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The Matter at Hand
The Matter at Hand
By chaseplays
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 60 | 3.93 | 43 | |
| Fun | 91 | 3.80 | 43 | |
| Innovation | 132 | 3.76 | 42 | |
| Theme | 357 | 3.57 | 43 | |
| Graphics | 108 | 3.86 | 43 | |
| Audio | 127 | 3.47 | 40 | |
| Humor | 427 | 2.40 | 34 | |
| Mood | 140 | 3.47 | 40 | |
Comments
Wow, this is... really polished. Really the only major knock against it is that there are no sound effects. Besides that - it's an impressive puzzler with a great core set of mechanics and solid level design that slowly introduces them at a good pace. This is seriously impressive.
Are you really 16? I don't believe you :)
One suggestion - show a zoomed-out version of all available cards at the start of each level so I don't have to either scroll through all of them (or, as is more often the case, fail the level) in order to match them up with what's in the level and figure out a strategy.
valden
2018-04-23 09:46
Very cute and clever puzzle game ! At first I didn't understand how the card mechanics would make the game challenging, but you kept on adding new mechanics that would have you choose the right order of cards to play. The tutorials were also very smooth. This would make a really nice game with more levels and mechanics. Well done !
danby
2018-04-23 09:47
This game is very very undervalued, more people should be playing it, very fun and complete
Great little puzzler, would be a sellable game with expanded mechanics and levels.
sndr
2018-04-23 10:02
Cute and nice game! I was a bit confused about the mechanics at the beginning, but could see the real depth of them after a bit. One thing I noticed though is that I had to press the keys for too long for it to react to my input (played it on a Mac). Thought I'd mention that :) All in all, good job!
@Aaron-Nemoyten Wow, thank you so much! I 100% agree with you on sound effects, and actually tried to implement them during the jam, but couldn't get them to sound very good. In the future, I'll try and improve my ability in that area so that I won't make that mistake again. Also, with the zoomed out version of cards, I agree that that would be an improvement, but might have difficulty implementing it given that I'm using pixel art. Thanks for the kind words!
@Valden Thanks!
@Danby Wow, thank you!
@frostdragonliz Hmm... maybe I'll make an expanded version. Thanks!
@sndr Thanks! I'm not exactly sure what's causing that problem... it seems to work fine on my computer. I'll look into it more if more people mention it.
hunz
2018-04-23 18:24
Couldn't play. I'm running Linux.
``` $ java -jar TheMatterAtHand.jar Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid format at org.classpath.icedtea.pulseaudio.PulseAudioDataLine.createStream(PulseAudioDataLine.java:142) at org.classpath.icedtea.pulseaudio.PulseAudioDataLine.open(PulseAudioDataLine.java:99) at org.classpath.icedtea.pulseaudio.PulseAudioDataLine.open(PulseAudioDataLine.java:283) at org.classpath.icedtea.pulseaudio.PulseAudioClip.open(PulseAudioClip.java:402) at org.classpath.icedtea.pulseaudio.PulseAudioClip.open(PulseAudioClip.java:453) at com.chaseplays.engine.sound.Sound.(Sound.java:21) at com.chaseplays.game.CardPuzzle.(CardPuzzle.java:32) at com.chaseplays.game.CardPuzzle.(CardPuzzle.java:12) ```
Really solid game! Nails the theme and fun, and all the other parts are very polished. Seems to be alot of content as well, one idea could be to show how many levels there are total (if I knew there are only X levels left, I may try to complete all the levels). Overall, a really great game, ship it!
As others have said, you should definitely make a full game out of this. The mechanics are reasonably challenging & the level designs are very smart. Also let me just point out that I loved the music: really simple but fits the game well. Frankly I haven't finished the game because I don't have the attention span to complete puzzle games in one go, but this is definitely one of the few LD games I'll be coming back to later on just to finish it. My only negative comment is that I don't really think the game fits LD's theme.
sophie
2018-04-23 18:47
...I kept getting really annoyed at how cleverly some of the hands were designed to lead you to one solution and only later let you realize it was an incorrect one. I mean, it's clever and I respect it, but I personally would have enjoyed the puzzles more if I could have actually seen all of my cards at once instead of having to fiddle around with them so much.
Definitely top 5 material so far. I thoroughly enjoyed playing this and especially liked how polished and finished it was.
sky
2018-04-23 18:59
This definitely feels like a finished (if not short) game I could find published on a game site somewhere. Very clean and polished other than the lack of sound effects. Well done! 👍
@hunz Sorry, I don't know why that's happening. I've had a lot of problems using sound in Java in the past.
@GettingRekt Thank you! I've added a number of levels to the description of this page to possibly help with people finishing the entire game. It's actually not too long, and can be beaten in a pretty short time.
@sophie Yeah, I'm not really sure how I could have fixed the problem of not being able to see your entire hand. Especially given the fact that I used pixel art, it's not exactly easy for me to shrink the cards any further. Also, I did, very intentionally, try and "trap" the players in a false solution, but hoped that it would make the puzzle more satisfying to complete in the end. Thanks for the feedback!
@aarre-entertainment Wow, you actually think it's top 5 material? I'm gonna try and keep my hopes down, but I'm glad you liked it!
@sky Thank you! I might try and create a more complete version of the game at some point, as I think there's a lot of room to expand. If I do that, I'll try and add sound effects too.
I think it's safe to say that I am biased towards tile-based puzzle games, but this my favorite of your LD entries. The art is very crisp and the music is phenomenal, to the extent that I didn't even realize the game didn't sound effects because it held up the atmosphere so well on its own. I agree that an expanded version would be cool, though I'm not sure how well the mechanics would scale, as a decent amount of the difficulty seems to stems from a lack of readability (in a good way, as in there being enough branching paths to require looking ahead). Personally, I find that expanding games like this to be quite challenging, as increasing the difficulty can quickly lead to the level design becoming muddled (HackOS in particular had this problem), which makes solving later levels feel like a chore rather than a rewarding challenge. Still, I hope you do toy around with it, I think the mechanics have a lot of potential. I hope this places really well, it certainly deserves to! Also, happy belated birthday!
@chaseplays Top 5 of what I've played so far (around 30 or so games). Would be a stretch from me to say for all the entries, but very, very good.
croewens
2018-04-24 08:24
Wow this is great. Felt really pollished. Very undervalued and could rank really high. I’d love for you to review my submission as well.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/keyboard-warrior
@stevenjmiller Thank you so much! I will probably expand on this in the future, and I think it has a decent amount of potential, but I do agree that a full version of this wouldn't scale very well. If I were to focus on creating a full version of any game, Timeless probably has the most potential, but I'd like to create a finished version of this one with SFX, more levels, a real ending, etc. beforehand. Thanks once again!
@aarre-entertainment Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. Top 5 is definitely a stretch, but I still think I'll do decently. Thanks for clarifying!
@croewens Thank you!
2018-04-25 15:30
Nice game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 41 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7llm9eTY4YI
yngvarr
2018-04-26 09:45
This looks solid. First time I noticed a tumbnail, I thought that it's a PICO-8 game and was a bit surprised to see a jar.
The game plays smoothly and even the lack of sound didn't spoil any fun! =) Really nice pixel art and color scheme seems to be picked with a lot of care. Well done!
btw, I'm running on Linux machine, it works as if the game was made for it. =)
This was really good! I feel like if the cards enforced the movement direction too (in the first level, I thought move-3 means the pawn had to move in an L), it would enlarge the possibility space of the game (I love puzzle games!)
Honestly the best and most complete-feeling game I've played this LD. Puzzle games are difficult to do, but you did a great job introducing new concepts before expanding on them. The idea of showing a zoomed out version of the cards takes away some of the forethought going into a level, in my opinion.
The art is hella cool too.
The one is the most complete game I played on LD41. The level design is suberb and mechanics are clever. The simple art style and music makes it easier to play. I enjoyed this game a lot and its perfect on many aspects. Excellent work!
This is a fantastically clever puzzle game. The design of the levels caught me off guard many times. Everything's tutorialized properly, and you did a great job leading me on to a false solution. Great job there, really. The music fits the aesthetic and I'd like to see it on soundcloud or the like. Graphics are also impressive. Relatively minimal, but incredibly clean and legible, and with a pleasant palette.
There's one minor failure of the design, I think: I had to spend a few levels just counting things. Grid squares sometimes, but more often cards. How many warps did I have, how many switches, etc. I understand that you were trying to meet the LD theme, but I think an interface where I had a number next to each ability, rather than a set of cards, might have been easier to use for those levels. On the other hand, you used the order of the cards to great effect in training and fooling the player. So I'm on the fence here.
The amount of different mechanics is impressive for a compo game, too. I want to find any other points to critique the game but it's so thought-through and polished that I can only say good things about it. Keep it up, I'd love to play your entry next LD.
Amazing game. The puzzle elements were awesome and the whole aesthetic works together great.
I agree with the comments about 'seeing the whole hand of cards' in the beginning, and I had the same thought as @amras0000 about putting a count number on each card instead of showing each separately. The notion of 'false solutions' would still be implicit in the level design, but not the card layout anymore. Not sure how important that features is to you.
Regardless, great mechanics, great learning curve, great levels, and great aesthetics. Great job!
I liked the visuals, it is very readable and easy to understand. music is nice. Maybe you could have skipped the tutorial levels for new mechanis, don't know (it is always hard to know if you should include or not, it really depends on people tastes ;) )
That was nice
@Jupiter_Hadley Thanks for playing my game!
@Yngvarr I'm glad you liked my game! In the description, I do credit a pre-created color palette, but otherwise all the graphics are mine. Thanks! Also, it's great to hear that this works on Linux as well, so thanks for letting me know!
@undefinist Thanks! I do agree that having direction-specific cards would have made puzzles more interesting, and actually considered the idea myself when doing the jam, but thought that for a game this small, it made more sense to make the cards more open-ended. In the end, I'm not sure what choice was best, but if I ever expand on this game, I'll definitely consider the idea further.
@PackNSlash Wow, thank you! I'm glad you liked my game so much!
@Arqcenick Thank you so much!
@amras0000 First of all, I'm glad you liked the game! I might put the song on Soundcloud, although it was actually sort of just a last-minute improvisation, so it feels a bit strange to upload it in that way.
I do agree with you about the counting feature, and I've seen that criticism several times in the comments. Now, you suggested that I just put a number to the side of each "ability", but also that it might defeat the theme. I don't think this is the case, though. In my opinion, the best option would be to "stack" cards of the same type, and put a number above each stack. If I make a new version of this game, I'll definitely do something along those lines.
As you mentioned, though, I did lay out the cards to trick the player several times, but I think it's a necessary sacrifice. Either that, or I need to make the cards smaller, or maybe even introduce a "stack" option? Something like that. Anyways, thanks for the criticism, it definitely helps a lot!
@nick-rafalski Thanks! I'm glad you liked my game. If you want to see my response to your "count number on each card", I talk about it above when replying to amras0000.
@joqlepecheur Thanks! Personally, I think that the tutorial levels were pretty necessary to make sure everyone understood every concept, and also none of them should have taken much time to figure out, but thanks for the comment!
lmb
2018-04-28 23:14
Puzzles are not my kind of game (I played maybe through six or seven levels), but as far as I can tell, this is a very solid entry. You have a simple game mechanic and explored it in interesting ways. I liked the level design, with some simple levels introducing new kinds of cards before using them in more complex ways. Graphics are cute, music works well. I can see people playing this kind of game on their phones or something like that.
I am afraid I don't have any useful suggestion for you, but congratulations! A very polished game!
I thought this was a really fun game that fit the theme really well. My only complaint is that it is not difficult enough, I would love to see much more difficult puzzles. There were a few that took me a number of tries to complete and those were by far the most enjoyable. I really think that you should continue to work on this game and turn it into something a bit bigger, I think that you could end up with a very addicting game! Congratulations on making a great game in 48 hours!
shivur
2018-04-29 03:17
Very good and complete game.
Good job! Cool game!
I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.
I hope you continue with the project.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape
impiaaa
2018-05-06 02:07
Wow, that is a whole lot of levels and cool mechanics for a jam game, and very smooth and clever tutorializing! And the puzzles are a good level of difficulty, too. Music is a little weird for the graphics, but well composed. Sound effects also would have been nice. Well done!
Nice little puzzle game you got there! The level design is done very well. The difficulty curve is really the best among all the games I played so far. The game is quite finished. If you add in a bit more polish and sound effects it would be a great thing to have in the market!
One thing I think I should let you know is that I couldn't play the game on my laptop. When I clicked the exe file, it tells me I need a Java Runtime Environmnet, so I switched to my desktop PC and it worked. IDK if you could get rid of that software requirement but it would be nice.
Anyway, great work!
le-slo
2018-05-07 18:29
Wow, very impressive! I think the amount of polish is superb, and the game is fun. Here some comments:
-Once you've selected a card, there is no way to put it back in the deck, I had to do some annoying restarts.
-I believe discarding cards is useless for these levels, you almost always use all the cards.
-The levels were pretty easy, but the potential is huge. More adding new objects than investigate the ones you already presented. All were great but none was truly explored.
-Too many cards, at least, you could stack them.
-The camera movement between holding the deck and playing one card is great, but in latter levels, when there are several cards to play in a row, it's a bit unpleasant.
I've you are willing to, working this game a little you could achieve a great game.
Loved this one, it deserves to be a full game in the future... (also, happy birthday(ish)!)