itch.io

To be very honest: since I just discovered that it doesn't save progress, there's pretty much no way I'm going to go back through 32 levels just to get back where I was.

(Well, slightly more than that, because I did use the "reveal answer / quit / reenter" trick to get past 32.  But things got more and more frustrating--the level where one answer was IDLE made no sense at all--and when I reached the point where it asked for an anagram of TRIANGLE, of which I should note there are four, and then you couldn't even put in the right answer because there were nine blanks for the eight-letter word....I'd had enough.)

Word puzzles are hard to write.  I get that--I know that from experience; I've been solving, and writing, for decades.  And the ideas here are good.  But if you're not thorough, you're going to frustrate people instead of engaging them.

I strongly encourage you to find people to test the game.  (Games in general, probably, but especially puzzles, are almost always harder than the creator thinks: the solution is obvious to you because you wrote it, but that only makes it hard to see what it looks like to other people.  The only way through that is testing.)

Sigh.  Never mind.  Pushed forward, in many cases by using the pen to fill in the answer, quitting the level, and going back into the level, which reset the pen hint.  But Level 32 is literally broken: there's no way to input a number!

There's so much here that seems like a good idea, but if nothing else I feel like it's badly in need of playtesters who can say "this clue was clear; this one was too vague for me to get".

I feel like I could use an answer key after solving some of them levels.  For instance...  (after some spoiler space, so it'll get hidden by a "read more")

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• Level 7: It seems to involve dropping a letter from one end or the other, but then why doesn't DISCO become DISC?
• Level 17: Clearly the vowel changes, but why STACK and not STUCK/STOCK?  Why NUT and not NET?  (Similarly for the three after it.)

Starting to get a little leery by level 22, where it feels like a guessing game.  (Why SOFT and not EASY as the four-letter opposite of HARD?  And POSSIBLE isn't particularly the opposite of FACTUAL; it's kind of the opposite of "definite", while "fictional" or "made-up" or otherwise definitely not true is the opposite of "factual".

In fact, currently stuck on level 23, where SEVER sure looks like it follows the rule of "synonym starting with S"...I really love the concept here, but the rules just aren't strict enough in some cases to know what the answer is.  (Maybe it could use more hint options than "the first letter or the whole word"?)

I'll grant that it's a very interesting concept.  Having "died" in the middle of the second page, I'll offer a few thoughts--

• Once you've found the words in the letter, or you've clearly missed everything because what's left is just "but" and "was" and "that", it would be nice to be able to fast-forward through everything else fading away.
• While the concept is solid, it's frustrating to be able to "lose" a puzzle game--a game shouldn't be trivial, but also having had the game end on the second page, I'm not feeling excited about having to go through it all again.
• It's kind of a guessing game.  A lot of things that looked like they ought to be important words, like people's names, or "angry", weren't.  The life system is a good way to keep people from just clicking everything as fast as possible, but it also discourages experimenting (and because there's also a timer, there's an impossible balance between "I don't want to click a wrong word" and "I don't have time to read all the words and think about which ones are important").

I get the mechanic, but I feel like there should be a mechanism other than "losing and running out of life".

Masters' programs are hard.  Take a break. :-)

None of that is particularly "drop everything and fix"; just figured I'd throw out a few thoughts, in case they help.  Good luck! 

Feels like it could use a better map than the very vague one it has.

The other thing that kept tripping me up is a problem very common among metroidvanias and other platformers: it's sometimes difficult to distinguish interactable features from the background.  At the start, I almost gave up because I went down the ramp and to the right was a bright vertical pillar that I took to be a wall, so I turned around and went back...  Crates are obstacles; nets are climbable; seaweed is scenery; but there's nothing to really set them apart.  (Probably limited by the color palette, since you don't have a lot of room to make things "brighter" or "dimmer".  Just something to think about.)

What are my takes on this.  Let's see.

As someone who does a lot of word puzzles, and has for decades, I found the daily puzzle and the first couple of levels pretty basic.  A lot of words like "ARO_ND" where there was only one option; a handful where there was more than one and it just needed to wait to see what letters got eliminated.

I didn't keep playing after the first two; I was curious to see what harder levels looked like, but not curious enough to play through potentially a lot o easy levels.

The main problem I noticed was that a given letter and a filled-in letter looked identical, so when I did have to go back and change something (I'd mistyped the "U" in the above word for an "O", as it happens), it was hard to see which letters I'd added and thus which ones I could change or remove.

Basically, you need the key and you're not getting it where it is.  It's going to take some pushing.  (See original comment for a spoiler on what I think isn't the most obvious mechanic anyway.)

All right, glad I came back to this. :-)  There's a lot of cleverness in it.  I still don't love the guess-the-spell-name mechanic (I'd be fine if it just told me that the spell I found was called "levitate" rather than making me go through a few hint presses), but since it's not much of an obstacle, it's easy enough to focus on the very good parts.

yeah, I know you're the dev.  My opening question was a snarky way to point out that commenting "what a gr8 game!" on your own game isn't a great look.

I don't know what to tell you about tapping not working; a screenshot won't show much, since the whole point is that nothing is happening.  (I mouse over a card and it moves a little, but clicking it does nothing, and when I mouse away the card moves back to its position.)

As for the other, here's what the game looks like when I start:The text below it, by the way, is legible to me; the text in the UI is too small, or too dark-on-dark, or both, for me to make out.

Anyway, here's how it looks six moves later:

Text below hasn't changed, but the cards and rows just keep zooming in.  It stops around move 10, but of course by that point everything's overlapping and the third row has moved off the bottom of the screen.

Do you know the author or something?

The game is too small to see.  Until I start playing cards, at which point the board gets larger with each move until it's too large to play.  The rules are wrong (it says to tap things, when in fact you have to drag them) and are too long to really make sense of.  Game elements overlap so it's impossible to see anything.

Conceptually good, but there are some visual improvements it could use, namely a much clearer distinction between floor and wall, and a clearer distinction between pushable souls and target souls.  (When I squint, it looks like maybe the target ones are a little dimmer?)

Anyone talking about how level 7 is just too hard is welcome to join me over here on level 3 and tell me what I'm missing. <sigh>

Ah!  That makes sense.  Though...it's also telling me I'm stuck the moment I move through it.  Maybe it would be better to have a button that says "you're stuck! [undo]" so that the player can see what's happening?

I like the concept here--but I can't tell why he keeps saying he's stuck.  I don't know if the rules aren't clear to me, or if the game is overenthusiastic about deciding that I can't continue from my current position?

I'm not a fan of horror in general, but man, the richness of the story and the family connections that you've put into this outweigh any aversion I might have.  (I'm not surprised by this!  I was blown away by the demo for Funeral for the Sun.  Already wishlisted and greatly anticipated.)

(V qba'g guvax jr svaq bhg ubj?)

oooh, wait, I got this one!  Tvira gung uvf fcvevg vf fheebhaqrq ol svfu, naq tvira gur ubzr ivqrb cynlvat ba gur GI jurer ur'f fjvzzvat jvgu uvf fvfgre naq gura uvf byqre oebgure qvfgenpgf gurve sngure jvgu oveqjngpuvat, ur irel yvxryl qebjarq gung qnl.

In rot13: gur pebffrf pna or zber guna guerr-ol-guerr, ng juvpu cbvag lbh arrq na bireurnq ivrj gb frr jurer nyy gur lryybj sybjref ner.

Which is to say that it does get more interesting, but very much in a "draw a map" way.  If you're not looking to map out a 3D space, then no, it won't get any more interesting. :-)

I love what's going on here but boy does #8 have me stymied.

Oh, certainly the hint method lets you work around it, but it's a basic flaw in a puzzle if the only way to get the answer is to ask for hints (or, in this case, to more or less literally spell out the answer).

OK I'm also having trouble with "Tiling the Floor", since it tells me to take a quarter of the area of the diamond-shaped regions, and I have diamond shaped regions with a total area of 18.  (I don't think I'm supposed to put "4.5" in the sudoku grid?)

I'm more than a little confused by the Kitchen Counter.  The extraction says to "The number that the finished grid shows - the number of Briquets used in the puzzle", but...I'm not really seeing a number in here?  (Note too that the upper left is underdetermined: several more rectangles can be put in the spaces that don't have numbers next to them.)

Is it a 19?  It looks kind of like a 19.

I think I may come back when it's been updated.  I'm interested to see how it all works, but with three spells I'm not sure where I'm going next. 

And...guessing the spells may be kind of a lot.  I thought the ambiguity of the second spell was interesting--I know I'm not the only person who tried [rot13] "whzc" first, and I liked the little challenge of figuring out the right word, but for the third spell there were just too many options: I thought it was "fyvqr", and then tried "tyvqr", and even after hints for all but the first letter I was trying "fyvat".

I plan to be back though! 

So...in the second mosaic, where there's a blue gate on the left and two orange ones on the right.  If I step on the black square on the right, is it not supposed to take me to the next level?  Did I misunderstand the goal?

> checkpoints are available

OK but do they have to be?  (I used a red key on the north door, and then to go out the east door, and I can't restore back past that, but also can't push the red or purple key out of the room I enter.)  

OK that was really sweet.  (And not easy!)

Hey, cup of tea and a cat is a great ending!

I love how new this is; the idea of the room behind a door depending on what key you use is a clever fantasy trope but not one I've seen come up in games before, I don't think.  The levels put it to really good use, and there kept being twists I didn't see coming.  Great game!

To be honest, at first it felt like a pretty standard sokoban-like, but you introduced some really clever elements and challenges; by level 15 or so I was already going "wait there's more? that wasn't the hardest one?".  Very satisfying to get through!

Very nice.  Some neat level design in there.  (I will say that the level where you start in the C-shaped cage was my least favorite, insofar as it hinges on what I found to be counterintuitive behavior--the ability to push a box away even if you yourself can't move.  But otherwise, no complaints.)

Is "exercise in mapping" a puzzle?  Is it thinking, or is it a mechanical task?  Eh, given how much trouble I had keeping myself from getting turned around, I think yeah, puzzle. :-)

Once I did start mapping, it came together much more clearly.  I appreciated the penalty for guessing being non-fatal but enough of an inconvenience that you wouldn't want to do it.  

Got about two rows into Tetris before it hit a bug (pieces dropping in the wrong place, and appearing as overlapping other pieces, and then a piece stopping right above a gap instead of going into it...).  Did not look further.

Oh.  Yes.  Using "X" was not on my radar for that.  Well, thank you--I'd finished the game otherwise, so with this I just had to go play several series of notes and I was all set.  Glad to have officially finished it, because it was in fact fun overall. :-)

...it's taking me even longer.  How do you use the piano?

For anyone who made the same mistake I did: You can use a key on any lock on a door, at any point.  I found the game pretty much impossible when i thought you had to wait for timelocks to disappear before you could open a regular lock on that door.  (Just me?  Oh well.)

Once I got past that, I won the game on the first try, but it still felt like an accomplishment and not something trivial.  It's quite good.

OK, I see there wasn't much more than the final message, but I'm glad I went back and read it anyway.  I like this.  The main thing it might have lacked is risk: navigation seemed very easy (I fell off the screen once this time) and generally low-penalty.  But the exploration aspects were very cool, in terms of transforming the world around you and in opening up new places to go.  I hope you decide to see where you can take this!

Huh.  I was kind of enjoying its surrealism--got as far as, um, making a green...thing...rise from the ground.  But then as I went back across the space, I reached the starting point and suddenly I got the original "you know what to do" box and I couldn't dismiss it.

It's...interesting but it's also a lot of sitting around while the computer plays with itself.  And takes all the good letters. 

Generally delightful; I particularly liked the way Foraging came together.

I did run into a bug where I'd filled in all of the words in Sword Practice and then started connecting letters, but when I got a connection it told me "define words".  I ended up reloading and having to type them all in again; not sure what happened there.  (Ultimately I probably would have actually preferred solving them all on paper; I'm a pen-and-paper kind of solver.)

The final puzzle felt like there was something more planned for it--spoilery discussion in ROT13: Lbh bayl hfr gur svir sbhe-yrggre jbeqf...ohg gur yrggref va gur sbhe svir-yrggre jbeqf ner gur fnzr gjragl yrggref.  Vg sryg yvxr znlor fbzrguvat jnf fhccbfrq gb unccra gung hfrq gung, ohg raqrq hc abg?  Juvpu yrsg gubfr sbhe nafjref xvaq bs sybngvat, juvpu jnf...jrveq?

As a concept, it's good, but the execution feels like it could use some work.  Idle notes from a couple of rounds:

• It's really easy to overlook exploded bombs, because they're dark on a dark background, and therefore fail to count them.  Giving them a different background would help a lot.
• I won the first round, and it told me something about a bomb that was getting added, but I didn't really understand what it meant.
• In the second round, after I clicked on a bomb, it revealed over half the board (is that what the new bomb did?), which made it impossible to win (I ended up with 30 gold), which felt like a pretty serious consequence of one misclick.