roughskin 2024-04-16 08:19
Pretty difficult puzzle game! Maybe because I wasn't familiar with the main mechanic but pretty good. Love to see a Pico game! I just see a relation with the theme, but nice polish and particles! Good entry!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Path of Aratron
By nusan
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 18 | 4.37 | 49 | |
| Fun | 40 | 4.23 | 49 | |
| Innovation | 12 | 4.39 | 49 | |
| Theme | 163 | 4.21 | 49 | |
| Graphics | 222 | 4.24 | 49 | |
| Audio | 101 | 4.06 | 49 | |
| Mood | 139 | 4.08 | 49 |
Pretty difficult puzzle game! Maybe because I wasn't familiar with the main mechanic but pretty good. Love to see a Pico game! I just see a relation with the theme, but nice polish and particles! Good entry!
a pretty good puzzle game which makes you feel smart when you succeed and that's really the thing about good puzzle games. And the achievement is mind-blowing...well done
Great puzzle game! This is a nice twist on the "programming game" genre, with a lot of style and polish. Amazing!
I love this, played a few levels to rate it but I will be coming back to finish it after the jam. Also gonna look at the source to see how some stuff works because I'm also a pico8 dev and this is *nice*.
@the4thcircle thank you! the source code is available, but do mind that it has been made in a rush and is a big mess of interconnected hacks. It's how I like to make jam games as it's not big or long enough to be a problem but let me do things super fast...
This is so much fun!!! It's truly amazing to see such a polished game developed in such a short time!!! I think the font could be changed. This pixel font is a bit difficult for me to read
What a great take on the theme and a good idea for the mecanics. I think it work really well and i was very happy to see a game made with pico8 ! I love the mood, and graphism, the music is nice as well. Overall a very good entry !
Awesome puzzle game. It's a very interesting concept and the levels are thought out pretty well. It is quite difficult though. Also, it's stunning how polished this game is. All in all a very impressive entry.
Even though I'm not a Pico-8 developer myself, one of my favorite things to do each jam is to go to Itch and see the newest released LDJam Pico-8 games. In their all simplicity, these games are just often charming.
And this game is not an exception. Good polish all around and lots of content.
This is a great game with really well thought out puzzles (and very difficult :sweat_smile: ). Tons of polish and game juice here! Keep on making games
Great game with impressive logic! Lots of fun and a bit difficult :D really enjoyed this one
Very neat, there are few entries I've played for over 1/2 an hour, usually a hallmark of a fun game
Really cool, took me a second to figure out how to play but after that it turned out to be a really interesting mechanic. The art is awesome too. Nice work!
Nice puzzles. Had me thinking on some levels ^^
Probably the best game I played so far. Had a lot of fun playing it, will try to beat the last levels later. Good job!
Really fun game with a range of clever puzzles. They got tough quickly but I got a great sense of achievement when i figured them out
Pretty little game, loved the retro graphics and sounds. Tricky gameplay but very enjoyable. Excellent work!
This game is so cool, and it's so solid as a gamejam game!
I really liked the puzzle, but the game lacks a built-in tutorial. Speaking of stone placement, the placement of stones outside the pentagrams seems useless, so why letting the player placing 'em outside the pentagrams?
Here how I see the first stage: You have one pentagram (forward) and one stone. The player can only place this one stone inside the pentagram. The demon moves one square, player wins. Second stage: the player has two stones and two pentagrams (i.e. forward and right). The player places these stones and wins. What I wanna say is that you've got to work on the learning curve in your projects. It's the game that should teach the player to play, not the description.
But overall, very positive!
@denismarasan Thank you for your feedback! I tried to make it self-explanatory and I don't think you need the description to help understanding the game, but yeah it can be very hard at first if you have no experience with this type of game. I think the start is fine, I don't like games that force you to do "trivial" things in tutorial, it often don't help me understand the game because I put no though in it, just following orders. I think the real trouble is on level 3, where there is not enough context about the green stones, I also realize I removed the tooltip on the green stones, so you don't even know they correspond to Ophiel, and even some coder friend had trouble with that puzzle, I should have put a puzzle there that doesn't even ask for repeating things. So yeah, the learning curve could be a lot better, I should have put more time on it but I was excited to put more interesting puzzles. Thank you again for the feedback, I'm glad you liked the game!
That is an amazing game! My favorite so far
Soooo coool!! Really well put together, I don't think I had too much trouble understanding how to play, though it did take some trying things out for myself, but that's totally ok imo. Graphics feel a little bit cluttered/overwhelming but it does add to the oppressive and hellish mood of the game, so I approve. :fire: The puzzles felt engaging and got satisfyingly complex. Great great stuff!
Truly amazing! Finding patterns to exploit is such a satisfying feeling. I'm not sure how the game feels for non-programmers though. I felt some concepts could have been better clarified at the start, such as the fact that once a demon's moves ends, it goes back to the demon that summoned it.
But regardless, one of my favorite entries so far. Really well done!
It always amazes me what someone can build with little resources and mandatory restrictions like Pico8! This game is incredibly polished and I liked every single level - the progression felt great! I needed some tries to understand how the calling works, because the text did not make that clear to me, but I felt even better when I got the hang of it. Really nice puzzle game!
It's very stylish both in terms of visuals and design! Love the VFX and the looks of the board. I think if expanded it can either become something big and complex (Zachtronics-like), or a great interactive intro to programming.
Programming for fun? Unheard of :laughing:
Looks and sounds great and makes you think, nicely done.
Nice game. Perhaps not my type of game, but the game is well made. Thank you for this experience.
I'd love to spend more time on it, but I got frustrated on Intro 3 and just given up :( Amazing graphics, idea and execution, though, really well done!
@comigor yeah I'm sorry the level 3 is a bit obtuse if you don't already have the correct logic in mind, I didn't refine my intro levels enough and explain how things works as I should have, I think I will make a post-jam version at some point where I try to improve on that. Thanks for your feedback!
@nusan a friend explained it to me later, and I understood what was missing: I though that the first summon would die when the new one was spawned, so I didn't think I could just make it spawn the second one three times. But yeah, maybe some visual cues would help (like changing the color of the devil on the bottom screen or something)!
This is a great game, I do agree at Level 3 it gets a little tougher, but I do understand how it works. I was a little confused how to "switch" to Ophiel, until I realized I needed to put Aratron's gem _on_ the Call Ophiel symbol. Then it made sense to me :smile: Really nice job on the theme, mood, and it's fun!
I'm always impressed by what you managed to cram in a pico8 cartdrigde ! I didn't know about lightbot but it made me think about zachtronics games.
I like the concept of the game ! The puzzles were fun, the audio and the music were impressive too, congrats !
I stopped at level 9 because unfortunately this did remind me a bit too much of my programming daily job (it's also the reason I don't enjoy Zachtronics games as much lately :/).
But it's really not the fault of the game which was a nice and really polished entry! The only thing that I would have loved is some kind of "clear all" button.
Congratulations !
I'd say this is a pretty challenging game, but it's fair and satisfactory. The use of programming-like strategies is quite rich and there's surely some good space for further expansion. Good job!
Very interesting puzzle! One thing I would improve is a font, as it's to difficult to read.
Super cool game! Level 8 and counting... Kudos! You really managed to get a fun and easy to understand game mechanic while offering challenging puzzles with a sense of skill building and progression. Really inspiring! Music fits the game well! Impressed by how much you managed to achieved in so little time.
Interesting idea ! My brain went overheating a little but now I think I can do programmation
This game is incredibly creative! I had an absolute blast playing through these levels! They all had fairly simple worst case solutions, but a LOT of room for creativity to try and cut down gem usage as much as possible. The art was simple and fun, though it could get cluttered at times, and I loved the vibe of the game! Great Job!
Good programming game! I thought Ophiel is alternate demon to be summoned to but it turns out it's just alternate program to the demon. But nonetheless, I figured out its actual purpose from the level. Haven't completed all levels yet but might come back someday.
Really nice use of the using the trappings of a summoning circle/ritual as the control scheme, thought it was awesome little idea.
You made me program for fun - I usually do this in text! Really cool little game, it's cool how it kind of teaches you repeated application of a function to some small bit of state.
An excellent entry, as expected from you! :blush: Surprisingly playable even for the pico8 resolution (thankfully thengame allows to reajust nodes spatially). I rushed through all the levels because I'm a programmer and it's exactly my kind of game, but the difficulty curve seemed very comfortable and I'm pretty sure complete beginners will enjoy it, too. Looking forward to more levels and more actions!