This was surprisingly fun and the art style felt simple and cohesive. The tutorial was great, and the UI was clear, so I felt like I was only really challenged by the game itself. And the gameplay was really well designed, solving my first grid was super satisfying and also quite difficult lol. Awesome submission, can't wait to see more of your work :)
Is it a pattern ? Is it a planet ? No, it's a god damn IQ test in disguise...
That was super original, my only complain is the lack of preview before selecting a cell. But there is the undo function to make mistakes so that's ok. Cause sometimes, it feels like I bruteforce the thing instead of using my brain. Maybe adding a preview and forcing the player to make it to the end in X turns could be a good addition, I don't know. The fact that the game doesn't spam you with a new tutorial when you launch it a second time is a nice detail too. Also the infinite emptiness of the void was hard to hear for me, so I put some dark ambient while playing, and it fit perfectly, providing an instant buff of +10 charisma to your game.
Well I will be damned, I never knew about those but just by looking at that Google search I can see so many obvious ways to improve my own system, I feel sad just thinking about it T_T
I did experiment with having a preview overlay when hovering over a cell with your pointer, however adapting that behaviour for touch screens would have meant a two steps, tap-and-confirm selection, and my messy code was already bursting at the seams at that point... Now that I am getting feedback about it, I feel dumb for not leaving that feature in.
Audio is probably my biggest weakness; that could be a nice thing to research for next year :-)
The parallel with spatial psycho technique tests was so obvious I thought your work was a direct reference to them at first... Cause adding and subtracting basic shapes like that is a classic in space monkey intelligence testing. TBH, I already pass some lame ass tests way easier than your game ! Ok, so if it's touch screen compatible, I understand the lack of preview. Now having that in mind you could also detect if the user is on a smartphone or on desktop, if... the code can handle it... I know music can look hard and impenetrable for many coder, but at the end, music is "just" audible math : frequencies, harmonics and interval, thats it. I even think its the most mathematical art form around here. Tell yourself that there is even subtractive and additive way of making sound too ! (with FM synthesis i.e) Also throwing a pre made looping tracks into a project should not be that hard for you I think.
oh this one is so clever wow!! one thing that happens with these short jams is that people don’t have time to make a tutorial and it’s a bit hard to get used to the controls, but this one’s tutorial was really good. i like the adding and removing patterns, it’s super fun but also simple to understand, my only criticism would be that sometimes it’s hard to discern how big a pattern will be on your “canvas,” like differentiating between one big circle and three small circles for example, but otherwise this is one of my favs, great job
Thanks for the feedback! Glad you liked the tutorial, I wanted to do one like that for so long and was glad I found the motivation to do it this time around.
I did experiment with a few different ways of displaying the patterns, including showing the grid on the planet's surface, having a two-step selection with an preview overlaid on your canvas, and even screen-space textures so that everything always faced the same way, and I ended up making some compromises to fit the vision I had for the overall look of the planet. They may not be the right ones from a gameplay point-of-view though...
Comments
This was surprisingly fun and the art style felt simple and cohesive. The tutorial was great, and the UI was clear, so I felt like I was only really challenged by the game itself. And the gameplay was really well designed, solving my first grid was super satisfying and also quite difficult lol. Awesome submission, can't wait to see more of your work :)
Is it a pattern ? Is it a planet ? No, it's a god damn IQ test in disguise...
That was super original, my only complain is the lack of preview before selecting a cell. But there is the undo function to make mistakes so that's ok. Cause sometimes, it feels like I bruteforce the thing instead of using my brain. Maybe adding a preview and forcing the player to make it to the end in X turns could be a good addition, I don't know.
The fact that the game doesn't spam you with a new tutorial when you launch it a second time is a nice detail too.
Also the infinite emptiness of the void was hard to hear for me, so I put some dark ambient while playing, and it fit perfectly, providing an instant buff of +10 charisma to your game.
Nice job here
Well I will be damned, I never knew about those but just by looking at that Google search I can see so many obvious ways to improve my own system, I feel sad just thinking about it T_T
I did experiment with having a preview overlay when hovering over a cell with your pointer, however adapting that behaviour for touch screens would have meant a two steps, tap-and-confirm selection, and my messy code was already bursting at the seams at that point... Now that I am getting feedback about it, I feel dumb for not leaving that feature in.
Audio is probably my biggest weakness; that could be a nice thing to research for next year :-)
The parallel with spatial psycho technique tests was so obvious I thought your work was a direct reference to them at first... Cause adding and subtracting basic shapes like that is a classic in space monkey intelligence testing. TBH, I already pass some lame ass tests way easier than your game !
Ok, so if it's touch screen compatible, I understand the lack of preview. Now having that in mind you could also detect if the user is on a smartphone or on desktop, if... the code can handle it...
I know music can look hard and impenetrable for many coder, but at the end, music is "just" audible math : frequencies, harmonics and interval, thats it. I even think its the most mathematical art form around here. Tell yourself that there is even subtractive and additive way of making sound too ! (with FM synthesis i.e) Also throwing a pre made looping tracks into a project should not be that hard for you I think.
So we will see next year, maybe... 👀
oh this one is so clever wow!! one thing that happens with these short jams is that people don’t have time to make a tutorial and it’s a bit hard to get used to the controls, but this one’s tutorial was really good. i like the adding and removing patterns, it’s super fun but also simple to understand, my only criticism would be that sometimes it’s hard to discern how big a pattern will be on your “canvas,” like differentiating between one big circle and three small circles for example, but otherwise this is one of my favs, great job
Thanks for the feedback! Glad you liked the tutorial, I wanted to do one like that for so long and was glad I found the motivation to do it this time around.
I did experiment with a few different ways of displaying the patterns, including showing the grid on the planet's surface, having a two-step selection with an preview overlaid on your canvas, and even screen-space textures so that everything always faced the same way, and I ended up making some compromises to fit the vision I had for the overall look of the planet. They may not be the right ones from a gameplay point-of-view though...