FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD40 → Cohesion

Cohesion

By alottabit

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall623.9126
Fun563.9326
Innovation1423.6026
Theme3093.5026
Graphics4183.1026
Audio1203.5625
Mood1743.4125

Comments

niterich 2017-12-05 17:50

A fun and engaging puzzle experience. I feel you did the tutorialization really well. Nice calming music, though I couldn't get past level 16 :( Overall, a really nice experience

alottabit 2017-12-06 03:31

@niterich Thanks for playing! You can actually skip levels with the 'n' key - I've updated the description above to reflect this. I didn't make note of it initially because I didn't want people to give up on challenging levels, but I'd rather have people see the rest of it than give up!

realryanrogers 2017-12-06 04:31

This is actually amazing. Polished, fun, engaging, and I love the audio. Well done!

notpresident35 2017-12-06 04:35

Nice game! It's not very innovative but it's still fun! The graphics aren't great but they don't need to be, and the audio is fine, along with the mood. Overall, decent entry!

alottabit 2017-12-06 04:38

What, you're saying it's obvious that I'm a programmer and not an artist?!? Haha thanks for playing.

realryanrogers 2017-12-06 04:39

@alottabit I actually think the graphics served what it is very well!

qzqxq 2017-12-06 04:39

This seems like a lot of fun, but it isn't working for me on HTML5, I'm just seeing a grey screen with music playing in the background. I'm using Chrome on MacOS.

chartman 2017-12-06 04:44

I loved the puzzles. They seem to be well-thought out and innovative. The tutorial was straight-forward and quick to learn. The music was great! Overall, it was a relaxing and fun experience. I wish that there were more puzzle games like this.

alottabit 2017-12-06 04:50

@qzqxq Sorry it's not working for you - as I said I don't have much experience with web stuff and I don't have a Mac... Any chance you could open the developer console (F12 -> Console tab) on Chrome and tell me what you see?

therdre 2017-12-06 04:51

Nice little puzzle game, it ended up being more challenging than I first anticipated, but in a good way. The difficulty jump between levels feels just right. Nice work, it was really fun to play.

qzqxq 2017-12-06 05:00

@alottabit Sure, here you go https://i.imgur.com/Rewd49J.png

I really like puzzle games, so even if you can't get this to work I'll probably switch to my Windows partition at some point to play this.

space-man 2017-12-06 05:08

Fun game, and feels very polished. That last level was tricky, took me a while to get it!

alottabit 2017-12-06 05:08

@qzqxq Hm...that's about what shows up for me (including the audio error messages). It's been working fine for me even when they show up, so I'm not really sure what else to do. Might work on Firefox or Safari? The WebAssembly tech is pretty new, so I figured there would be a few issues, but I don't know how else to get a game in C on the web. Regardless, thanks for trying!

qzqxq 2017-12-06 08:47

Ok, I ended up switching to Windows and it worked fine.

Overall, I thought this was very well-designed. The ramp-up levels did a great job at introducing the mechanics, and there were some really nice levels later on. One thing I like to see in puzzle games is levels that have a tight solution path, so it's difficult to do by trial and error and instead forces you to think about how to get from point A to point B. I think you had several great examples of that, like levels 10, 15, 16, and 21. I really enjoyed the "working backwards from the end" thinking involved, where you consider the possible final positions of the blue squares. Also, the music is quite pleasant to listen to.

Some of the levels were less elegant, like 23 where you can just ignore the blue square on the bottom and easily finish going through the top, or 19 where it seems like you can do anything you want, and there were some other levels in the middle that felt sort of filler-ish. This is not a big deal, though, and doesn't really take away from the game.

Honestly, my only real wish is that there was more (I'm sure there are lots of possible additional mechanics that could make for some really interesting levels), but even with what you have, there were multiple times where I felt very satisfied for figuring out the solution to a level. And I think that's the most important thing when it comes to puzzle games, so great job!

niterich 2017-12-06 21:39

Very nice game! Nice calming music and an interesting core mechanic. I think you did an awesome job of tutorialization, too. Even though I couldn't make it past level 16 (even using n and p [btw, why those two buttons specifically?]), I would be super interested in what you do with this in the future!

alottabit 2017-12-06 23:50

@niterich I used 'n' for 'next' and 'p' for 'previous'. They're there more for testing purposes, but I decided to leave them in the final version in case people get stuck and want to move on. Glad you liked it!

tiberiusuciu 2017-12-07 01:11

Wow the simplicity from the this game is soo awesome. Rare are the games like these that the concept is obvious but I would have never thought about it hahahaha

Art is very good, it shows exactly what it needs and the sounds fit in well. Good set of tutorials, making sure the player understands some basic strategies on how to solve levels.

Good job! :)

c1fr1 2017-12-07 03:05

Would have been cool to have a leaderboard or challenge of some sort (maybe just personal best) for the least amount of moves on a given level

shinyogre 2017-12-07 03:09

An excellent puzzle game. I think it played fast and loose with the theme though. I agree @therdre that the 'tutorial' levels were perfectly paced.

dr-v 2017-12-07 03:22

Nice puzzle game. Innovative mechanics. Very simple to understand yet hard to master.

alottabit 2017-12-07 03:24

@c1fr1 I agree - wanted to make that an additional challenge but didn't have time :/

alottabit 2017-12-07 03:26

@shyinyogre Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I don't expect the Theme category to be my strongest, but this game was the best idea I had that at least kinda fit.

nizlow 2017-12-07 17:41

I got stuck at level 15, guess my brain could not handle those cubes anymore lol.

The music is pretty chilly, the puzzles ranged from easy to unsolvable(in my case :D). But honestly, they were quite good and judging by the comments there are atleast 23 which is nice. I think this game could do well on mobile devices since it has easy controls and an intuitive game idea.

Good job!

alexfalkenberg 2017-12-08 02:13

One of the best puzzle games I've tried this LD. I wouldn't mind being able to use two hands--maybe arrow keys for movement and retaining q and e for turning, say... and having the game display larger on screen in my browser window would have been nice. :) Otherwise, love the concept, the music and audio fx are very fitting, the graphics aren't fancy, but work well, and I would expect to find this on an app store somewhere for sale at some point. Congrats, and have a great LD! :)

toboggan 2017-12-08 04:41

I liked this! Felt like it was a bit slow for a while, like a lot of levels repeat the same core idea. Levels 13 onward were really good though. The difficulty was a bit all over the place for me. I like the trivial final level thing. :)

Didn't like the input layout, would've really liked to use arrow keys instead. An 'undo' button would have been nice, especially in the later levels (not just reset). The music was nice.

alottabit 2017-12-08 05:45

@alexfalkenberg @toboggan Interesting, I never even considered using the arrow keys, but it's easy enough to implement! Definitely considered an undo button as well, but it would've taken too long to make for the jam. Thanks for the feedback!

kaisean-games 2017-12-08 10:32

I was unable to go past lvl 13. It seemed impossible to me. Did I miss something?

However, nice little creation :) Well done!

korpokrowa 2017-12-08 12:35

Pretty, little puzzle game with addictive gameplay. Great job!

budgiem2 2017-12-08 19:46

Very well designed!

jegus9 2017-12-09 01:59

That was a damn good Compo entry. Using C and SDL to make your game, in 48h, while everyone else is doing it with an engine? That's *hardcore*.

Some levels got me stuck for several minutes, but I could complete all 25 in the end. Really nicely developed puzzles, and the relaxing music prevents me from raging after many unsuccessful attempts to solve a level.

Really, I've been leaving some harsh reviews on some compo games around this event, but this one does stick out of the crowd. Congratulations.

jimbly 2017-12-15 17:34

Great level design, quite a few levels, and very challenging! I got to level 15 before I had to use the Reset button. Web version crashed (maybe crashed Chrome?) when I switched tabs though :(. I enjoyed it enough that I replayed the levels to keep going though, and managed to make it to the end, yay!

Good music and simple aesthetics as well.