It looks neat but I have no clue what’s going on. I did the first few “puzzles” by just drawing a circle every time. I have no understanding of “rules” after doing five or so of them nor a reason to keep doing them, meanwhile the next puzzles already don’t seem to be solvable in the same way but I feel no drive to do them.
A more dedicated introduction could improve this greatly.
These starting hexes are there to familiarize the player with the interface and then later help isolate and exclude a few things that don't work when returned to. It's not really about whether they resolve, but rather how. The entirety of this demo is tutorial content. They are all solved in pretty much the same way. It's hard to know what you even mean by "solvable in the same way" though, and perhaps looking at their resolution as a solution could be argued not to be the right mindset to have for this game. I suppose this isn't as clear with how unfinished the tutorial is, but I guess even then you wouldn't see it anyway if you weren't interested by that point? I can look into your concerns if they are more specific.
What do you mean by "dedicated introduction"? The soul of the game is that of a subtle hostility, so it is tricky to make it interesting straight away without making it feel like it's rolling out a red carpet for the player.
I mean no offense but I’m not sure I understood half of what you said, so I’ll try to answer the question instead.
I understand that the game wants to have a layer of mystery over its mechanics that you simply intuit as you work your way through these first puzzles, but it needs to do something so that it actually clicks in. Doing the same thing five times and then hitting a brick wall is not exactly what I’d envision. By dedicated introduction I mean having a narrative/map progression clearly unlock or progress after you do a few of them. I see a lot of things around this first area but I cannot figure or do much with most of them, and the things I could solve led to nothing. I need something to grab onto so I can derive some meaning from my actions.
Yea I got filtered pretty hard by this. I have no idea how the puzzles work and was only able to start the game by bruteforcing. I wanted to start over to figure it out but it doesn't seem possible to delete your save data.
Needing to press enter at the main menu to start the game is weird.
Needing to hold ESC to use the settings menu is weird. Why not just have it as a toggle.
I'm not a fan of the tank controls. If you need finer camera control you could try tying it to right click + mouse move perhaps. I think this game could work really well with point and click movement.
At the start of the game when the camera is in a bird's eye view, it's pretty hard to tell what direction the player is moving because of their hat.
I really like the aesthetics you have here. Unfortunately I was too much of a brainlet to figure out how to play.
Don't worry; everyone has found this game hard to understand at some level. I think I have gotten a grasp of the main pain points and I will be sure to make it much easier and less dense in the future.
I will consider getting a cursor-only control scheme to work, since so many people keep asking for it. That has to come with all sorts of custom provisions, though, for when you are in a free movement mode and such. So it will require some iteration.
I played for a bit. I will say, I am really bad at puzzle games though. The only thing I really figured out was how to solve most of the cubes. No clue about the door or wand. I'm not sure how I feel about the camera, it took me some time to figure out I can move. There was one area where the camera was following you and it felt better. But if you want to keep the old school static camera for puzzle games it might be a good idea to experiment with a different way to move around - like point and click or something. The visuals for the environment were interesting. The font was a little hard to read. Would also like to see more feedback when you are going in the right way, I wasn't really sure what my goal was. Even if the puzzles are going to be really difficult and cryptic it would be nice to know what you're supposed to solve next.
I can't add much else, as I said, my experience with puzzle games is very limited.
I did check out the telescope but I wasn't really sure what it was showing me. I think the cube I couldn't figure out was the one that had 3 swirly things and one of them wasn't surrounded by solid tiles. Idk how to explain it lol. It was around the area where the camera follows you.
Hey bro, I tried your game, I have to say the visuals and mechanics are interesting, but I really didn't know what to do after the first 2 hexes, I was trying to brute force the bigger puzzles but couldn't get any of those right :( sorry. I ended up exploring the map which looked really nice. I would like to understand the logic of these puzzles.
Interesting game. Nice aesthetic. Cute character. Didn't finish and I have no idea where to go next. I have a potato laptop running Windows and things ran fine on performance mode other than getting rather hot.
I think I have some understanding on how to cast hexes but I have no idea what to do for the 'scenario clear object' that you mention. I managed to get the bottom left number (my level?) to 3 and presumably assigned some points. I don't know what effect assigning the points had and it took me awhile to figure out that I could drag them. Saw the dialogue for the wand but have no idea how to proceed there. Similar situation with mashing the gate. Spent a fair amount of time running out of bounds and falling through the world. Killed a miscreant. I assume the Warden sort of resets/saves the game? Cool telescope and dragon. Might play around some more later but the summer heat is getting to me.
Thank you for playing! Nice, you have done better than most. The gate seems to be holding people back more than I thought, but it should become really obvious what to do about it once you can talk to someone. The trick to get the wand is easy to miss, and getting that object is pretty hard/not that intuitive when the area as a whole is unfinished, so consider it cleared for this version.
I guess I'm the most retarded playtester because I couldn't figure out how to move.
I also tried to record my gameplay for you but my laptop couldn't handle obs and the game at the same time so it's just a slideshow with me mumbling into my mic barely audible. So I'm not sure if I have any useful feedback.
This seems cool as fuck but I understand next to nothing. Looking forward to a more clear demo in the future, or if extreme obtuseness is what you are going for I guess I will try to figure this shit out.
Right at the start, walked around, did not get what to do with the hexagon pop ups. I will give it another go a bit later today and see if I can understand some more of it.
Interesting. How did you get through the first one? I thought people might not realize what they're supposed to do with them, so that star one was supposed to force a basic level of understanding before you were even allowed to move. Maybe I should have more.
Were you unable to get through the others that same way? Sorry, it is a bit hard to know what you're struggling with through words. I'm definitely changing that in some way though. Thanks for trying to clarify.
I have experimented with different (click-to-move and forward=camera normal) control schemes, but the tank controls ended up tourning out pretty integral for the game to work, since a lot of it ultimately benefits from 100% camera-independent movement. I'm open to any suggestions on that though. What did you find disorienting?
On what did you get stuck?
You have to unlock the title screen because that teaches you something for later.
Got it working with proton, it more or less works but freaks out if the window resizes.
Right off the bat the framerate seems really low, even in the main menu I seemed to only be getting about 30Hz. Also, although the volume slider worked properly, I had to press enter to get the first blue cube on the title screen to work.
Menu art style is on point, the loading screen looks sweet.
You’re damn right it’s obtuse, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I also couldn’t click on the blue cube near the start only the smaller pink ones.
It’s also really hard to make out shapes in all the blue. It seems like that’s sort of the point but it makes moving around really annoying.
I needed to hold down Esc to open the menu and I couldn’t find a way to quit other than terminating the window.
Are you going for something like “The Witchness”, that’s the way it seems to work. The art style is appealing, but I definitely don’t have the time to get sucked into a big puzzle game. This definitely does have potential.
Well done on getting it to work on Proton at all, because I've tried and failed to even get it to boot. Unfortunately, I use a bunch of Windows API calls, so native Linux builds are not an efficient use of efforts for now. Do you generally get Unity games running with a good framerate?
I use the same script for all Unity games for Windows:
Do you generally get Unity games running with a good framerate?
Yeah, normally they run about as well as they would on Windows.
Unfortunately, I use a bunch of Windows API calls
What for? Windowing, I/O, audio playback, and rendering context would all be wrapped by Unity wouldn’t they? The only remaining thing I normally use OS calls for is hot-loading DLLs.
>What for? Windowing, I/O, audio playback, and rendering context would all be wrapped by Unity wouldn’t they? The only remaining thing I normally use OS calls for is hot-loading DLLs.
Mainly for setting the cursor position, and also some minor reading of window data like border width. I should probably change to an in-game virtual cursor implementation at some point for many reasons, and that should get written out then.
I wonder why the performance is so bad, then. Are your specs good, and these other Unity games you're running 3D? The people running on Windows don't seem to be having any issues, and I get hundreds of FPS on a 1060.
Currently, this demo deliberately may err a bit on the side of obtuseness, such that I can then focus on clarifying only whatever it is that has players getting stuck. It is also very unfinished. It's possible to get to the end but it's more than fine if you don't. When you find unfinished parts or don't understand what's up with any given element, move on and tackle something else. Things are not designed to be cleared linearly anyway. If you get physically stuck, quit with Alt-f4, or your save data will be bricked in a save and quit!
Comments
It looks neat but I have no clue what’s going on. I did the first few “puzzles” by just drawing a circle every time. I have no understanding of “rules” after doing five or so of them nor a reason to keep doing them, meanwhile the next puzzles already don’t seem to be solvable in the same way but I feel no drive to do them. A more dedicated introduction could improve this greatly.
These starting hexes are there to familiarize the player with the interface and then later help isolate and exclude a few things that don't work when returned to. It's not really about whether they resolve, but rather how. The entirety of this demo is tutorial content. They are all solved in pretty much the same way. It's hard to know what you even mean by "solvable in the same way" though, and perhaps looking at their resolution as a solution could be argued not to be the right mindset to have for this game. I suppose this isn't as clear with how unfinished the tutorial is, but I guess even then you wouldn't see it anyway if you weren't interested by that point? I can look into your concerns if they are more specific.
What do you mean by "dedicated introduction"? The soul of the game is that of a subtle hostility, so it is tricky to make it interesting straight away without making it feel like it's rolling out a red carpet for the player.
I mean no offense but I’m not sure I understood half of what you said, so I’ll try to answer the question instead.
I understand that the game wants to have a layer of mystery over its mechanics that you simply intuit as you work your way through these first puzzles, but it needs to do something so that it actually clicks in. Doing the same thing five times and then hitting a brick wall is not exactly what I’d envision. By dedicated introduction I mean having a narrative/map progression clearly unlock or progress after you do a few of them. I see a lot of things around this first area but I cannot figure or do much with most of them, and the things I could solve led to nothing. I need something to grab onto so I can derive some meaning from my actions.
I hope this clears it up a bit.
What brick wall did you hit?
I think they were called “Aligned” “Missaligned” and “Eclipse” puzzles?
Yeah, these sure are getting repurposed for something else. Thanks.
Yea I got filtered pretty hard by this. I have no idea how the puzzles work and was only able to start the game by bruteforcing. I wanted to start over to figure it out but it doesn't seem possible to delete your save data.
Needing to press enter at the main menu to start the game is weird.
Needing to hold ESC to use the settings menu is weird. Why not just have it as a toggle.
I'm not a fan of the tank controls. If you need finer camera control you could try tying it to right click + mouse move perhaps. I think this game could work really well with point and click movement.
At the start of the game when the camera is in a bird's eye view, it's pretty hard to tell what direction the player is moving because of their hat.
I really like the aesthetics you have here. Unfortunately I was too much of a brainlet to figure out how to play.
Thank you for playing!
Don't worry; everyone has found this game hard to understand at some level. I think I have gotten a grasp of the main pain points and I will be sure to make it much easier and less dense in the future.
I will consider getting a cursor-only control scheme to work, since so many people keep asking for it. That has to come with all sorts of custom provisions, though, for when you are in a free movement mode and such. So it will require some iteration.
I played for a bit. I will say, I am really bad at puzzle games though. The only thing I really figured out was how to solve most of the cubes. No clue about the door or wand. I'm not sure how I feel about the camera, it took me some time to figure out I can move. There was one area where the camera was following you and it felt better. But if you want to keep the old school static camera for puzzle games it might be a good idea to experiment with a different way to move around - like point and click or something. The visuals for the environment were interesting. The font was a little hard to read. Would also like to see more feedback when you are going in the right way, I wasn't really sure what my goal was. Even if the puzzles are going to be really difficult and cryptic it would be nice to know what you're supposed to solve next.
I can't add much else, as I said, my experience with puzzle games is very limited.
Thank you for playing!
On which cube did you get stuck?
Did you not notice a telescope? That's supposed to show the goal (not that it's accessible yet)
I saw some streamers struggling with the font too. I will change it.
Don't worry, I want feedback from all sorts of players. This is not strictly a puzzle game.
I did check out the telescope but I wasn't really sure what it was showing me. I think the cube I couldn't figure out was the one that had 3 swirly things and one of them wasn't surrounded by solid tiles. Idk how to explain it lol. It was around the area where the camera follows you.
Hey bro, I tried your game, I have to say the visuals and mechanics are interesting, but I really didn't know what to do after the first 2 hexes, I was trying to brute force the bigger puzzles but couldn't get any of those right :( sorry. I ended up exploring the map which looked really nice. I would like to understand the logic of these puzzles.
Thank you for playing! That's fine! I wanted to know where people would get stuck and that information helps with figuring out what to change
Interesting game. Nice aesthetic. Cute character. Didn't finish and I have no idea where to go next. I have a potato laptop running Windows and things ran fine on performance mode other than getting rather hot.
I think I have some understanding on how to cast hexes but I have no idea what to do for the 'scenario clear object' that you mention. I managed to get the bottom left number (my level?) to 3 and presumably assigned some points. I don't know what effect assigning the points had and it took me awhile to figure out that I could drag them. Saw the dialogue for the wand but have no idea how to proceed there. Similar situation with mashing the gate. Spent a fair amount of time running out of bounds and falling through the world. Killed a miscreant. I assume the Warden sort of resets/saves the game? Cool telescope and dragon. Might play around some more later but the summer heat is getting to me.
👍
Thank you for playing! Nice, you have done better than most. The gate seems to be holding people back more than I thought, but it should become really obvious what to do about it once you can talk to someone. The trick to get the wand is easy to miss, and getting that object is pretty hard/not that intuitive when the area as a whole is unfinished, so consider it cleared for this version.
I guess I'm the most retarded playtester because I couldn't figure out how to move.
I also tried to record my gameplay for you but my laptop couldn't handle obs and the game at the same time so it's just a slideshow with me mumbling into my mic barely audible. So I'm not sure if I have any useful feedback.
The vibe feels cool tho
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gtrIiuluQgaGKUG0XZOujdd4BR0_N8Zl/view?usp=shari...
You need to use the mouse to wake up first. Thanks for testing! I will see what I can do to make that part more obvious.
This seems cool as fuck but I understand next to nothing. Looking forward to a more clear demo in the future, or if extreme obtuseness is what you are going for I guess I will try to figure this shit out.
It is supposed to be obtuse, but not so much that you can't fumble through and figure out the bare minimum to progress. Where did you get stuck?
Right at the start, walked around, did not get what to do with the hexagon pop ups. I will give it another go a bit later today and see if I can understand some more of it.
Interesting. How did you get through the first one? I thought people might not realize what they're supposed to do with them, so that star one was supposed to force a basic level of understanding before you were even allowed to move. Maybe I should have more.
Brute force.
Were you unable to get through the others that same way? Sorry, it is a bit hard to know what you're struggling with through words. I'm definitely changing that in some way though. Thanks for trying to clarify.
aesthetically pleasing, i love your shader
the tank controls feel very disorienting for this kind of game imho
but i did get stuck pretty much immediately and couldn't solve one of the first puzzles.
also, why do i have to UNLOCK the main screen with enter and then click play with the mouse? what's up with that?
I have experimented with different (click-to-move and forward=camera normal) control schemes, but the tank controls ended up tourning out pretty integral for the game to work, since a lot of it ultimately benefits from 100% camera-independent movement. I'm open to any suggestions on that though. What did you find disorienting?
On what did you get stuck?
You have to unlock the title screen because that teaches you something for later.
Got it working with proton, it more or less works but freaks out if the window resizes.
Right off the bat the framerate seems really low, even in the main menu I seemed to only be getting about 30Hz. Also, although the volume slider worked properly, I had to press enter to get the first blue cube on the title screen to work.
Menu art style is on point, the loading screen looks sweet.
You’re damn right it’s obtuse, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I also couldn’t click on the blue cube near the start only the smaller pink ones.
It’s also really hard to make out shapes in all the blue. It seems like that’s sort of the point but it makes moving around really annoying.
I needed to hold down Esc to open the menu and I couldn’t find a way to quit other than terminating the window.
Are you going for something like “The Witchness”, that’s the way it seems to work. The art style is appealing, but I definitely don’t have the time to get sucked into a big puzzle game. This definitely does have potential.
Well done on getting it to work on Proton at all, because I've tried and failed to even get it to boot. Unfortunately, I use a bunch of Windows API calls, so native Linux builds are not an efficient use of efforts for now. Do you generally get Unity games running with a good framerate?
I use the same script for all Unity games for Windows:
Yeah, normally they run about as well as they would on Windows.
What for? Windowing, I/O, audio playback, and rendering context would all be wrapped by Unity wouldn’t they? The only remaining thing I normally use OS calls for is hot-loading DLLs.
>What for? Windowing, I/O, audio playback, and rendering context would all be wrapped by Unity wouldn’t they? The only remaining thing I normally use OS calls for is hot-loading DLLs.
Mainly for setting the cursor position, and also some minor reading of window data like border width. I should probably change to an in-game virtual cursor implementation at some point for many reasons, and that should get written out then.
I wonder why the performance is so bad, then. Are your specs good, and these other Unity games you're running 3D? The people running on Windows don't seem to be having any issues, and I get hundreds of FPS on a 1060.
(JANKY AND UNFINISHED TUTORIAL AREA)
Objective 1: Cast a hex.
Objective 2: Get the Scenario Clear object.
Currently, this demo deliberately may err a bit on the side of obtuseness, such that I can then focus on clarifying only whatever it is that has players getting stuck. It is also very unfinished. It's possible to get to the end but it's more than fine if you don't. When you find unfinished parts or don't understand what's up with any given element, move on and tackle something else. Things are not designed to be cleared linearly anyway. If you get physically stuck, quit with Alt-f4, or your save data will be bricked in a save and quit!