Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → But Buttons
By euler-moises
🤖 The developer uploaded this game to itch.io, and declined to answer whether AI was used or not.
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 24 | |||||
| Fun | 25 | |||||
| Innovation | 26 | |||||
| Theme | 25 | |||||
| Graphics | 25 | |||||
| Audio | 24 | |||||
| Humor | 24 | |||||
| Mood | 24 | |||||
This main mechanic reminds me of the science experiment where they taught rats to drive little "cars". Its a really simple initial mechanic that scales drastically in interest with the nesting functionality. I think this is a simple yet very strong idea with lots of puzzling potential!
That's one of the coolest design I've ever seen so far! Putting buttons in buttons( and in buttons again) is Really astonishing!
That is quite the scaling movement mechanic. The rapid degradation of precision as the recursive control schemes take over is really something, a really cool idea for a game jam game. Lots of potential there. The simple art style works well for the game, letting the gameplay carry all the weight, although I didn't really see the connection between each level and the classic game that showed up once the buttons were pressed. Overall a very neat game, well done!
It's an interesting concept but I found it a bit frustrating to play, the experience of knowing what you have to do but finding it difficult to control is unpleasant. The initial figuring out of "ok I have to go left to go right to go up" etc is fun though, it's just the execution of it I found annoying.
Perhaps not entirely resetting the level on a "death", i.e. leaving pushed buttons pushed, would make it a bit more forgiving.
@el-chivo-vivo Thanks so much for playing. I’m a big fan of simple concepts that grow more complex. I’m glad you enjoyed it!
@ralex-x Thanks so much for playing. I hope you had fun.
@smilewood Thanks so much for playing. The image of the classic game is just a little bonus—by "turning on the light" to see the exit, you get a memento of old-school gaming technology. ;)
@nathmate Thanks so much for playing. My inner retro gamer wouldn’t let me be kind enough to keep the buttons pressed down even after the player dies! :D I hope you had fun.
Such a good idea ! I miss a key on my keyboard it was difficult but so fun to play !
It's an interesting idea, but nah, by the third level it was too hard to play.
Very unique controls that mess with my mind. The exit didn't appear after I beat level 2, however. Also, there should be music in the levels
The green button really suprised me, and made a big smile out of me! Very elegant game idea!
funny idea with cool design and mechanics
Now this is an original way to control a character, love it !
@em-perrier @caerind @seyoke @leandre00 Thank you very much for playing. I hope you had fun!
@andriybyelikov Thanks for playing. Don’t worry. It’s a very good thing to know one’s own limits. I hope you had fun for as far as you were able to go.
@technicalitycreations How strange! Can you tell me what happened? Did you try more than once? The music serves as a "reward" after the player manages to press the buttons. The silence helps with thinking things through. Thanks for playing. I hope you had fun!
Que coincidência que ambos fizemos algo parecido :) (no sentido de controlar algo indiretamente, controlando botões dentro do jogo)
Eu pausei (ainda não sei se desisto ou não) no terceiro nÃvel porque começa a ficar bem difÃcil 😅 Você chegou a experimentar diferentes velocidades? Me pergunto se a lentidão pra mover a bolinha tá deixando as coisas mais difÃceis ou o quê (acho que é só aquilo que os jovens chamam de "skill issue" rs)
Hahaha what is these controls, you game is horibly good
I like the unique method of movement! Somehow gives me the feel of steering a massive ship.
I was surprised by, and really loved the presentation idea of revealing the theme/ game after completing the movement pattern!
I think the levels were mostly too silent, maybe a cool idea would be to have the final music come together one instrument/ channel at a time as you press more buttons, or maybe some sound effects from the retro game? On the other hand, the silence made the music reveal quite more rewarding.
I sadly wasn't able to complete the game as I also was stuck on the third level. Managing 3 layers was too much mind-bending for me.
Oh god... my brain hurts... it does work well, but I couldn't go on after the third box - this was simply too much. But I do wonder how deep these controls go..
It's a concept easy to understand, but actually playing it is more frustrating than fun.
@wendel-scardua Coincidência boa. Pensei em algo simples por não conseguir fazer nada mais complexo no momento. E vou te falar que me deu bastante trabalho mesmo assim. :D Eu testei bastante as velocidades. Mais devagar demorava demais e me deixava ansioso e mais rápido não dá tempo de corrigir a direção caso houvesse um erro. Também testei os tamanhos das plataformas e menor que esses acontecia de apertar dois botões ao mesmo tempo ou a plataforma ficou grande demais. Por esses motivos eu deixei o level design mais de boa. Já é complicado andar com as plataformas por si só. O segredo é paciência. Todos os botões tem uma margem de comando mais do que suficiente. Uma dica: aperte os números de cada fase para ir direto para elas. ;) Obrigado por jogar, meu amigo.
@frizifrench Thank you so much for playing. I hope you had fun.
@marks Thank you so much for playing. The idea of ​​opening a separate sound channel for each button is truly great! I should have thought of that. My initial idea was to have the platforms produce sound—each one at a different frequency, creating a chord if all three moved together—but I couldn't quite pull it off. As a beginner programmer, that’s currently beyond my skill set. I hope you had fun!
@fis Thanks so much for playing. *But Buttons* only has 3 levels. Does that encourage you to give it another try? :) I hope you had fun.
@mikoolec Thanks for playing. As someone who grew up playing classic games, I’m a fan of challenging titles. I hope you get over your frustration soon! :)
The beginning music is awesome. I could see the reason for it not repeating would be because it would be high pitched and repetitive, but if it were threaded into a longer song I wouldn't mind it playing on repeat by default.
Level 3 was hard, and level 4 even more so by messing with my sense of directions. A way that could make the game easier would be to have a mode where the blue stars become walls instead of death spikes. Even if the buttons gave 100 points and the stars cost 1 point every time you touch them, that could feel better while still rewarding players that never touch a spike by giving them a perfectly maxed out score.
Thinking on it again, the game does leave me wondering, how far does the box-ception go? Will there be more cool animations and music upon completing a level? How many levels could there possibly be? Makes me curious!
Holy cow, this is absolutely the hardest game I've played (so far) this LD. I wish there was a timer so that I could say for sure how long I spent in the last level, but I do know that I took at least 25 minutes, because I eventually realized I ought to start a podcast while I kept grinding it, and I'm 25 minutes in now 😂
I liked it despite the intense difficulty (which might be obvious, given my play time)! When I started my grind, I was worried that I was going to have to bail out early, but I eventually found myself falling into a sort of meditative state where I was both thinking each movement through very carefully, but also not focusing too intently on any one attempt. I quite enjoyed it, and it paired *excellently* with a podcast! :)
I also thought the levels were well designed, with a clear intended pathway through each of them, which helped keep the difficulty approachable. I always knew what I was supposed to be doing, even if I couldn't execute it properly. That said, there was one quality of life change that would have kept the intended challenge, while making the moment to moment gameplay feel much more friendly and enjoyable: If you added a visible box around the up/left/down/right arrows telling you when they would kick in (perhaps in the form of a button that you're depressing), it would make the game so much more legible. As a player I eventually got a feel for where each of their hitboxes were, but for a game that was all about pressing clicky buttons, it was strange that the main movement buttons didn't have that same clickiness. A little bit of feedback would have helped the game feel
Overall though, well done! Thanks for making and sharing this :)
(And also, *thank you* for not adding a fourth layer, because I think that level of indirection would have melted my brain, but I still would have tried very hard to beat it 😂)
@nbumgardner Thank you so much for playing. *But Buttons* only has 3 stages (not counting the title/tutorial screen), so the stage with the 3 platforms (blue, green, and red) is the final one. I didn’t have the heart to add another stage—even though my son kept insisting that I should! I’m currently studying programming, and the code took up so much of my time that I didn’t have much left to polish the audio. Your idea about a scoring system is great; I hadn’t thought of that! Maybe in a future version? I hope you had fun!
@koolruz Thank you so much for playing. I intentionally made the paths obvious because the game’s core mechanic is quite difficult. I don’t know much about level design, so I just wanted to make things easier for the player—so they wouldn’t lose their mind (or their soul!) while playing. My goal was to create a game that was relatively simple, yet challenging and fun. I’m not sure if I succeeded! Initially, I planned to include a timer for each level, as well as an overall timer to create a final ranking. I also wanted the arrows to light up, but—as is often the case with Game Jams—there just wasn’t enough time to do everything I wanted. Perhaps in the future? I hope you had fun!
I like how comfortable it is to play, so it remains to react in time and carefully watch where the cube is moving. Thank you for your hard work!
This is so devilishly hard. Not sure if I'm missing brain cells and there are things to ease my pain ^^ congratz on that mind-twisting idea!
I love and hate this so much. This was such a weird juggling act to manage movement. Unique idea with great execution.
@orange-kiwi @sevansevan @atmospherium
Thanks for playing, rate and comment. I hope you had fun. :)
Got to the level with the red button, but the delay and required precision was too much for me to deal with. It's really interesting seeing where different people stopped. The base mechanic is easily extendable, and everything made immediate sense about how it worked. Overall really nice job.
Love the elegance and simplicity of this design, @euler-moises! A unique take on the Old Tech theme, and the puzzle design was pretty challenging! I like the vibe shift when the exit is shown, I thought that was an artistic touch to only show the background environment and play the music once the exit has been revealed. It was an interesting way to shift the tone, and in a way, reward the player for *almost* being done. Great concept and awesome entry!
Being tortured by this design was a real treat. The final victory felt earned. I love how painfully slow the player moves so you can just feel your impending death on a mistake. I also enjoyed the colors and art style. Thanks for sharing this with me. https://www.youtube.com/live/1jKZ760uuDk?t=12427
A clip of my near victory: https://youtube.com/shorts/u_Oe7pfjzpM?is=aOW2wL_PNW5-sRzA
Neat idea. The red container was too much for my tired brain. The background games felt random to the game but it was fun to see them as a reward.
Nice job!
I didn't complete the game. I died several times on a level with 3 boxes (red, green, blue) and after another failure I just quit, scared that I will break something in frustration.
This game really made me suffer! 😂 But I guess it was intentional, so great job! It's also thrilling and rewarding when you succeed but that's rare for me. 😅
I don't have any useful feedback because the game feels complete and almost perfect in its cruelty.
The controls on this are INSANE. No idea how you came up with that. I started off wanting to be able to move faster and then quickly realized how much I'd hate that, lol. I wasn't expecting any of this just jumping into it. I do think that maybe the controls outshined the theme, but otherwise, it's a well done game. Good job!
