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I Wanna Lockpick

A strange puzzle game about matching colored keys and doors. · By LAWatson

Awesome game + feedback

A topic by Hatless created Dec 16, 2022 Views: 284 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 3
(7 edits)

Super, super cool game. Thanks for making it. I kept notes when playing.

(Spoilers for everything!)

backside and finale

By which I meant: it's strange that the exit to the finale is just slightly more obscure than the exit to the backside stages. If it's imitating the early exit from Baba is You, the finale ought to be much more obvious and much easier to reach and beat. If it's meant to be hidden, it ought to be more hidden.

any number of jumps

I was wondering if the protagonist should blow past double jump to infinite jump. Having beaten(?) the demo since, I guess there were three or so stages that would break from this. But the user-convenience might be worth it?

bicolour door label

prose?

I forget what these were about. Heh.

operators- the song lyrics are 'that's amore', not 'that's adore'

Deliberately annoying text has unintentionally annoying eggcorn.

confusign- explaining the mechanic in the text kinda sucks. we made this far. give us some credit

The stages immediately before had figuring out the new mechanic be a major part of the challenge. 'Confusign' just yells that answer at you. I guess none or all of them should do that?

picking favorites- much too hard

Actually, I finished the demo without ever beating this one. Maybe there's a trick I didn't see. Maybe it's just too hard for such early placement.

macrocosm- too easy. yes, the text _says_ it might be too easy, but it still feels wrong that it _is_

The flipside of the previous, I guess.

library- too few clears?

The library world only needs six stage clears to advance. It felt like too few at the time, and it still does.

cascade- ahahahahaha YES

Cool stage.

lens of truth real anticlimax

I wrote this before the game even explained how the lens worked. As far as I recall, the game just dumps it on the floor in front of you, explains nothing, and then drops a load of operating instructions on you on the stage where it becomes relevant. Probably could be organised better.

imaginary doors could look cooler

Unique sprites or something?

prose?

The quality of the prose dropped off over the course of the game. Yes, it does tell you that's what's happening. But a stage with no text is better than a stage with ha-ha-yes-this-text-is-bad-(pleasedonthitme) text.

ending?

I am only mostly sure I beat the demo. Which is awkward. I reached an area with an impassable DEMODEMODEMO wall, a tutorial that doesn't seem to tutorialise or unlock anything, and a second finale which looked far too large and trollish to attempt. (If it unlocks a third half of the game, I guess I'd try it. If it only unlocks a you win screen, I'm happy to say I've already won.)

The megalomaniac scope of the demo being what it is, I have no idea if that's the end or the halfway point. Heh.

This was a kickass puzzle game and you should be proud if it. If my notes look too negative it's only because I didn't write 'wow' and 'cool' everywhere. I'll definitely buy the full version if it appears.

Developer

I don't intend to sell the full game for money. Definitely not even *possible* either with the amount of copyrighted/licensed stuff I yoinked (you can see a brief overview in the credits file). Anyways, thanks for playing! I'll respond to a few choice things:

Backside & Finale: Backside is pretty easy to find as soon as you're feeling even a speck explorative, but I've seen people *actually* miss Finale, even solving Graduation first before they knew about it. I'll probably try to err on the side of more obvious in the full version.

Picking Favorites: This puzzle is constructed of a lot of "micropuzzles" for each individual color, weaved together. It's definitely a bit of a tangle, but I figured one that, at this point, the player probably knew how to untangle anyway.

Confusign: This puzzle was actually sort of a risk in my eyes, because this technically teaches you about the Underflow mechanic used in World 11, but could be easily confused as implying "doors with negative copies do not have their locks changed" unless you hovered your mouse over the door and saw the negative lock count. And, honestly, this one's mechanic is as simple as doing the thing to the thing anyway, so I'm not sure too much is lost from outright explaining it. I'll give it another look though. I like to be very blunt about certain mechanic introduction puzzles.

Lens of Truth / Imaginary Doors: The only reason I dump the lens on you the way I do is because I didn't want players to have a button that made the doors look all weird in the earlygame and then think it could be applied to the early puzzles somehow. (In fact, that's why it exists at all.) I *do* intend to add spiffier graphics for all the Imaginary Doors to fully 1-1 match the special lock graphics for Real Doors. Honestly, the graphics of these mechanics in particular is jank as all hell.

Prose: First off, "adore" is a door pun, and you will NOT be hitting me for it. I will catch your fists and judo throw you into a Combo Door whose locks consist of your every last fear and regret. Jokes aside, I see what you mean by the prose dropping off (I distinctly remember the ones which mention that the narrator is running out of new things to talk about), I'll probably be redoing a few choice ones both to be less awkward as well as to retcon a few details.

Again, thanks for playing!

Developer

Also thanks for teaching me about the word "eggcorn", this is an incredible discovery.