Ex Automata

quasilyte 2023-10-03 09:32

The art direction of this game is cool. :)

Please provide some instructions in the description here on on the itch io page. :sweat_smile: I'm literally that dog from the meme "I have no idea what I'm doing" when playing this game.

I mean, I can put some stuff on the board. Sometimes they explode (?) But I have no idea whether it's good or bad. Or what is my goal in this game (just to get more score and there is no win/lose state?)

This lack of direction makes it frustrating to play it for a longer period of time. Extending the description is something you can do without modifying the game, so please use this opportunity.

wtf.png

quasilyte 2023-10-03 09:34

Also, keep in mind that you need to play other's game to get people play (and rate) yours. Good luck.

kjip 2023-10-03 09:45

I have absolutely no idea what's going on, but I like it!

airwaffle 2023-10-03 09:49

I assume you can learn how the different pieces interact and try to maximize for points and using destructions sometime to clean up the board?

However, I thought I learned how certain colors interacted and then it was shown that they didn't work they way I though :P Also, since score is different for whatever you place, maybe just having a (+X) at the end of the score could help a bit to keep track of what your previous move did scorewise (if it's at all something that you can figure out, and not just random of course).

Cool game nontheless!

ping78 2023-10-06 00:45

@quasilyte If you can't place anything anymore or can't place stuff without it immediately dying too many times in a row, then you get to see the game over screen. It's actually best part of the game. Also, I'm literally that lion from the meme "Do not cite the deep magic to me. I was there when is was written"

@airwaffle That's the idea. The different colors are just to keep the game from looking grey (clearly not the best idea for this type of game), also some people can't see them. Shapes you wanna look at. (+X) is something I also was thinking during development but didn't get around to it.

**Update:** Added the (+`lastScore`) next to the score.

untitled-studios 2023-10-06 04:17

Super neato and very pretty! I found this strangely engrossing; its kinda exactly my kind of thing. I figured out what a few of the pieces did (i think?? the castle, triangle, swirly one,) but generally just kinda vibed it out and watched the very satisfying and pretty animations. Absolutely love this. Screenshot 2023-10-05 231553.png

matt-walak 2023-10-06 04:22

Very unique gameplay! This is the first game of this kind that I have come across from this jam. I also quite like the graphics: very strange and abstract, but the animations are super delightful.

I, unfortunately, was not able to figure out the function of each piece, but discovered a few behaviors that remained consistent throughout the game. I know you call yourself out for it in the description, but I do wish there was a bit more onboarding, or maybe if the interactions between objects was a bit simpler. Perhaps fewer objects to start and then as the game progresses more objects are added?

freamdev 2023-10-06 08:51

I enjoyed the graphics, and maybe understood that placing some things next to some other means getting score most of the time. :smile:

its-capp 2023-10-06 08:52

I loved the environment, it has that basic yet sleek look I really like. in terms of gameplay I struggled to understand what my goal was, I was placing these shapes down in different formations and they would break sometimes? like if I put 3 pyramids in an L shape they would break. I beat the game (I think) in 63 turns.

geronimo 2023-10-06 08:53

Very neat game! its almost like one of those newspaper puzzles which wants you to find the criminal that did something and the only way you can get to them is by deduction, (I.E. tom has a red car, the person with the red car had a dog, mary had a dog, the person with the dog was walking to the park) and i found that really cool :D, my biggest score was around 1100, and the most fun part about this game is when you have a theory going, but then it gets broken by something not working as intended, so you have to make a new theory about how the world works, it's cool! Good luck in your future games X

nusan 2023-10-06 09:04

Nice game! I like the visual and the abstract mood, it's elegant. Gameplay wise I like the idea of discovering the rules ourselves but I couldn't really do it, maybe we would need a few "tutorial" levels with only 2 or 3 piece types so we can experiment with them, or maybe when a piece is destroyed it could highlight what other piece where responsible. I managed to get a 14 score/turn. Anyway, good work there, thanks for the game!

lovewerk 2023-10-06 16:43

Interesting game. It took a while to figure out what was going on but I started to get a handle on it after a few minutes. Since there's no explanation of what to do, I picked my own objective and set about trying to empty the board of pieces. I was down to one castle piece and then I suddenly got game over. I see in the comments you said that placing enough consecutive pieces that are immediately destroyed is game over. I think if you're going to be intentionally vague about how the game works, then the ruleset should be more forgiving for people to play how they want. I felt like I had figured something out about how to place pieces to prevent them from cluttering the board, and then I was hit with a game over before I could complete my objective.

As a quality of life thing, I would have liked to be able to click on the board and automatically place the next piece there instead of having to drag.

I liked the glowing piece that blows everything up, it was very satisfying

adam-gallina 2023-10-06 17:59

Interesting idea, the audio and animations all pull me in and make me want to figure out how the game works, but overall it just seems too overwhelming without any guidance. I think if you implemented some kind of level/progression system where only 1 object is introduced at a time it might be more enjoyable to figure out, but as it is, it's a little too complicated to try and learn

gilborn 2023-10-07 14:59

Great and impressive art style, but had my problems with finding out whats going on (The best things I got from the comments here ;-)) Fits perfectly to the theme.

henk 2023-10-07 17:05

This sucked me in for about an hour until I forced myself to stop. I think I could see myself dumping a very unhealthy amount of time into this, so congratulations. I especially like that it's (apparently) all deterministic, so it really should be possible to figure out all of the rules with enough patience. The visuals are also very beautiful.

I wanted to confirm some of my guesses, so I downloaded the source code to check, and it was interesting to see what I got right vs the things I missed that were staring me in the face. I'm not quite sure how one would go about building your game from the source code, however. I think it's a Unity game? If so a lot of the project files seem to be missing from your dropbox link.

jacobingalls 2023-10-07 19:23

I somehow got to nearly 2k points. And I still don't understand :cry:. Really liked the art direction and animations. With more info, I could see how this could be a optimize everything, nail-biting puzzle. However, since I didn't have that info, I didn't really feel like my space was limited, since stuff was just happening; if that makes sense.

raaph 2023-10-09 10:19

It's a lot to expect from a player to figure out everything without a single clue in my opinion. You think you get the hang of some rules, turns out you don't. You game over for an unknown reason and realise it's going to take a lot of trial and error to understand the rules (if there even are any?). Great art and animations for sure.