Queen's Rose Garden

nyunesu 2020-04-20 03:15

Heyo Wyatt!

So, a little bit of feedback!

Feel free to ignore most of the things due to jam scope etc, but as always I’ll give feedback considering you’ll work on it after the jam.

Could’ve been better: - Sound Effects to complement my actions - Some pieces I couldn't rotate the way I wanted (e.g. the triangle with 1 space in-between) - I Didn't feel rewarded for completing the game, I feel like it could've led me to a victory screen or something like this

Good points: - Balancing is great! The challenges felt like they were in the right amount to the skill I had at each level of the game - Particle effects and a lot of eye candy - Context & drawings to set the game's fantasy - Nice music (there was an option to export as a loop in LMMS tho, haha)

Hope that helps, and if you happen to update this game, come back here in your comment section to remember me and drop me a tweet or something!

If you have time, please click on my profile and give me some constructive feedback on my game (:

See ya, thanks for the stream!

candlesan 2020-04-20 17:51

@nyunesu You got in FAST. During the submission hour I added sound effects on placement confirmation. Thanks for the suggest though! Thanks for the kind words. As for the pieces not rotating, I think they all rotate "correctly" but keep in mind that some pieces don't rotate the way that you want because of their geometry. (kinda like the two tetris S shapes that don't rotate into each other)

Thanks for taking the time to play the game and a big thanks for taking the time to tune into the stream!

candlesan 2020-04-20 17:51

@nyunesu You got in FAST. During the submission hour I added sound effects on placement confirmation. Thanks for the suggest though! Thanks for the kind words. As for the pieces not rotating, I think they all rotate "correctly" but keep in mind that some pieces don't rotate the way that you want because of their geometry. (kinda like the two tetris S shapes that don't rotate into each other)

Thanks for taking the time to play the game and a big thanks for taking the time to tune into the stream!

kunonooni 2020-04-22 00:15

The music complimented the gameplay as did the sound effect for healing the flowers. The first time I played I didn't realize you could rotate the droplets and I found the game a little difficult. I played again and that is when I saw about rotating the droplets. This made the game much easier :laughing: All in all a pretty solid game.

fernando-tonon-de-rossi 2020-04-25 21:35

Got distracted by it, nice idea adding the dialog, it made the overall experience much better!

I've user the trackpad, it isn't much easy to control, maybe u could add an option to select the pattners using the numbers or the function keys...

I liked the concept! Great idea, congrats!

dasilvacontin 2020-04-25 21:48

Loved the character images and the dialog! Would have personally wished it was more challenging, dropped out after the 3rd level.

Good job! 🤗

fran-gambero 2020-04-25 22:46

I loved the concept and the designs! The patterns and playing with them were very nice. I would increase the difficulty, I never really I had problem on keeping the level over 75%.

gurbx 2020-04-27 21:33

Some thoughts I had when playing the game.

My instincts at the start was to not water the healthy roses. I was concerned that watering them when they don’t need it would instead kill them. I was also worried about waiting too long to revive the dead roses thinking they would die permanently if I wasn’t quick enough.

Nothing of this seemed to be the case but maybe it could have been a fun additional challenge if it was. Especially since the game felt quite easy, having to worry about not watering healthy plants would probably have added some additional depth and challenge to the game.

How the happiness meter worked wasn’t entirely made clear to me either. The first round playing the game I assumed it worked like a standard health bar, basically the percentage of flowers alive is your health and the happiness bar filling up below it was just a level timer. Only after playing around with the game after I had beaten it I understood that the percentage of flowers alive causes the bar to go up or down. This might also just have been a problem relating to the difficulty as during my play session the happiness probably never dropped below 70 percent, or at least not long enough for me to notice the bar go down.

I also instinctively tried to deselect the pattern by right clicking, which of course instead rotated the pattern. It’s fun to be able to play the entire game with just a mouse, but I think I still would have preferred to control the rotating with arrow keys instead. That way it could also be possible to go back and forth, and the right mouse button could be reserved for deselection. This is probably very subjective, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

Overall, an awesome job! The game feels very complete which I think is kind of unusual for jam games. I also really enjoyed the dramatic story you have going through the game :)

mhykah 2020-04-30 01:28

That was a fun and relaxing game! I played until the end. The audio feedback made watering plants feel satisfying and the music helped to give that relaxing mood. I hope to see more of this game post-jam! I found the gameplay to be intuitive, and the difficulty curve between levels was well designed. Adding harder patterns in later levels was clever. Great job!

stmatn 2020-04-30 21:15

The game was really fun. At first I did not realise that you can turn the patterns. And I managed to beat the game on the first try, so it might be made a bit harder. All in all great game :)

seothen 2020-05-01 15:45

There was something beautifully Tetris-esque in this, without feeling derivative; nice work! I like the intuitive nature of the gameplay as well.

zondarg 2020-05-01 17:02

Very relaxing.. the rotation mechanic reminded me a little of Hexic and similar, but here it is less strict because you can water the plants anyway, its more a ..turn in the right position to conserve water. Played well, not really hard, could get through in one go. Good work! :thumbsup:

cheesepencil 2020-05-04 05:12

I am proud to say I preserved the roses until I beat the game. That dastardly with really made the last round difficult! I thought this was a great compo entry. If it weren't for the narrative between scenes I would have stopped playing after the first or second level but because of the cut scenes I had to see how it ended.

jsec 2020-05-04 07:32

Nice game, i like mechanics. Its little bit confusing on the beginning.

100th-coin 2020-05-07 17:13

Woo. I have proven that beauty is worth fighting for! I really enjoyed the game, very relaxing and full of simple decision based puzzling. Great work on the graphics and music!

flyingbear 2020-05-12 19:56

Pretty great puzzle game you came up with here! With some polish and additions I could see this becoming one of those puzzle games people get crazy addicted to. It's extremely satisfying to fill a space perfectly.

Some random notes: -On lvl 1 I was thinking "I really want to rotate!" and you gave it to me on the very next level. Nice! -I don't know if the alive % chart UI is necessary, and it initially had me thinking there was more to it than it was. There might be a better way of displaying this or perhaps not displaying it at all is the answer. -I liked the way the game ramped up, I found chapter five (confrontation) was the sweet spot where the game got really good for me. That said, the last level was a step back for me in terms of fun. I get that the last level's supposed to be very difficult, though. -letting the player reply with "Very Well" upon losing fits the flavor of the game perfectly -The three point triangle pieces (with gaps in between each point) and to a lesser extent the 2 vertical roses with a gap in between were problematic for me. Even after using them for awhile I could never get the hang of which of the two triangle variants I had, and would "try out" a triangle piece, rotating it through all the rotations before figuring out I had the wrong one. A few approaches on how to solve this: 1. Make these pieces very rare. If I encounter them less then I spend less of the game being frustrated. 2. Remove them altogether. 3. Remove one of the variants. Perhaps with one of the variants missing it makes it easier to learn that shape. 4. Combine the two triangle pieces into one. Instead of having the triangle piece cycle through after 2 rotations(180 degrees rotation), combine the two and alternate between them, creating an uber-triangle piece that cycles through in 4 rotations(90 degrees each rotation). You end of with a piece with a lot more versatility and likely relieve the frustrations I had