very hard to succeed with zero luggage space.)

Well, so far I've figured out:

1. If I push the left block, everything freezes and I can't do anything.

2. If I don't push the left block, there's nowhere to go and, um, I can't do anything.

I don't usually post "I don't even know how to get started" comments, but--

I think maybe it needs more thinking?  I was given

Target touches Node 2. Target is 1 nodes from Node 3. Node 3 is EAST of Node 2.

and the target was Node 1, which is on the other side of Node 2 from Node 3, and thus very much not "1 nodes from" Node 3.  Unless I'm very deeply misunderstanding how distance is being measured.

something is wrong. i can get "st" for #1 but then no matter how many times I type "ay" after it, I can't get him to stay.

please get him to stay. i am so sad now.

(Seriously this was so well done.)

Clever as always.  Really love the jumps from "right but that makes this impossible" to "wait hold on what if" to "yeah no great thought but it won't work" to "hey I got a big gold trophy!".

Perfect vague hint; also got me there.  Thanks!

Kittens!

Loved it!

This is really quite good.  (A few nitpicks: it's very atmospheric to have everything in typewritten or handwritten images, but it's a little frustrating when you have to retype an entire Caesar-shifted message instead of being able to copy it as text.  And at least one of the typewritten notes was spaced to be left-and-right justified rather than having a ragged right margin; not really typewriter-esque, and also made it harder to count the number of letters in the redacted name.)

If this is your first game, I look forward to seeing what else you come up with!

Something's going on with the controls, I think.  I had to reload the game (that's happened a few times now--the first was when I had the keypad open when I ran out of time, and [enter] didn't see to do anything) and now my movement is much slower.  Slower as in, I can't even get to the "Code is..." room that I've gotten to before.

...never mind, figured it out.  (And finished, though with only one secret, alas!)  It's very good.  And I'm glad to see it was inspired by Leap Year, because I was getting strong leap-year vibes from it (in a good way! in a "this reminds me of that game I loved" way!).

I'm loving this.  I'm also often getting stuck--I had a hard time figuring out where to go after getting block 3, and am once again after getting block 6.  (It's hard to tell from the limited minimap navigation where there might be a new location.)

Really lovely.  As I was finishing, I thought, "Is the solution unique? Could I have done it in fewer rows?" but the bonus question answered at least part of that. :-)

Word puzzles?  Without score/time pressure?  I am so in.

There seems to be a small (non-breaking) bug where the letters don't quite clear if you switch levels.  After finishing the warmups, I clicked on the "1" (not realizing it was taking me back to what I had finished), clicked "SA", realized my mistake, hit "home", and went to the first level of the next set.  When I did, the "SA" were still there, and I ended up spelling "SAMYTH".  (Which the game accepted as "MYTH", so as I said, non-breaking.)

OK, back to the game.  Loving it so far. :-)

On the second level, how do you move the bubble to the right?

"E" picks things up (and puts them down again).  That may get you started on crossing the water--or you could just walk and hope for the best, since it only drains your power slowly...

That's too many controls I will never remember them all.

(I was...intrigued, and maybe enjoying it, until there was a tetris piece coming down and I hit "ctrl" and "R" at the same time...)

Well, this is...cryptic.

I think the main thing I want (other than "any idea what's going on") is a "click to continue" after scoring, so that I can look at the three cards, look at how they scored, and try to learn something, anything, about the system.  As it is, I'm going, "Oh, cool, +12 for circle-circle-diamond, by playing a--god, was it two green cards? I think a 3?"

For me (Windows, Firefox), the bonus round works for the first game or two, and then it hits a game where it just doesn't accept input at all (from the real keyboard or by clicking the onscreen one).

So I love the idea of "make the rules fit the seating" instead of "make the seating fit the rules"!

I did get a little stumped on the second one, where I put together the rule "At least one goblin next to elf".  The "VERIFY" result seems to show the second row not working when it's "goblin - elf - goblin", but that row does indeed have at least one goblin (in fact, two) next to every elf in it.  What is it that's wrong with that solution?

EDIT: I'm not entirely clear on the grammar of the rules.  Does "at least one goblin next to elf" mean there's at least one goblin next to every elf, or that there's at least one goblin next to some elf?

The other thing that's not clear is that I think I'm gathering that the rules have to uniquely determine the row, and not just allow the row to be satisfied?  That would explain why "At least one elf seated" isn't valid in the second puzzle (even though it's perfectly satisfiable, with either "goblin - elf - elf" and "goblin - elf - goblin").  I think that probably wants to be more explicit.  Even with that, though, I don't know why "At least one goblin next to elf" fails on the second row, since "goblin - elf - elf" doesn't have at least one goblin next to each elf.

OK, now that I've gotten into the computer, I can see how this has plenty of potential.  Don't let game jam time limits keep you from seeing where you can take this!

Ah--somehow I parsed "November 15" as today's date (which is a thing a lot of computers-within-computer-games do), and didn't particularly parse the birthday hat as "today is my birthday".  (It's an old decoration?  They came from the break room where there was cake for a coworker's birthday?  Anyway.)

Am I being particularly dense?  I can't figure out what the PIN is supposed to be; the screen is the only thing I've found that I can interact with.

The word "Chaucer" was definitely missing.  (Though it had had no trouble with "Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevky".  Length of answer in lines, maybe, not words/letters?)

"The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey"?  Might want to check your list.

Solved--now there's a game there instead of a single level! :-)

Finished it.  It's quite good.  The right length, not trivial but not so hard as to be unapproachable.  Very satisfying.

Same thing happened to me (Windows, Firefox).

Cozy!  Not hard, but it's not supposed to be, and the style is perfect for the theme.

This is excellent.  Fair at every step, always interesting, neat final puzzle.  Really good work on this.

That's very clever!  And, I suppose, advanced, as chess battles go.

It's stylish, but...confusing.  I got through, um, one prompt, with the Hacker telling me to respond with certain words (which...felt weird, because I was looking for something coherent to say).  After that, I've got my boss asking for the project name (why did he open with "does it or doesn't it"?) and Lucy asking if I'm OK, but...now it feels like a guessing game?  I tried responding with "everything is ok", "everything is not ok", "tell me the project name"...

All I can get from her is "huh", and I feel like I'm looking for some magic combination of words.  Is there something I'm missing that points me in the right direction?

Are you use that the odd one out is heavier or lighter?  I think it's apparent how to determine which ball is heavier than the others, but if it could be heavier or lighter, I don't see how you can get enough information in two weighings.

For a one-hour game, this is pretty clever!  Not at all trivial, and a neat mechanic.

Oh, that's really interesting.  You've done a really nice job of making the gameplay interesting and making the text meaningful.  Obviously just a prototype, but it would be interesting to see what a longer game looks like.

Two coins short and not even sure where to find them.  Very entertaining though!

I clicked on the balcony to get the rope fibers, and on Elias's email address to get the email, but then neither one appeared in the Clues list on the side.