velaachlorine 2021-10-04 03:04
super fun, very unique mix of concepts, the puzzles are hard enough to keep you busy for several minutes and also engaging enough to not rapidly bore you; really enjoyed this
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → when the earth falters
By honey-pony
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 43 | 4.01 | 33 | |
| Fun | 83 | 3.83 | 33 | |
| Innovation | 71 | 3.96 | 33 | |
| Theme | 419 | 3.09 | 33 | |
| Graphics | 97 | 3.93 | 33 | |
| Audio | 146 | 3.51 | 31 | |
| Humor | 187 | 3.01 | 29 | |
| Mood | 104 | 3.67 | 30 |
super fun, very unique mix of concepts, the puzzles are hard enough to keep you busy for several minutes and also engaging enough to not rapidly bore you; really enjoyed this
Nice job, puzzles were interesting. The turbo commands were a good addition, could be fun with a longer chain to have to enable and disable the turbo multiple times
Fun game! The puzzles were hard though. I really like the graphics!
This was super well done. Great difficulty curve. Easy to play and understand. The art all felt consistent and well done. Controls were fun. Reminded me of Mysterious Island of Dr. Brain. It woul dhave been nice to see the early puzzles unlock doors in the environment that lead to the other pages. As it was, I just ran around, collected all the pages, then did all the puzzles.
@big-play-ben I did want to put a couple doors in that you would have to enter codes to get through, but I did not have enough time. Thanks for playing!
Awesome game! Perfectly balanced game with the puzzles. I feel like anymore and my brain would've started to melt. I got FF7 vibes going into the observatory, with that one instrument in the music that sounds like that one FF7 song. Anyways, well done!
Very nice! This felt to me like it was very inspired by something like The Witness, but also with binary hex puzzles thrown in, which I absolutely adored. I had to play this one through to the finish, and the difficulty curve was perfect. It was really satisfying to finish the puzzles. It's probably a bit on the lighter-side of the "Unstable" theme, in premise alone rather than gameplay, but I don't think it suffered for it.
I can see this being expanded on, for sure! With a few levels of terminal where each one gets longer and more complicated strings.
One thing that I would suggest is to have some kind of "quick reference" for all unlocked codes. It was a little annoying to go through multiple pages to figure out what I needed. Also, as you mention, changed code part-way through the string was a bugbear, and it was a bit annoying to start over if you realise you used 10 instead of B7 too late.
Overall, loved how emergent the gameplay was, and how you slowly introduced the game to the player. Props to Godot 3D also!
Cool game! Played it through. I liked the story. Puzzles were mostly easy and some mediocre for me. Maybe there could have been tougher ones too, or that you get only part of the codes for first puzzles and rest when you have solved them.
Mood was good, I liked the peaceful loneliness while looking for notes, but the music began to be repetitive after awhile.
Also I half expected a twist that you couldn't make the trip and were actually being left behind to make sure the shuttles launch properly.
@tomssuli Thanks for the feedback! I totally agree with your points.
What I was aiming for with the puzzles was definitely for them to be easy. I wanted solving the puzzles to essentially just be a way the player participated in the story, but I also wanted it to be possible for any player to beat the game without much difficulty. I do think that the puzzles could possibly be a bit more engaging with a bit more variety.
Music is definitely somewhere I would like to improve. This compo in particular I had a really hard time getting anything done for the music.
On being left behind: I did try to include an angle on this sort of theme in the game. In particular, the overall vibe of the game is intended to be rather relaxed, and the question of whether you actually want to be evacuated is intended to be pretty open-ended and contrasted with the relaxed mood of staying behind. The game is essentially supposed to be asking whether it might be worth staying on Earth, but I'm not sure that ended up coming through very much. (The "report for evacuation" menu does not communicate quite as much narrative as I initially wanted :sweat_smile: )
This was neat! I like how you did both 2d and 3d in the same game.
It's sad you weren't able to do more with the story, I liked where you were taking it, and the area it's set in was quite relaxed and beautiful.
Almost want a 72 hour compo, I think the more skilled contestants could do very well with it.
Mhhh, how interesting! The 3D world hunt for pages didn't feel particular hard, but it also felt a lot like it wasn't supposed to, which opens up an interesting idea of how to let the player decide the pacing of the game. I for one would collect one page at the time and solve the corresponding puzzles, then look for another page and so on, but I read others preferred to first collect all the pages and then start with putting in the codes. Both completely valid options for different playstyles!
To convey the narrative through the journal pages the player flicks through anyway is incredibly clever, made sense in the universe and was overall efficient!
While a few more interactable objects, changes to the environments and similar ideas would have been perfect for the 3D environment, 48 hours simply aren't that much time.
The difficulty curve felt very reasonable, which I liked a lot, too! While I liked "There, Again" better in mechanics, this one made me feel accomplished as I could actually beat it! :D
Thank you for this wonderful entry!
Great game! I loved the very detailed 3D exploration hub and the relaxed atmosphere. The idea of the story was also nice, if a bit underdeveloped. I liked how it's essentially two games in one. The puzzles were pretty fun.
Some feedback: I liked aiming for the minimum amount of commands in each puzzle. I know it's not really the goal, but I think it would've been nice seeing the the ideal amount of steps somewhere. I think using clockwise/anti-clockwise would've been more intuitive than right/left in the rotation page, at least for me. I thought pressing No in the "report for evacuation" screen meant exploring the hub a bit more before finishing the game and not a real choice - perhaps it could've been better communicated? But maybe it's just me.
Other than that, good job!
@frogman Thanks for the feedback!
I totally agree that clockwise and anti-clockwise would have been better. And yeah, the evacuation screen is really not very good. I definitely thought it was likely to be interpreted the way you interpreted it, but I didn't have much time to make anything much better. Oh well. Thanks for playing! :smile:
Combining 2 games with completely different playstyles is an intresting idea. I feel like it would be better if you made it so you -had- to switch between two of them because right now you can find all the notes without touching the puzzle part which makes it easier to burn out on it. But, it's a great entry either way
Cool work. The puzzles were challenging but I enjoyed the challenge. This is a solid entry and I truly enjoyed the way the world looks. Sweet submission
Agree with the comment above. I found all of the letters first and went on to the puzzles afterwards. For me it could have just been the puzzles and i wouldnt feel like i missed out on much. I dont know how you could have connected the two 'games' better myself maybe more clues in the world instead of the very on-the-nose pages.
The puzzles itself were nice and not to hard with the novelty of having to literally write launch codes.
On graphics i feel like there is a big discrepancy between overworld and puzzle screens. I really like the style of the puzzles and the fallout like device you came up with for them. And the journal pages were fine too. But the hub world felt very bland and empty with honestly not much to do or explore (the earth model is the one thing standing out here).
So as you may have noticed im not a fan of the diconnected 'overworld' (sorry xD) but after all the puzzles were actually really fun to solve and had their own good visuals too.
Capture4.jpg
I love the planetarium plot explanation :D
FWIW I had no issue with rotating "right" and "left", and find that easier to understand than clockwise/anticlockwise, but I'm probably in the minority there :p
Had a blast solving the puzzles , but like others have mentioned the 'overworld' felt a bit less useful since I went to get the pages all first. but over all the game looked and sounded great and was really fun! Nice work!
Just lovely, absolutely lovely, the gameplay is very smart even though the puzzles themselves are easy, the fact that you have a limit of 8 codes and can't see the progress of each one and just have to map it out in your hear is brilliant, the visuals are also really cool, even if they're simple they set a nice mood, and the diegetic UI is also fantastic, always love that c: i think my 2 criticisms would be that 1.The mood is kinda too happy and carefree when the planet is about to run into the sun xD this obviously didn't even bug me but i tought it was worth mentioning at least if you ever aim to make this a more serious and developed project. 2.I understand that you wanted this to be as easy as possible since it is a jam game and it's not fun to get stuck when you're trying out lots of games, but i think a really cool missed opportunity was to present certain commands just as subtext clues, or on the environment, and let us experiment with it and take notes, i found out the move right command before i actually found it's page because it was mentioned in the directional gates note, and that was the moment i felt best while playing the game, so i think leaning into it a bit could be very very good. All in all phenomenal game, loved it a lot, one of the best i played this jam, kudos to you! a 5/5 in my book for sure
The music was alittle tedious to listen to but the puzzels were extremely fun and i really like the idea to look for pages to get information on the puzzelse. Great game overall!
Good game, nice graphics, a lot of work in such a short time
Loved the puzzles, as well as the challenge of finding the pages. My only complaint is that the turbo mode doesn't seem very consistent, as it only applies to 0A commands. Besides that I loved the game!
@lovetocode999 Yeah, the turbo mode is intended to only apply to forward motion commands, which does seem a bit strange in game right now. I think if I had more animations for the ship sprite it might seem more sensible. I did try to make it clear by writing "While in turbo, the ship moves forward twice as fast" but I think it's also easy to miss the significance of the word "forward" there. Thanks for the feedback!
I enjoyed your style and the unique gameplay. Definitely a fun experience — can't believe you made all this in 48 hrs!
Great two part game. Easy relaxed searching for codes and a bit harder rocket programming puzzles. The world looks pretty, the tablet looks like tablets should look. The music is nice and relaxing and fits the game nicely.
You did a beautiful job with the architecture and the landscape. For me that was the most interesting part of the game — exploring and looking at the buildings and trees and so forth. I can see you put a lot of work into it. I was able to solve some of the programming puzzles, but I confess that I’m very slow when it comes to programming games. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting concept, and the way in which you have the notes scattered about adds a new twist to the game. It appears to be two genres combined into a single game — this hearkens back to Ludum Dare 41. Anyway, it’s quite impressive for a compo entry. Nice work.
I was surprised to be defeated by the last puzzle! I was always one operation short. Cool idea! Very much in the vein of many of my favorite games. Would have loved to see just one more mechanic in there, to elaborate beyond just moving around, but such is the compo. Turbo mode was just enough to let you design some interesting puzzles. Nice job!
One of the better entries I've seen this jam! It's aesthetically nice, has calming music, a fun story, and most of all, is really fun to play! The puzzles were just the right amount of challenging.
Great job! :)