Played this several demo days ago, seems like you've made some amazing progress. The interface has been improved a tone and everything is a lot clearer. Love the concept and the cool horror elements you're working with. Art and presentation is top notch too.
One addition I'd request is a button to skip forward 20 days all at once, it feels a little silly to just smash the buttons twenty times. What counts as a networked building is still unclear to me. This became apparent in level 9. Not sure if it's a bug or just something I'm failing to grasp.
Full of soul and charm, definitely gonna make it. Looking forward to seeing more progress.
This is an interesting puzzle game. It has fantastic art, very snappy controls and a great atmosphere.
The levels themselves were simple since they all felt like tutorials. The puzzle mechanics however are on the convoluted side of things, even a simple house has a boatload of requirements. Later levels could become overwhelming if the player has to keep track of too many things at the same time. Pools and prisms are hard to wrap your head around, specially when I had to use them to "extend the keep". I always screwed something up and had to retry. The chess position notation helped a bit, but it still felt like guesswork. Mirrors were difficult too until I realized they only repaired houses, I imagine they have more uses later on.
Speaking about buildings, building a house is a lot of work. More than it should.
Move mouse to the bottom, click the cut icon
Move mouse to the meadow, click it to make dirt
Move mouse to the bottom, click the timber pile icon
Move mouse to the dirt, click it to make a timber pile
Move mouse to the bottom, click the house icon
Move mouse to the timber pile, click it to make a house
Realize the timber pile is not next to the garden
Restart the level
Doing this once is not an issue, but failing a level and having to do this again and again is tedious. I know about the hotkeys, but the player shouldn't learn three different hotkeys to build the most basic structure of the game. Why not just let the player place a house directly on a meadow? Cemeteries work like that after all. Hell, make it spend 3 actions if you want a similar resource cost (cut/build/build). Same applies to the mason and a bit to the gardens.
I didn't understand cementeries. Even having three felt like they did nothing and houses started falling apart for seemingly no reason. Sometimes I clicked on a tile to know what it was reflecting, used a tool somewhere else and the tile info remained on the screen. Text in general is hard to read and the pop up window with info sometimes appears behind the bottom bar. When having the cut tool selected, it would be cool to have an indication of what is going to be harvested before clicking a tile.
The premise of this game is very cool and I had a lot of fun going through the levels. It will be interesting to see how the game plays in later levels after all the mechanics have been teached.
Very nice I like the day mechanic replacing having to wait for little workers to do there thing in other games like this and I like how the first level that made you wait 20 days showed that the dark forest can expand. I feel like the gray checkerboard background is a little plain and boring though you might be going for the very clean kind of look.
I got to level 9, but the game appears to be bugged... or maybe not. Pools are hard to understand, it's really not conveyed well. But when I thought I finally understood, the game then throws this at me...
And if I try to build it next to the other house, it says it needs to be networked to a keep.
That aside, the presentation is excellent (other than the mixels for the action cards).
The visuals and sounds are great and the puzzles were fun. I still don't know when dark forest spreads, but I managed to get by. Also, the amount of levels in this demo is a good amount to get an idea of what the game is. Also, just before writing this I played the game for the second time and realized resources are limited. The first time I played a day ago none of the resources I collected were used. I'm not sure how to recreate this as I simply just played it in the browser.
Meant to be played in fullscreen, it seems. UI elements were a little too small in the browser window. Sound design, both the ambient stuff like the wind and the building sounds were great. Matches the art style for peak comfy. I played through the rocks level and intend to come back to play the rest.
Only problem I had was deselecting options. Wasn't a huge issue, but I like being able to have no option selected. It was possible by pressing the corresponding key ("T" to deselect house, etc) but not by clicking the appropriate button, which would have been nice.
Not sure if you're intending to add music, but that might enhance the atmosphere further.
Very nice graphics and interesting gameplay. I only played the first 14 levels, found them a tad too easy (maybe it picks up in difficulty afterwards).
I like the graphics, they are extremely good. The small text box saying the requirements to build a certain building or not is way too small. Other than that, it's a really fun and enjoyable experience. I hope you add more to it.
Comments
Played this several demo days ago, seems like you've made some amazing progress. The interface has been improved a tone and everything is a lot clearer. Love the concept and the cool horror elements you're working with. Art and presentation is top notch too.
One addition I'd request is a button to skip forward 20 days all at once, it feels a little silly to just smash the buttons twenty times. What counts as a networked building is still unclear to me. This became apparent in level 9. Not sure if it's a bug or just something I'm failing to grasp.
Full of soul and charm, definitely gonna make it. Looking forward to seeing more progress.
Beat almost the entire demo, except level 19.
This is an interesting puzzle game. It has fantastic art, very snappy controls and a great atmosphere.
The levels themselves were simple since they all felt like tutorials. The puzzle mechanics however are on the convoluted side of things, even a simple house has a boatload of requirements. Later levels could become overwhelming if the player has to keep track of too many things at the same time. Pools and prisms are hard to wrap your head around, specially when I had to use them to "extend the keep". I always screwed something up and had to retry. The chess position notation helped a bit, but it still felt like guesswork. Mirrors were difficult too until I realized they only repaired houses, I imagine they have more uses later on.
Speaking about buildings, building a house is a lot of work. More than it should.
Doing this once is not an issue, but failing a level and having to do this again and again is tedious. I know about the hotkeys, but the player shouldn't learn three different hotkeys to build the most basic structure of the game. Why not just let the player place a house directly on a meadow? Cemeteries work like that after all. Hell, make it spend 3 actions if you want a similar resource cost (cut/build/build). Same applies to the mason and a bit to the gardens.
I didn't understand cementeries. Even having three felt like they did nothing and houses started falling apart for seemingly no reason. Sometimes I clicked on a tile to know what it was reflecting, used a tool somewhere else and the tile info remained on the screen. Text in general is hard to read and the pop up window with info sometimes appears behind the bottom bar. When having the cut tool selected, it would be cool to have an indication of what is going to be harvested before clicking a tile.
The premise of this game is very cool and I had a lot of fun going through the levels. It will be interesting to see how the game plays in later levels after all the mechanics have been teached.
Very nice I like the day mechanic replacing having to wait for little workers to do there thing in other games like this and I like how the first level that made you wait 20 days showed that the dark forest can expand. I feel like the gray checkerboard background is a little plain and boring though you might be going for the very clean kind of look.
I got to level 9, but the game appears to be bugged... or maybe not. Pools are hard to understand, it's really not conveyed well. But when I thought I finally understood, the game then throws this at me...
And if I try to build it next to the other house, it says it needs to be networked to a keep.
That aside, the presentation is excellent (other than the mixels for the action cards).
I got to level 19. It was not clear to me how cemeteries work.
Overall it's a nice puzzle game. All the presentation felt like a finished game
The visuals and sounds are great and the puzzles were fun. I still don't know when dark forest spreads, but I managed to get by. Also, the amount of levels in this demo is a good amount to get an idea of what the game is. Also, just before writing this I played the game for the second time and realized resources are limited. The first time I played a day ago none of the resources I collected were used. I'm not sure how to recreate this as I simply just played it in the browser.
Excellent little puzzle game.
Meant to be played in fullscreen, it seems. UI elements were a little too small in the browser window. Sound design, both the ambient stuff like the wind and the building sounds were great. Matches the art style for peak comfy. I played through the rocks level and intend to come back to play the rest.
Only problem I had was deselecting options. Wasn't a huge issue, but I like being able to have no option selected. It was possible by pressing the corresponding key ("T" to deselect house, etc) but not by clicking the appropriate button, which would have been nice.
Not sure if you're intending to add music, but that might enhance the atmosphere further.
Overall, great work.
Nice graphics and sounds, simple and fun.
Very nice graphics and interesting gameplay. I only played the first 14 levels, found them a tad too easy (maybe it picks up in difficulty afterwards).
I like the graphics, they are extremely good. The small text box saying the requirements to build a certain building or not is way too small. Other than that, it's a really fun and enjoyable experience. I hope you add more to it.