Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Jailocorp
By jaywoody
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 182 | 3.48 | 44 | |
| Fun | 250 | 3.20 | 44 | |
| Innovation | 186 | 3.26 | 44 | |
| Theme | 363 | 3.00 | 44 | |
| Graphics | 175 | 3.58 | 44 | |
| Audio | 122 | 3.39 | 44 | |
| Humor | 246 | 2.65 | 35 | |
| Mood | 116 | 3.51 | 44 |
I found this reaaaally hard, I love this type of game so I'm torn between continue playing to this game or move on to the others 10000000 games I want to try. I guess I will replay your game later! I managed to do and understand some things, but there's so much left to do and I'm struggling so hard (and I still don't know what to do with these damn levers :( ) It's a bit frustrating, but still enjoying :) Good work !
Cool game, sometimes its really hard to tell what to do, but its ok. Please rate more games!
I like this idea. Puzzle games like these are among my favorites. This was very difficult though. A "tutorial" level would do wonders to this game. Very good graphics and soundtrack, good job!
The post-compo version was really cool and less frustrating than the compo one. Welll done and great puzzles!
Your puzzle is very interesting, I liked it. Its sound design got really good, both on the menu and playing. It's a great FPS puzzle even more considering the short time of Compo
This is really cool, and lots of good ideas here, but I (who was bad at Myst back in the day) find it really hard. I was able to figure out the lever puzzle, but the rest has me stumped. Or at least stumped within the time I have to devote to playing Ludum Dare games at the moment.
Tried out the post-compo version and sadly didn't get much farther.
Great take on theme, and good job getting this together in a compo weekend. If you do put a hint system (or put up a quick hint guide or similar) at any point I'd love to try it out.
Took me a while but I finally completed it. I did play both versions, but I completed it on the post jam version. I think there are too many red herrings. The extra circle and diamond combinations and the weird way the lights to the door are arranged, and the association between the green and red squares and the levers up and down state made me think that it was related to the colored block puzzle. I really liked the chess one where the words on the walls relate to the roles of the chess pieces. That was the hardest one for me, but still my favorite.
A ha, I got it - I couldn't give it up and was able to finish the post-compo version. Got the chess one thanks to @edshotmachine's comment, then the colored button puzzles clicked one I thought about them some more. Good stuff!
Good comments from everyone, totally agree with you edshotmachine that a lot could be improved in the compo version and even in the post-compo version still. Thank you for trying out the game. I play tested the compo version with my buddies and it's definitely too hard. I tried to make it more simple in the post compo version and hopefully that would be something that most of the players can get through. We'll see.
I'll seriously have to think about adding the hints if it's clear that the post compo is still too hard.
Hey, nice game.
Good grpahics and music, first of all.
Then, the atmosphere was very nice (felt like an Escape Game IRL). And the intro cutscene, OMG, gorgeous. Nice voice overs also.
But I have to say, your game is less about puzzles than about problems. To be less hard and more rewarding, to be less vague and unclear on what to do or how the things are related, you should have worked more on the logical bounds between the elements of your room. Hints, progressive difficulty (think of The Witness for instance), more feedback when stuff are going the right way ... It's a bunch of things to make the whole less random.
A idea could be, for instance, to have some notes leaved here and there from previous subjects that could tell hints about **other** problems, easier one but which have the same mechanic/concept of the hard one that are in the room.
Anyway, overall it's a good FPS game, finely polished. Good job but, to me, you could improve a bit your game design in the way you deliver the problems to make them be puzzles and not problems.
I hear you @pl4typus. It's a difficult balance to be sure and one that isn't easily done in a 48 hour timeline. At least by me. I had to start from pretty basic stuff to make sure I could finish the game with my limited knowledge. Of course I would do totally different puzzles now since the colored buttons is unexciting as are the levers. The chess pieces serve well as a puzzle mechanic but the way the puzzle is ultimately designed leaves a lot to hope for as well. So I'm not oblivious to these facts. I really just ran out of time in the compo version and then just tried to see how that crude seed would work if polish was added. Mainly as a test to myself how far can I take that. I think it's a smoother experience and it could still be a lot better with some things added.
Thank you for the comments. I appreciate it very much!
i like the little backstory you made for the game, very cool. i was shit at solving the puzzles, i dont know if its because the game is too hard or am i a dumbo. that aside i saw that you really put effort into thinking of cool puzzles i appreciate that a lot. very unique entry to ldjam, god bless. .
Thanks @goog for the comments, I appreciate it. You are definitely not a dumbo as you can see from the other comments. :)
Have a great saturday!
Very cool puzzle game! I love how all the puzzles are environmental! Got them all in about 12 minutes. :) Probably a bit too difficult for a LD game, might want to slowly ramp up diff somehow. (but this is my type of puzzle, so I loved it - felt challenged and rewarded at the end)
Setting & story adds to it as well, and the gentle ticking clock now and then adds great mood.
The post-compo one adds some great mood.
Some pieces of info I was unclear about what they meant, and I did not seem to use them (and I just saw you removed those in the post-compo :P)
Although I only was able to solve one of the puzzles (the chess one) I was totally unable to do the other ones. That said, the game has a lot of well placed hints here and there that make me wanna try a million different things (although none worked).
All in all, a great experience and really amazing job for a LD game. Keep up the awesome work.
Thanks for the comment @joror! You got through! Congratulations! :)
Yeah it's a bit too difficult, at least the compo-version is. It would've been cool if I could've made a longer game where the difficulty ramps up, but I knew I wouldn't have time for that. I got through this one barely in the 48 hours. Maybe I'll expand this or make a totally new one with more solid puzzle designs, who knows.
Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks you for the comments @multiplexor! I'm really sorry I made it so hard. :( Hope you still had a good time with it! Thank you for the kind words and have a great weekend!
I think this is a very clever entry - sadly, too clever for me, as in both versions I had very little idea of what I was doing. I could identify where the puzzles were, but I don't think I had any success in solving any of them.
On another note: although you don't get marked on your post-jam build, I just wanted to say that it's really beautiful! I can only imagine how you'd be able to make it look if you used UE4...
Thank you for the comments @joshyoshkenoshi! The puzzle design was too hard and vague definitely in the compo version and I think it's still far from optimal in the post-compo version.
And thank you for the kind words on the post-compo visuals. It means a lot. I have thought about using UE4 and I'm somewhat familiar with it. I've mainly stuck to Unity because of the C# language. Maybe I'll try my hand in UE4 some day.
These are great lessons for future reference. So thank you very much for the feedback!
Really enjoyed this one, nice to see a point and click adventure. Like others I found the original version too hard (managed the chess puzzle and one of the button puzzles), but managed fine with the updated version. I commend this project for the level of atmosphere.
Nice going @big-cow! It's great that you were able to work things out in the post-compo version. Thank you for the feedback!
Right, I had another go (I'm not one to just give up!) and managed to solve all of the puzzles in 9:39. I still don't understand the chess puzzle, and only solved it by trial and error, but never mind. I do very much like this game - I'm eager to try and make a sort-of 'escape room' style game myself - as it many ways that is what this is - and it has given me some good ideas.
Regarding, UE4, I myself have only been using it since the start of the year, and to be honest C++ isn't as scary as it might initially seem. The good thing about using C++ is that it forces you to be more explicit with your programming, for example by protecting againt null pointers, etc. If you are itnerested, Epic have a lot of free tutorials available, and I'd suggest converting a project you've already worked on to get a good idea of what's similar and what's different. Plus, if you're lazy (as we all are from time to time!), just use blueprints. ;-)
One of my favourite games I have played so far!
The music and graphics really create an interesting atmosphere and the puzzles really force you to think. In the end, I had like a minute left but still 2 puzzles incomplete (the numbers and the levers). Then I figured out the numbers puzzle solution and just clicked the levers until the door opened. Somehow I finished this game with only 13 seconds to spare.
All in all, I got a memorable emotion out of it and that is great.
Wow @joshyoshkenoshi! That takes some dedication. Thank you very much for trying it again and kudos for getting through it! I guess not many have done it based on the comments. :)
The chess puzzle's integral piece that connect the words on the walls with the actual pieces is the table compass which unfortunately isn't as high fidelity and as prominently displayed in the post-compo version as it should. I would fix it in a jiffy to be more intuitive if Unity wouldn't have made it very difficult for me. I see what I can do to that in the near future. Thanks for the feedback on that.
I have heard that the C++ route is the best route in the end. For some reason I haven't felt that as intuitive as Java or C#. Maybe I will try again and take a look at it.
Thanks so much for the feedback and trying my game again!
Very nice to hear @siimer! It's incredibly cool that you got a worthwhile experience out of it. You really made my day!
Thanks so much for playing my game, the comment and making me happy!
@jaywoody - thanks for the tip! Now I feel silly for having completely ignored that table! Not sure why I did that; I think I gave it a quick look and just thought 'that's a nice pattern!' Super work - I'd love to see where you could take this game in the future!
Overall a very polished entry given the time limit, much like a lot of players I found the compo version too challenging but I faired a bit better on the post-compo one. I think the key is (as others have mentioned) feedback, just knowing that I'm on roughly the right track boosts my motivation and helps me to complete puzzles. It is nigh impossible to get that kind of balancing done in the compo though. You've done a great job given the time limit and the post-compo version is going in the right direction.
Thanks for the feedback @adamd. I completely agree with you. I thought about adding some subtle hints to the cinematics in the intro and after completing a puzzle thus nudging towards the next solution, but I just ran out of time with that one.
Thank you for kind comments!
Love these types of games! Pretty ambitious project for a ludum dare, but you guys pulled it off!
Overall, I really enjoyed it! It was definitely very hard, but that just meant that it felt great when I finally figured something out. I managed to solve three puzzles, the two with the colored buttons and the chess one, but I have absolutely no idea how to do the switches. I only played the compo version, so I'm not sure if you already made these changes, but I would have liked the music to loop better and for walking to be a little faster. The overall mood was great, and I did like the music and especially the ticking sound every minute, it really emphasized the time constraint. I think maybe a little more time, or a few more hints, would really make a big difference.
Really good entry for a fun puzzle game. Maybe too hard for me. It reminds me some escape game like The Room, but yours has a good background as story. I play your postcompo project because you tried mine and I appreciate your effort. The main aesthetic is oppressive like a psycholigical prison. I like too the music with this little timer sometimes. I cannot solve all puzzlez, but I did the first and the second. I will continue this test. Well done. Thank you ++
Thank you for the comment @jakeuro! It's good that you feel that way since after the first 10 hours of the compo I had a Unity scene with a capsule moving in 4 different directions and not much else. It's amazing what you can do in a short amount of time if you don't care about your well-being. :)
Thank you for the comment @acearcher! The lever puzzle was definitely way too hard on the compo version just like you said and I dialed the difficulty on that way down for the post-compo version. I'm impressed you got through all of the other ones as those have been tricky to others as well. Kudos on that!
There is a left shift for run but I for some reason left it out of the instructions.
Can I ask you what do you mean when you say you would have liked the music to loop better? The main game music should go to silence and after some 10 - 15 seconds loop again from the start. Maybe I left a mistake somewhere.
Thank you so much for the feedback!
Thank you for your comment @geckoo1337! As you can see from the comments, you are not alone thinking it's too hard. I really like making music and so I think that is something I dedicate too much of my time when making games to jams. Thankfully you and others appreciate that aspect. I'm glad you got two puzzles out of the four solved, that's pretty good and shows tenacity! I really appreciate you taking your time to test the updated version.
Thank you for the feedback!
@jaywoody For the music, I would have preferred a perfect loop instead of the silence and starting over. It's a really minor issue, though. The music itself is great, so it's better to leave it as-is than to replace it with something seamless, but having a second or two of silence was a bit distracting for me.
Thanks for clearing that out @acearcher! Yeah now that I think about it, the silence might be too long between the loops. Thanks for the feedback!
I really love this idea for a game, and you executed it beautifully! I love how it feels like you are trying to solve an escape room, and the music really adds to the intensity. The idea of it also being a life or "you're getting sold" sort of thing makes it interesting and is a really nice interpretation of the theme. Great job!
P.S. I only got through the color-number puzzle :cry:
I played the post compo version. I started off by trying to find objects that I could interact with, but none of the things I thought that I could interact with showed the circle around the cursor indication. Perhaps you can explain elements of a puzzle, before introducing the player to the puzzle.
I played the post-compo one and got the chess and button puzzles but I had no idea what to do with either set of levers. The chess one was really clever.
The game is really good. Great atmosphere, and good puzzles. I did not manage to complete them all, but I'll try more later
For someone who was always intrigued about Myst back in the day but never had the patience to play it - this is quite appealing, but I didn't manage to solve the puzzles, argh. One of my biggest puzzle to get over initially was the mouse movement since I play all my FPS games with invert Y-axis =)
Thank you all very much for the feedback and trying the game! I appreciate it!
I love it, great theme and well done on a puzzle game for compo. Indeed it's a little frustrating esp. at the beginning, but rewarding to figure out.