eupde 2021-10-04 23:32
Fun interesting puzzle idea. Good art and seems well executed, but I'm not sure the puzzles are solvable after level 2, at least not with the mechanics I could figure out.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Ark
By prodigalson and Drums
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 110 | 4.09 | 64 | |
| Fun | 75 | 4.12 | 64 | |
| Innovation | 263 | 3.77 | 64 | |
| Theme | 1458 | 2.38 | 64 | |
| Humor | 847 | 2.75 | 58 | |
| Mood | 524 | 3.60 | 64 |
Fun interesting puzzle idea. Good art and seems well executed, but I'm not sure the puzzles are solvable after level 2, at least not with the mechanics I could figure out.
@eupde thanks for giving it a go. I think we did not make it clear that you can create a "cross" by going over other tiles. That is how you beat level two :D
Really clever puzzle mechanic, had me thinking for a while.
@eharp Sweet! Thanks for playing!
Hi, fun game, I really like the mood ! The polish is really great and gives off really good vibes ! One thing it could've used somewhat was a slider for letting the speed increase when the players go on their trip
Great game, cheers on your entry !
@vicoptp thanks for playing. The funny thing is that I had the button in place and the solution for it but forgot to finish/enable it before posting. That's why there's an empty spot next to the start button. Lol I'll probably upload a version with that enabled soon.
Really great puzzle design!
Really well polished! The last few puzzles got really really hard! It would've been nice to have a way to reroute the beginning of a line without having to also redo the whole end.
@codsalmon Thanks! @nardandas I agreed 100% and I really tried to find a way to accomplish that while also supporting all the other moves. I will need to invest more time into that because I'm with you on that one :D Thanks for playing
Had a great time with this one, nice puzzle designs!
Really hard puzzles I liked the game! thank you!
Loved the puzzle mechanic and the implementation of them. The level design was really spot on throughout.
Fun game and fun levels, liked it a lot overall
Nice level design, liked it a lot!
The art is SO adorable, I love the style! The wave effects and the backgrounds are really beautiful and the animals are SO cute! The puzzles are fun and challenging! Really good job!!
Really well made puzzles, had a lot of fun with this one!
The puzzles were well made!
Super cool game! I'm really impressed! I'm not a big fan of puzzle games, but this one I liked a lot. The only little thing I had a problem with is that you could really easily accidentally remove a line when you move a mouse in a wrong place. Everything else is really amaazing! And really well made puzzles.
fantastic game! mobile port please
Great game! Love your artwork and soundeffects!
Solid puzzle game! I enjoyed that the progression of levels helped you learn the mechanics.
Excellent execution on the concept. Solid puzzle designs and the artwork is just great. Well done!
Great game! Too tough for me though lol
great puzzle game very complete and very polished.
@prodigalson great design and super solid feel!
Very smooth game mechanics and flawless level design. Truly an impressive submission! The sound design is great too!
Thanks everyone for playing our game and for your feedback and to those who streamed it thank you! @arthurds @erikengineengineer @charles-viau @bridgefromtv @kage @toxiccomputer @notke @ghostbit @nshbae @simpathey @rein @bougiebirdie @potkirland @john-luke-lusty @karsinis
had to think alot for this!!! really clever how you went about portraying the theme
Nice and relaxed puzzle game; very well polished. Excellent job! I'd love to see optional numbering on the paths, but it would be tricky to implement at crossings; perhaps each character draws their number in one quadrant of the cell? (Red character is always top-left, yellow character is always top-right, etc.)
Good puzzles, I got stuck on the last one but will return with fresh mind. Not much to complain here about. I would add an indicator what level the player is on and a pause button to inspect what the state step by step. Other than that I crashed the game by completing level 12.
Some very creative puzzles on this. I like how well things were built to allow trial and error a bit, especially on the puzzles that allowed for more precise timing. Art was great - very playful and while still being VERY readable for figuring out the pairs and the pathing. Great work.
It's an amazing puzzle game that I'm glad I managed to solve in the end, it was absolutely mind-boggling and I had an enjoyable time playing it with the Twitch Chat! Thank you so much for bringing the game to the world. The only thing is that I had a bug that stopped me from interacting with the UIs near chapter 13. I don't know what I did but I think I was constantly readjusting the the path because it didn't work well, I believe it was when I was pressed play without a complete path, stopped it, redid it, stopped it and so on and somehow nothing works again. But yea, excellent game, great job!
This should be a mobile app
Very nice puzzle game, the graphics are very cute, nice work.
Great game. Really solid puzzles. Hard to design stuff but I think nailed some genuinely interesting puzzle designs that still felt fair.
The puzzles reminded me of those fake mobile game ads, except this is the actual game that they try to bait you with. The puzzles are well thought out, and the graphics look good. Doesn't seem to fit the theme very well, but the game is solid and fun. Good work!
Very cute game! Challenging puzzles as well. I really enjoyed playing it on stream! Thanks for submitting it! Here's the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1172843372
Great puzzle, your take on this genre of game felt refreshing :) I only wish I wasn't so bad at it, got stuck on Level 6 (maybe I'm missing something, I don't know 😅). The only thing I felt was missing is some indication of which levels were already completed and which is the current one.
Great puzzle game! I enjoyed beating all the levels and a lot of them are quite good. The plates were you put down animals for them to be later picked up are a very clever mechanic and add a lot to the later puzzles. I also agree with the choice to make animals picked up by going adjacent to them rather than through them, which makes it more interesting The presentation is wonderful, the graphics are perfect for the type of game this is.
With the element of timing in a lot of the puzzles I think there should be some kind of indicator where other paths are when you are at a certain point (say all paths are by default darker, and then they fill up with the lighter version of their color with how much that path would have progressed at the point you are building your current path). Counting path sections is really overatedc
Great puzzle game, I hope you go further with the idea. The UI on the side was probably the most lacking part but that's understandable given it's a jam entry (and I assume it's in part why you are getting rated on graphics). The puzzles themselves were really good.
Heya! I think this is probably the first entry that I recognised as a really solid game without it being a game that I particularly enjoyed, as far as the mechanics go. For whatever reason, I wasn't really compelled by the puzzle format, but it was really clear throughout that you put a lot of time and effort into the design and flow of the game, which were really quite good. The graphics, sounds and animation were all very well put-together. Honestly it's hard to fault this entry other than the take on the theme being a little weak and the font being tough to read at times (God read a lot like "Goo").
Still, big props for managing to nail what you set out to achieve. Congrats on the entry :)
I usually don't share my ratings, but this is def one of my favorites! **Overall: (5)** Great game, tons of polish, challenging, but fair **Fun: (5)** You bet it was fun, the puzzles were great! **Innovation: (4.5)** I've seen a couple similar games where you are making these paths, but the barrels present a unique challenge along with having to get 2 animals with each character (which also fits the story perfectly) **Theme: (2.5)** I would have liked to see "Unstable" as part of the gameplay instead of just the lore for the sake of rating this category, but the game was perfect without trying to force in unstable gameplay elements **Humor: (3.5)** I don't think it was a specifically humorous, but it was still silly being able to click on the animals/people to get them to make a sound. The red guy was my favorite! **Mood: (5)** I usually rate this one for audio/graphical/tone consistency and everything fits together great
Some suggestions: - The last guy you pick up stays on top (like you have already mentioned) - Be able to cross over the end of another path - Be able to drag the path back inside the guy (I realized you can actually just click on the guys to completely restart the path too oops! That woulda helped me a bit haha) - The magenta is a little harsh against the green background, I think blue could have worked better - fullscreen button - hide the ui on the sides with a pause menu so the game can be played larger
The puzzles were super fun to solve. The art style and music is awesome. I also really appreciate different animals sound effects. I wish there was more levels :) Great job!
Was a fun game! Cute graphics, loved the sound.. didn't like how the UI stayed on the screen the whole time, I know its nit-picky but I'd prefer it gone.
Really good puzzle game! I'm impressed over the level of polish you managed to achieve in such a short time, like how the animals jump and make a little sound when you click them. The puzzles were really well designed too. I hope you consider making this a "full" game, I'd pay a few bucks for it if I could buy it on the app store for example.
This game is simply incredible! Huge amount of respect for what seems to be a very original puzzle mechanic, and one that has a whole bunch of depth to it in terms of things you can learn. Things like trying to avoid corners because that makes the tile impassable, or that you can go past the same basket twice to pick up the same thing you put down. Or that moment when you finally get the timing right and everything works like clockwork. Such an amazing feeling.
I've designed a few puzzle games vaguely like this before, and it's a lot of hard work, but also fun to discover all the different ways a few simple rules can lead to different patterns of thinking. I thought that experience would help me solve these puzzles quickly, but it ended up taking quite a long time to beat them all :sweat_smile:
The presentation is great too, it feels pretty polished all around, but just from an abstract design standpoint alone, this game rates very highly for me.
fun! A neat, different take on cosmic express. I like the interesting consequences of the exact mechanics of how the different paths are allowed to cross (i.e. not at corners)
Level 12 was probably my favorite; I spent a while trying to figure out a complicated sequence of "A picks up X and Y, then drops Y and picks up Z" before stepping back and figuring it out :D
I feel like my level 13 solution was unintended? not sure; here it is if you're interested: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/375116771545579520/899108365983162389/unknown.png
I wish there were more speed options for running my solutions. Also, I wish the volume settings didnt reset every level (although that might be because I have cookies disabled...? not sure)
The polish on this was really great! I thought having the UI+instructions+settings+game all simultaneously visible at all times was a neat, different thing, and I like it.
I promise to write up a full comment, but in the meantime, we have a recording of our playthrough here:
https://youtu.be/QZxtnpxwT_M?t=5864
Also, as promised earlier, here's the screenshot of level 13, where the solution below created a bug where a poor narwhal was left behind, yet the game registered as the correct path. Humans can be so mean, sometimes.
firefox_HB9ona63py.png
@pancelor there really isn't an intended way to our levels as our goal was to create multiple solutions for players to experiment. I love your solution as I never seen it and it works beautifully. Nicely done! Thanks for playing
Moooooom!!! I'm on the TV :smile: This game was really amazing to play! Thanks for joining us live!
I finally had the time to come back and rate everything I played so far! Sorry for being a bit late. I really enjoyed this game, let us know if you make a future version <3
Here is a link to the vod of the review if you wish to see it again: https://www.youtube.be/watch?v=h15d_WbzH64&t=9579s
Full comment:
It's a good thing I'm already a puzzle game designer, because boy does this puzzle game become really hard, really fast. The rules that this game provides are relatively easy to learn and understand. I think it was clever keeping the focus on path-building, and creating mechanics around that central concept.
One thing I did struggle with were that some mechanics weren't introduced in such a way that eases the player into understanding the fundamental behind it. For example, the first level that required creating an intersecting path involved creating a sort of a figure-8 path, when I think a figure-4-like solution would have been a simpler way to teach that mechanic. Furthermore, it would have been nice if some levels were dedicated to reviewing a previously-introduced mechanic. It took me a while, for example, to learn that an animal placed in a basin can be re-retrieved. Had I known this, I think I would have solved some of the levels much faster.
Perhaps the biggest concern I have with a puzzle game like this is that there's probably going to be a point where the difficulty of a level has escalated enough, that some players would end up simply quitting the entire game mid-way through. I'm wondering what sort of solutions there might be to prevent this from happening: perhaps, adding some time-step controls to monitor the timing of how each individual carrier moves. It might also help adding in a hint system that provides a partial solution for those truly stumped.
Still, I've enjoyed my time playing this game, and would definitely like to see more development in this project.
Really cool idea for a puzzle game! Quite ticky to beat though!