ekeller217 2022-04-04 17:39
The link is broken for windows. The link is sending me to the itch.io error 404 page.
(edit) 👍. I'll be back later to try the game out
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → Column
By notinatal
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 456 | 3.70 | 24 | |
| Fun | 439 | 3.60 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 429 | 3.56 | 25 | |
| Theme | 1396 | 1.90 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 713 | 3.63 | 25 | |
| Audio | 605 | 3.32 | 25 | |
| Mood | 400 | 3.76 | 25 |
The link is broken for windows. The link is sending me to the itch.io error 404 page.
(edit) 👍. I'll be back later to try the game out
@ekeller217 My bad, I have accidentally published the LD project instead of saving it. The link will be functional in a couple of hours. Again, sorry for the inconvenience
(edit) We hope you enjoy it :)
Excellent job of teaching mechanics through challenging puzzles. Had fun playing.
Great job! I appreciate the thought that went into selecting the various mini-puzzles to represent the different pillars. This was a solid puzzle game with some thought-provoking themes as well.
One suggestion, an undo button would be nice so I don't have to restart the whole level when I push a block too far. (I'm reminded of the puzzle game Baba is You, which has a similar undo feature.)
Congrats on an awesome jam entry!
Very interesting way of combining Sokoban gameplay with each of the four mechanics. Really solid puzzles that didn't feel too hard or too easy.
* Very cool atmosphere! * Love the sounds * Add an instruction somewhere about the R key! I restarted the game the first time I got stuck :) * The puzzle dynamics were confusing. For example it wasn't clear that you could step on the tower of hanoi but for the individual rings they behave like boxes. * If you don't know the games / read the description it is a bit hard to understand what to do. * The coins need to be explained more I think * I think there is a bug with the coins. There is a race condition and the coin jumps to a random location:
Screenshot 2022-04-05 085013.png
Good job on this one, really liked it
@christian-zommerfelds
Thank you for all the descriptive feedback! We'll definitely try to learn from some mistakes we did in later jams or development ☺️
May I ask you when does the bug actually happen, whether you restarted the level before? So we can try to possibly fix that. (edit: so far i tried to replicate the bug but didn't manage to)
Anyways, thank you again and we're glad you liked it!
@svntax @beefsock
Thank you so much, happy to see you actually enjoyed playing the puzzles!
We spent quite some time to try to teach the mechanics as good as we could within just few words and examples.
@joe-cowman
Thank you for playing the game and giving some constructive feedback. Nice to see you actually like the meaning behind the game and the mechanics!
Everyone in the team already agreed with carrying on with development of this game, we still have a lot of ideas that aren't present yet and we'll definitely consider your sort-of-undo-button suggestion.
@notinatal played again through to that level so I can check. I can't reproduce it now though! Not sure if it only happens when the computer is slow, my laptop is not the best, but it works now. Strange.
BTW I thought of something you could do to maybe make the coins clearer. Add a negative example that is easy to fall into. Like you push forward the white coin straight along a hallway and suddenly the orange one snaps away to an undesired place. Otherwise the player might push things into the right position by chance and somehow the level is magically solved (that's what happened to me).
@christian-zommerfelds It is a thing that we are planning on adding. This game is far from finished, we are currently working with 7-9 different mechanics for some future pillars as we hope to expand the game once LD is over. Adding in a negative example and making the controls cleaner was a thing that we originally planned on doing, but failed to do so due to time pressure mounting. Thanks for your commentary!
The puzzles were great! Very effective at teaching the main mechanics of the game. I wasn't that inclined to read the multiple paragraphs of text, but that's the only real gripe I have with the game. Nice work!
Very cool puzzle game! I really like the atmosphere
@Askoed @noisemaker Thank you both for your replies. It is always pleasurable to see people enjoy our game. About the paragraphs, they are not necessary for the gameplay, they are only for those, who wish to have deeper thoughts while playing.
Played through the entire game, and it was pretty addicting. I might just be dumb but I didn't see how it related to the theme, but good job anyway!
Very nice entry. Level design is EXCELLENT! Good job!
@SugarSugarSugar hello! I am happy you enjoyed the game. The general idea of the game is a methaphor of how the race against people is futile - throughout the game, you see hints, that your work is only delaying the inevitable, and in the end, the methaphorical regime you were protecting falls. Hope this clears it for you :blush:
Really awesome game, well done! Like others have said an undo button would really help with the overall gameplay as reseting for making a small error is very punishing, so if you expand this further (which you should) I would love to see that implemented. My only other real issue with the game was the font as I found it a little difficult to read the large paragraphs. Overall though, amazing work!
@Bastienre4 Thank you very much! We are happy you enjoyed it :)
@roka-josh We are happy you enjoyed it! An undo button is a thing we are currently planning to implement, along with at least 5 more columns, into a final game that we hope to release outside of LD50. Those paragraphs are not essential to the game and as said before, they are more used to explain the metaphors to the fullest. Thinking of it, I will be adding a note to itch.io page that reading those is not essential to gameplay...
Wow what an amazing game! I loved every second of it. Really interesting puzzles and great diversity in mechanics for a jam game! I loved just figuring out the rules of each section and everything was so well presented and polished. Only gripe I might have is that the theme interpretation seems a little bit of a stretch to me. I hope authoritarian regimes are not inevitable and we can do more than just delay them.
@sibi Hello! I am happy that you enjoyed the game and that you liked it! The message is rather the opposite actually - we hoped to explain by a dialogue, that no matter what the people in power do, the columns would eventually fall, leading to a democracy, which we tried to underline in the final cutscene as well as the dialgues at the end of each section.
@notinatal Thanks for clarifying! I quite like that outlook :)
Really clever concept, with metaphors all around, and great puzzle design ! That's a very interesting game with a deep message, really well done ! The only thing I think could be improved it the visual communication of gameplay elements : it is a bit confusing at first to understand what the player can walk on and can push, and what the different blocks do. It's always really hard to do, especially in a short schedule, but it is better to find some visual rules that inform the player about gameplay. For example the white and yellow coins have totally different properties, I don't think they should be so close visually. I know that some games try to give the same kind of block-like shape to everything that can be pushed, and show that things that can be stepped on are just writings on the ground. It might be a good start. Anyway it's really good stuff, it deserves a full post-jam version !
Such a cool concept and implementation. Great puzzles and atmosphere. I'm so happy you all made that web build. Great job!
This was really fun to play. Really nice how the mechanics felt different from eachother.
Very cool puzzle game! As a history nerd I appreciate the regime flavor texts/metaphor. The art and sound are good and fit the game really well. The actual puzzles are well done and fun to figure out. Some of the mechanics (I'm thinking mainly of the coin sliding in the last phase) could use some explanation. Maybe not necessary though, since the level reset is so easy, and allows for easy trial and error for learning. Great work guys!
edit: I almost forgot - you missed a _huge_ pun opportunity for the title to be _fifth_ column :-D /nerd
Nice game, I like the idea that you have to figure out the puzzle mechanics by yourself. They were well introduced through the first levels to get a basic understanding of how the machanics work. Personally for me, some were not obvious enough and I really struggled for some of them. For example, I didn't know where I can step on or I didn't quite understand how the checkboxes in the unity chapter related to each other. Maybe that could be a bit clearer. However, I still managed to play through all levels and it was fun, so good job! :)
@saintchristopher777 Actually, that is one of the columns we didn't manage to indroduce in time :D Simply said, we are planning on at least five more columns in the finished games, each with yet another mechanic, as well as expanding on the ones already in game. That pun has not been missed, we were forced to postpone it, but I can promise you, that it is coming in the final out-of-ld50 game for sure!
That was pretty good! Some of the puzzles were pretty tricky. Using many different mechanics kept the game feeling fresh all the way to the end. Each level felt pretty distinct too, as there was usually something interesting you had to figure out with the mechanics to solve that level in particular. I don't really get how this game fits the theme, and the puzzles as metaphors didn't really make sense to me, but it was fun to play anyway.
@boxedmeatrevolution Happy you enjoyed the game, I will quote myself trying to explain the theme: "We hoped to explain by a dialogue, that no matter what the people in power do, the columns would eventually fall, leading to a democracy, which we tried to underline in the final cutscene as well as the dialgues at the end of each section." Hope this explains it. I must admit in some places, it is too metaphorical and might have overshadowed the theme, but it is too late to do much about it now...