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Islands in Equilibrium
Islands in Equilibrium
By nekusoul
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 72 | 3.87 | 25 | |
| Fun | 69 | 3.78 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 23 | 4.13 | 25 | |
| Theme | 59 | 4.00 | 26 | |
| Graphics | 437 | 2.69 | 25 | |
| Humor | 359 | 2.18 | 18 | |
| Mood | 364 | 2.84 | 21 | |
Comments
This is an excellent puzzle game for a 48h event. Really nice job here. The developer art may be lo-fi, but it makes for a super clear interface.
The fact that you did a tutorial too...it warms my heart. Thanks for the game.
Very nice mechanics, they work really well. Good implementation. Excellent entry.
nomaki
2017-05-06 16:25
A pretty original puzzle mechanic for the theme, really fun to play! You should totally develop this further after the LDJam, a few points: - A faint grid to better judge where tiles can be placed and count before playing out a level - An even fainter ghosting of the tiles you laid in the previous (failed) turn to allow tweaking of solution - If you have five water tiles to place, after selecting a water tile, you should be able to click 5 times to place them, rather than going back and forth to the sidebar.
Great work!
frolicks
2017-05-06 16:27
always nice to see unique mechanics interplay and consistently revamped to create fresh puzzles! wracked my brain trying to count & visualize the future behavior too!
A very interesting puzzle game, liked it a lot even though I didn't make it past "only 2 more islands to go". Even the "programmer art" didn't bug me, because the mechanics were nice and clear to follow. I would have liked some minor comfort features, such as right-click to put back the current tile, or being allowed to run the simulation without all tiles placed, so I could see how things would play out without my intervention first. Well done!
EDIT: I made a little video earlier today with my favorite games so far and naturally "Islands in Equilibrium" made the cut :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQSb3D6GyCw
Nice puzzle game! Very original concept. The last puzzle were quite challenging!
If given more time, you should work on the UI: It would be nice if you did'nt have to select the same type of tile multiple tile. And also if you could see wich tile you placed yourself (with like a black border), and they stuck after you've hit play.
Still I really enjoyed it!
luk3
2017-05-08 00:06
Loved the game! I really scratched my head with some of them! Simple, unique and fun. I'd love to see more. Good job!
rialgar
2017-05-13 13:41
Very cool. I think the simple art is important here, because it let's you clearly see the tiles and focus on the puzzle instead of trying to figure out where the borders are. I like how the last one forced me to think out of the box.
szimano
2017-05-13 19:35
Very cool game, totally enjoyable (tho couldn't get pass “only 2 more islands to go” :) ), good theme match, just few ideas from me:
* You can keep placing tiles even if they're on 0 level, which prevents the level from starting (goes to -1) * Couldn't figure out how to remove a previously places tile * Tutorial on my mac got partially hidden by the tile bar * Would be great to be able to "play" even without placing all the tiles, to check what's going on
mmason
2017-05-14 12:20
there were some levels that too me a while to go from "that's impossible" to "of course". The puzzles in this game were really well thought out and lead the player into a natural progression. The only thing I found frustrating is having to remember where I placed the tiles when I clicked stop, being able to move them and giving them a faint outline would be helpful.
Brilliant puzzle game, reminds me of Conway's game of life (not a game, more a mathematical algorithm), really great mechanics, gets challenging too. Multiple tile placement would be nice, though. Great job overall!
gilborn
2017-05-14 21:57
Very nice!
cosine
2017-05-14 22:11
I won!! This was a very cool puzzle, and an interesting mechanic. I found it quite fun! The last level, I thought, most exemplified what a fun level can be with this mechanic. However, some levels felt like there was a lot of counting, and I didn't like counting 30 tiles. I liked how this mechanic allowed for many solutions, but sometimes I felt like I was "cheating" with a solution that was obviously not what you had in mind. A couple things that would make it better if you develop it further: 1. "Fullscreen" mode on Windows shows up *under* the taskbar 2. I can place below zero, so I could pause and place additional tiles and then play again. 4. I didn't know what "sometimes pausing can be helpful" was supposed to mean. I never used it. 3. Levels like the last, with less counting and more "clever" solutions are more fun IMO.
Here's a screenshot illustrating bugs 1 & 2: Screenshot (9).png
Also, thanks for building for Linux :) I generally switch to my Windows boot to play LD games because rarely anyone builds for Linux, but I'm glad you're making it possible for those that can't / don't want to do that.
Really cool game, and a neato concept. Lots of depth with just a few pieces! I enjoyed it, got hung up on "Two islands to go!" and stopped after a few tries, but that doesn't mean I didn't have fun. Would have liked a skip level button that popped up after a few fails, because it's great to see all of someone's cool LD work that they had to crank out in a short time. Great work!
Edit: I beat that level thanks to a viewer on my stream! :tada:
Edit 2: omg the last level. Aren't you clever <3 good job!
I love the innovation of this, it is a great game!
Great to see a game with original game mechanism!
The idea of balancing nature and civilization by manipulating land distribution is novel and meaningful. It also turns out to be fun. One possible weakness I noticed is that the requirement that civilization and nature must take exactly the same number of tiles might be too rigid and requires too much calculation to be involved. For the levels currently in the game, this does not seem like a big deal, but I imagine this could be a problem once you have levels with bigger scale. After all, this is a game, not an engineering job.
A minor problem: On my Mac, the vertical panel on the left blocks the text (probably because of low resolution)
jimbly
2017-05-19 00:01
Fantastic! Quite enjoyed playing this, made it all the way through, and quite enjoyed it. Only got stalled on one level because I was trying to do something tricky that was never going to work (on the... 3rd to last, I think... trying to let the forest scoot by to take over the mountain ranges before the city destroys them... didn't work, but would have been cool ;).