lawrence 2020-10-05 02:02
Very cool game, but the game got stuck here:
ld47_stuckinaloop_VQMQxqWaAI.png
Nice to see someone using Shapes, I was just thinking about getting it soon myself. :slight_smile:
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → Splines 'n Shapes
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 6 | 4.30 | 52 | |
| Fun | 4 | 4.29 | 52 | |
| Innovation | 7 | 4.50 | 52 | |
| Theme | 11 | 4.49 | 52 | |
| Graphics | 41 | 4.21 | 52 | |
| Audio | 3 | 4.41 | 52 | |
| Humor | 299 | 2.54 | 37 | |
| Mood | 19 | 4.11 | 50 |
Very cool game, but the game got stuck here:
ld47_stuckinaloop_VQMQxqWaAI.png
Nice to see someone using Shapes, I was just thinking about getting it soon myself. :slight_smile:
Hey @lawrence! thanks for the feedback! It's not directly stated, but the order that the orb has to reach the shapes is on side count. (so it needs to go triangle -> square -> pentagon in this particular level). I'll try to think of other ways of explaining that within the game (ideally without explicitly stating it).
And Shapes is awesome! Definitely couldn't have made this game without it!
I really *really* enjoyed this game. I'm a huge fan of puzzle games and minimal yet pleasing graphics like this game has. Playing with beziers to make sure they go through things in the right order was a brain teaser I never thought of before. The audio went hand-in-hand really well with the gameplay. Few nitpicks: Wish there was a way to "reset" the points, and wish the difficulty scaled not just in number of points (thanks for stopping at 7... or was it 8?), maybe with like points you should avoid, or even moving points. Overall, this was an excellent job! Thank you for making this.
This has the potential of becoming a great mobile timewaster! :-)
Very nice
Thank you for this entry! :-)
- great puzzle gameplay loop - great use of simple graphics - good color choices - audio works well - improvements needed: [] (programmer joke for can't find anything to improve)
Amazing! Really really great. The theme is used well, the game is gorgeous, and the sounds. MM! So good. It's challenging, engaging, and also super relaxing. Well done!
Excellent idea and implementation!! However, I've had trouble understanding how exactly I define the order of shapes. How can I know which one is the first, or the second, for example?
Very neat idea--nice use of color, sound, and shape to communicate mechanics. Lovely little game :)
@undefinist - Thanks for the suggestions! I agree that having a way to reset to a default state would've been a nice quality of life improvement. And I had that same idea of points to avoid and moving points! But alas, I ran out of time hahah. Another mechanic I was thinking of was having multiple orbs / loops to control
@hermitao - Thanks for the feedback! The order of the shapes is based on the number of sides the shape has (so triangle -> square -> pentagon -> etc ...). It seems that there needs to be more indication of the order. (perhaps I could use color, or dots/numbers?)
@ everyoneelse - Thanks for the feedback! It means a lot!
very cool game add score thing it will make it more cool. very cool idea
Very cool game and excellent implementation
Lovely concept around vector shapes and very soothing indeed. Love the sound design, reminiscent of Mini Metro. Simple and effective, great job.
Beautiful game, loved it!
Awesome idea and execution, it's super relaxing to play and just enjoy the rythm, the shapes and the colours as you adjust the control points. Really loved your game!
What a fun concept, well done! I think your game fits this Ludum Dare perfectly.
Really neat entry. The visuals and audio complement each other beautifully leading to a very clean and polished look and feel. This is especially impressive for a compo game. The levels themselves were surprisingly tricky and puzzely and very satisfying to play.
A reay impressive entry.
Very cool concept, with excellent implementation, high quality! Totally fits a theme. Thank you for the Linux version!
Great Game!
What a lovely game, challenging & relaxing is a great and difficult combination to pull off!
I LOVE THIS GAME!
Soooo beautiful, amazing audio, genuinely fun puzzle, perfectly on-theme, really well executed!
Fantastic game. Chill, innovative, interesting puzzle, audio and graphics support the mood well. I look forward to buying this to play on my tablet before bed soon.
This is an incredibly solid entry. Very nicely done.
I like how I became more aware of the symmetry properties of the Bezier curve, as I could always just start solving each puzzle at any point in the curve. I also liked how my conceptualization of the directionality of the curve evolved over the game--at first it seemed like an important thing to be aware of, while at the end it was closer to, "put the point that's first in the loop at the first shape". :smile: I suppose the game sort of makes you think about how curves work. The nice properties that curves have become more obvious as you begin to develop systematic ways to solve the puzzles.
I think looping the game instead of ending it makes sense, although I thought it made have been a nice "final moment" to have the game end after it goes back to three dots and you send them through the single triangle again.
The only other thing is that, sometimes it seemed like the dot should have connected with the shapes and it didn't? It seemed like maybe the extra speed the dot got would sometimes slightly affect its range where it would hit the shapes? But I could be wrong. It only seemed to happen on one puzzle so my perception might just be tripping me up.
Overall I'd say this is the best entry I've seen so far. Takes a good, simple concept and executes it beautifully. :smile:
really great! the ideal game jam game- clean concept perfectly on theme, an idea that makes you wonder why you haven't seen a game like it before, and very well-crafted too. Would love to see this expanded into a full release with some more variety and elements added in.
Solid! I really enjoy the immersive guide of the gameplay you present. Also the puzzles!
Probably the smoothest game of the jam ! Like, so cool, fluid and zen ! The concept is simple yet so fun ! I really love it and everything seems so polish and fine tuned ! Really awesome ! Congrats !
Really cool and relaxing! Simple and effective good use of the theme and strong overall aesthetic.
@marcmagus @walaber - thanks! I definitely plan on exploring this concept more, and it definitely seems like this would translate to touchscreens pretty well. We'll see how it turns out!
@honey-pony - thanks for the feedback! One thing I noticed about this game is that people were able to get a very good intuition of how control points affect a curve pretty quickly! I hope that it could be applied to situations outside this game (not sure what all the other real world use cases of splines are though lol).
Also, glad you made it to the end! It looping back to the start is kind of a joke on theme (the levels themselves loop hah). But yes, I agree that some payoff at the end would have been nice.
As for the dot missing, the two things I can think of are: 1. the dot travelled past the whole shape between two frames (this could especially be the case if the fps is low...and if the dot is moving fast) 2. the loop invalidates itself after one revolution. So there might be the case that you nudged the loop so that the triangle is placed after its original spot.
It's probably both hahah.
@ everyoneelse - Thank you for all the feedback and kind words. It's much appreciated
Really well done! Good compo entry. The art and sound is very limited but the art direction is great. The art and sound really work great together. The game play is interesting enough to keep me engaged at first but lost me after about ~7 minutes due to the lack of variation. Just adding more anchor points and target forms didn't cut it for me to keep me playing. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of genre, so that would be a hard task to achieve in the first place. Still, a very good and polished entry! Fluid game play, rather intuitive controls and nice use of limited art and sound design. Good job!
the aesthetic is so clean and pretty. The sounds are soothing and great for a puzzle game. A compo gem. great work
realy lovely game. this kind of puzzle is my kind of game. i played through the entire game i think, i ended up with some dots dissapairing with only 3 left and one triangle dot as in the beginning, so i guess it reset?
realy cool consept.
Absolutely blown away with this, Ill be honest I wasn't expecting much but man did you take such a simple concept and really polish it. Fantastic idea perfectly incorporating the theme and pairing it with an incredible, yet simple attention to detail. I personally love the feeling of hitting each shape, the sfx the visual cues ah its very well done. Its probably one of the highest ratings I've given out. I am seriously impressed this execution well done
@honey-pony - when play testing with someone, we were able to create the "skipping valid shapes" bug. I believe its because of low framerate and the orb is moving fast. It's a bit tricky, but I'll try to implement a solution tonight or tomorrow. (btw, were you happening to use a macbook or a lowend laptop?)
@duke - thanks! Totally reasonable that the game got stale for you. I hoped to add more mechanics but ran out of time. I'm hoping that exploring new mechanics can help keep engagement up.
@overlook-studios - thank you! It's much appreciated!
@lombax - glad you made it to the end! It does reset to the beginning (a bit of a metajoke on the "Stuck in a Loop" theme :sweat_smile:)
@honey-pony sorry for spamming you, but just wanted to let you know that a postjam build is up that helps mitigate the low fps collision detection issue. I'd love to hear if it solves your issue or not :sweat_smile:
@sharkwithlasers Oh shoot, I thought I had responded to you earlier. Forgot to push "send."
I was going to say a have a pretty decent laptop, so I don't think I was generally having a low framerate.
I honestly only encountered that bug once so I'm not sure I could recreate it even on the original version... if there was some specific thing you thought I should try I would be happy to do so.
@honey-pony ahh not a problem! the bug had a chance of happening at high framerates as well (just not nearly as often), so that might have been the case. I don't think I have anything specific for you to test. Thanks for the offer though!
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/767497194?t=3h44m41s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
[I don't think I need to reiterate how much I enjoyed this one](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/766889390?t=03h54m37s) :smile:
This one activated all of my pleasure centers. The colors, the sounds, the satisfying puzzles, it's the whole package. Very nicely done with this one. It's easily one of my favorites!
This was a real calm and challenging puzzle game, looks like there are plenty of solutions. It would have been nice if there was an end state though, I wasn't entirely sure the levels looped along with the game.
Wonderful aesthetic, and the best audio I've heard this LD! This definitely seems like a concept that could really blow up on something like Apple Arcade.
Full mark 5/5! I want this on my phone now!
One of the best Compo entry!
Really clever. Full points for innovation here. Thanks.
Simple but satisfying! And by simple, I don't mean easy :D quite a original experience from my point of view, and a good use of the shapes plugin! Good job!
Nice! This game uses minimalism pretty effectively. It felt like I ended the game with a pretty different understanding of the puzzles than when I started it, which is a neat feeling.
Minor quality of life thing would be to have some way of visually associating the control points with their order. I found it pretty difficult in the later puzzles to figure out whether orangey point would go to greenish point or the other way around. A minor hindrance, to be sure, but still worth noting. I understand that the muted colors are sort of part of the aesthetic though, so I am not sure what the best way to handle this would be. Perhaps just a way to reset the curve (to a known ordering a position) would suffice, or even automatically doing that between levels. Not sure...
@ddrkirbyisq glad that the game gave you a bit of intuition about how these weird loop things work!
I think that resetting the curve would be a good addition. And I agree that it isn't the most intuitive to know how colors are ordered, I think difficulty arises from the fact that we are dealing with a loop.
If it were just a curve going in one direction, then a 2 color gradient could be used to show order. But because of the loop, the gradient needs to loop back to the starting color as well. A 2 color gradient would be especially bad in this case because the colors on the loop would be mirror (e.g. red -> blue -> red). Because of this, I decided to use a 3-color gradient. (found this one online: https://uigradients.com/#Atlas ).
I think that perhaps numbering the control points, (and perhaps numbering the target shapes) would be the most direct way of showing ordering. (Though I still think I'd need to figure out the best way to show that the last control points connects to the first). Perhaps there's a way to number these shapes that doesn't detract from the aesthetic I'm going for?
@sharkwithlasers yeah, there's no obvious solution. But I think we are used to seeing hue sliders and rainbows and such so naturally I would be able to put an order to something like red -> yellow -> green -> blue. That is =almost= what you have with your 3 color gradient, but...not quite -- in your gradient, red is between orange and purple rather than the other way around -- and I think that mismatch really hinders my intuition. So I would try to find and/or create a gradient where hue is monotonically increasing.
OR just do the simple thing and simply cycle the hue itself rather than use a gradient between arbitrary fixed colors. There's a chance that may appear a bit too "rainbow"-y, though. You can play around with it.
Perhaps the better solution is simply a more direct visualization rather than relying on colors alone. For example, maybe dotted arrows on the path itself that show the direction (just as an example, you can probably think of something prettier). OR, while you are dragging a control point (and only then), some sort of visualization fades in (an arrow pointing from the previous control point to this one? An arrow pointing to the next control point? Etc)
Or maybe the control points themselves could just have small "tails" and "heads" that point to the previous and next one, instead of simply being circles.
I like these sorts of ideas better than placing numbers on the points, as that sort of goes against the minimalist aesthetic you have.
@ddrkirbyisq Good point on how hue can represent order. I'll definitely play around with that.
And I also agree that there should be multiple things can signify order (instead of color alone). Controls points pointing to other control points could be a solution. Another idea is to have a faint line from the control point to the place on the loop it most affects.
So many options... seems like the best way to go about is to implement them all and see which works best!
I thought this game was rather pleasant. The difficulty is definitely more tuned towards those who use Illustrator often. Good thing I have at least more than one hour in Illustrator. My two bits are:
- A reverse direction button, for those times when you accidentally placed your nodes in the wrong order.
- Have lines to show which point is "closest" to the same colored node, also because I lose my nodes super often.
ld47_stuckinaloop_V5zCu79xZM.png
Very smooth! As other said before me - the sounds make this so so pleasant to play. I love how something so seemingly simple can be so complete and it seems adding any more "sophisticated" graphics would probably ruin the experience. Great entry. Oh and not sure if that's the way you're meant to do it, but I liked the fact the player was forced to use movement on further levels rather than just statically place points in the right places.
Wow, incredibly intuitive and fun to play game! I stumbled upon a very similar game this jam, and while I wouldn't want to choose a favourite, the presentation of this one is very pleasant for the eyes and ears! Thanks for these great puzzles :3
Wow, very cool. Probably the best (or one of the best) game I saw for the LD47 (and it's almost the end !). I love the gameplay of course, but also, there is like a very quiet and chill mood I loved a lot. To be honest, didn't finish because I can't spent too much time on each entry, but I'll probably come back when I'll have more time))
Impressive with a clever concept. Nice casual game. System is really hard to explain, but you did something intuitive. Nice minimalist aesthetic with pretty colors. I love this one. Thank you for your kind feedback ++
Such a nice Zen game, polished and so satisfying. Great job with the audio!