justcamh
2023-10-20 22:14
Yooo this was awesome! It took a while to understand how to lay fuses (that I needed to drag + needed to connect one to pipe and others to each other), your video really helped with understanding, thanks for adding that. Once I had figured out how the fuses worked I had a blast (hehe)! I was genuinely hoping for more levels, in the current level I used all 0.5 second fuses, would be fun to see more variety that encourages tighter timing.
Screenshot 2023-10-21 090227.png
Regarding the initial learning, it was difficult to tell which explosives could be connected from / to. I understand now that you need a line of fuses that can't have any loops, dead ends or splits. I had expected that splits would work, where one explosive could have multiple fuses exiting it to trigger two things at once, something like below. This seemed likely because of how many ports were on each explosive, it looked like more than two fuses (one input one output) should work. I'd expected this to launch me diagonally, and whilst I could do this with a super short fuse, this is what I had expected would work (the game didn't allow this it's an edit):
Split fuse.png
I also had issues figuring I had to drag the fuse to a pipe. Whilst it's kinda cliche, there could be one of those dynamite lever boxes, that'd make it obvious that you've gotta draw a fuse to that. It took a few minutes to learn, but I would've loved to see more levels of this, once I got it, perfecting my flight path was really quite fun! It's surprisingly consistent, I imagine lots of moving parts in future levels to make for some tricky timing and positioning. Neat game, well done! :v:
I loved the concept. Certainly it needs more polish, specially in the matter of ease of play (usability). Simplify the controls/interactions as much as possible, so the player can focus on the essence of the challenge.
Of course, the game needs more levels, and the first levels should have solutions a lot simpler, I'd say even trivial, given how innovative the gameplay is. It would help the player to get used to the timing (as well as to the controls) while still beating levels, instead of plain trial and error. Maybe introduce new explosives and fuses through the levels, starting with only one or two available in the first levels.
Great job coming up with this!
nada [-2].png
@justcamh
> It took a while to understand how to lay fuses (that I needed to drag + needed to connect one to pipe and others to each other) > Regarding the initial learning, it was difficult to tell which explosives could be connected from / to. > it looked like more than two fuses (one input one output) should work
I confirm that each explosive only accepts one input and one output fuse (unless the game glitches out). I also confirm that I forgot to mention it in the manual. It may look like each explosive has four openings but really there are only two openings per wiring area and each explosive faces two wiring areas. This allows you to have both an input and an output wire on the same wiring area. There isn't really a chance that you can wire from more than one output node at a time, so I could display a hint indicating the next output node that must be connected, to make things clearer.
> I also had issues figuring I had to drag the fuse to a pipe.
Not really dragging, but just clicking on the pipe exit while a wire is selected and there is an explosive in the first slot of the pipe is enough. I made a semitransparent fuse appear in the pipe exit when you hover over it and you can place the ignition fuse there. But I guess the area is too small for the player to ever drag their mouse over it and if there is no explosive it won't show up at all. So yeah, I could make it clearer by displaying a permanent indicator.
> I was genuinely hoping for more levels, in the current level I used all 0.5 second fuses, would be fun to see more variety that encourages tighter timing. > I imagine lots of moving parts in future levels to make for some tricky timing and positioning.
I was also thinking about this while making the game but I concluded that making harder levels would require too much time of the game jam to playtest and calibrate to ensure that they are not completely frustrating and nearly impossible to complete. It would be neat to have this in a polished game, though.
@lincolnsalles I'm sorry that the game UI wasn't clearer and that the game manual was a wall of text. That's why I made the video to show players how to play the game.
@igor-kingamer
> Certainly it needs more polish, specially in the matter of ease of play (usability). Simplify the controls/interactions as much as possible, so the player can focus on the essence of the challenge.
Indeed, I've had this problem myself while playtesting, so I was very aware of it and also I've had a bunch of friends play the game and they were always complaining about how many buttons they had to click to set the editing mode right (that you have to switch between explosives and fuses and then also click the pencil or the eraser all the time, they often tried to erase an explosive while the eraser and a fuse was selected and it didn't work because you need to select the eraser and an explosive to erase explosives), and they were also complaining about where exactly to click on an explosive to start dragging the wire.
> the first levels should have solutions a lot simpler, I’d say even trivial, given how innovative the gameplay is. It would help the player to get used to the timing (as well as to the controls) while still beating levels, instead of plain trial and error. Maybe introduce new explosives and fuses through the levels, starting with only one or two available in the first levels.
This is actually a great idea, thank you for the suggestion.
@justcamh @lincolnsalles @igor-kingamer Thank you all for your feedback!