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A jam submission

Virus BrainView game page

A man with a brain computer loses his mind.
Submitted by vianite — 2 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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Virus Brain's itch.io page

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Comments

(+1)

Vib-ribbon is cute!
Writing is nice.
I located the first updated puzzle! I've only played chess and a game where toads EAT multi-colored cirnos :D
I attempted to do things such as equating the letters to their numerical order and doing equations for some sort of pattern and attempting to find a pattern in how the first row (which had all the letters on the keypad) and sorta figure a pattern the next buttons are punched in but it was also probably not how to get the right answer. 
Now I'm here!  I'm gonna give the columnar transposition cipher a try... but... I couldn't figure it out cuz my brain is probably toasted :<
I didn't get it! I wish the very nice Mrs.Vib-Ribbon or the notes would very nicely give me vague hints as to the manner to which I needed to look at the puzzle to get my mind in the right general ball park since I was probably being overly complicated and silly because I'm not built for puzzle games and I sorta SUCK at them since I went in weird directions, busted out a pencil, graphing paper, and calculator in search for a solution like a nerd really trying to get it but i was filtered
I'll be back in two months to be filtered all the same cuz i suck, it's probably my fault, shid, sorry...

Submitted (1 edit)

This game is weird in a good way.

I personally think that the personal dialogue with everything is a bit much but that's my opinion. 

Not sure if I really like the "brain room" or whatever, it's a bit zesty. I think the game having a serious aesthetic/vibe would be better but as it stands you're a bit too in the "quirky indie RPG" niche. 

The cyphers are cool if you know how they work. One way to help people with it is to allow the cypher columns to be rearranged on the UI so that the player can organize them without having to do it mentally or in my case, take a print screen and copy-paste them in the right order.

Speaking of, the second cypher clue word was missing, is that intentional? I got it by simply reorganizing them myself as there's only a couple of words it could have been. I am assuming it was either a bug and didn't show up or there's some clue in the level that I completely missed. 

The combat is very interesting. I think there's a lot you can do with it. Maybe even bribe enemies to leave. 

Overall interesting game that i'd be happy to play again.

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you for playing!

You just missed the demo version update I pushed to itch.io. I remade the puzzles but kept the original puzzle as an optional bonus challenge (the entrance to it is a bit hidden on purpose).

The tone and the setting are both considered decisions. I like them but I understand there can be critics.

The combat is still in early development but I'm glad it got you intrigued.

I'm glad to read you're looking forward to this game!

Music is an absolute BANGER, sets the tone just right.

Definitely needs better visual cues for what's going on in the cypher screen, took me a bit of time to understand that the keyword is "Key". Other than that it's pretty simple. Combat is... I dunno. It's alright, I guess, but I'm not too hot about paid abilities.

Very curious about where you take it, I think it can be carried with good writing, cuz the story seems very intriguing.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing. The music is by my friend https://x.com/akuLukka

Submitted

Interesting game. Even though the ciphers are fairly simple, I think you should show an example of one being solved in the very beginning. I kept getting killed at the mind virus that has all the little tadpoles on the screen. 

Submitted

Oh man, this game certainly took turns - I did not expect to suddenly get a gun, have a combat and money system once reaching the Brain Server, that was a really good twist from the initial presentation. The combat isn't what I expected either, but it works well enough. I like the general vibe of it so far, curious where it'll go from the demo. Below my findings I've written down while playing through it:

- Sound effects! The music is alright, though a bit repetitive after a while, but there's a strong lack of any sfx in the game.
- During the cutscene like the robot arm taking out the "brain" or the opening of the door from the computer, you can press E and the puzzle interface shows up still. It'll also gets stuck on the screen until you interact with the computer again.
- Clicking on "Chat" in the Brain Server keeps repeating the camera movement animation.
- First time I died against the second enemy (because I didn't realize you need a bullet to heal), and after respawning and killing it, going back to the Brain Server made it repeat the whole introduction dialogue of giving me a gun, HP and wallet (and saying I had no money despite having $94)
- Went in a circle made it back to the hook enemy. He was gone while the door was closed, but after opening the door he reappeared though was not interacatble. Was able to pick up the hook rope again, and looks like this can be done infinitely.
- Had to do a few loops, unsure what to do before I noticed the hole in the ceiling where the hook rope is used. Some flair to draw attention it (light ray shining down, dust particles floating down from it etc.) might make it more noticeable.

Developer

Thank you playing!
I'm glad you liked the twists, it was exactly what I was aiming for.
And thanks for the detailed list.

Submitted


Beat the demo with some previous knowledge of the ciphers. I like the vibe and the look of the environment, as well as the enemies and corpses. The gun gameplay was a bit strange, but kind of fitting in a weird way. The only other thing the game needs other than more content is an indicator for opening doors, a little popup mayhaps. Overall cool and great atmosphere, look forward to more!

Submitted

I have some feeling, that you wanted to have kind of LSD: Dream Emulator vibe, but darker. Got the letters puzzles, but don't know what to do with the hooked rope, stuck after that. And it's kinda tedious to search for all interactable objects, pressing E all around until I find any.

Submitted (1 edit)

The intro is really great and I think sets up a neat, dream-logic vibe. Overall, the game has a very confident start. The music is well done but personally I found it a little overwhelming over time, I would have like it to fade down a bit after the intro to appreciate some more ambience/mystery. I eventually solved the second puzzle (not sure I completely understood why) and died on the school of fish. Interesting combat set up, curious to see how it gets fleshed out. 

Submitted

congratulations, you successfully filtered me

i have no idea what any of the puzzle instructions even mean

(i have never been good with puzzles)

Developer(+1)

Lol, damn, maybe it was a bit too hard.
It's a  columnar transposition cipher; it requires you to shift the letter columns and the most top row is the key.

Unscrambled it looks like this:

K  E  Y
H  A  P
P  Y  C

And the columns are then shifted according to the alphabetical order of the letters in the keyword (in this case KEY becomes EKY).
Here's the puzzle again:

E  K  Y
A  H  P
Y  P  C

And thus the answer is HAPPY(C). C is a null character added just to fill the column.

Submitted

Sure would be nice if the controls were shown in-game, and if you had a pause/options menu (I had to quit using task manager). I played up to the cipher puzzle and then quit, since I had zero interest in solving it. Very cool presentation and atmosphere up until then, though.

Developer (3 edits)

!!! USE SPACE FOR RELOADING !!!
CONTROLS
:
Keyboard and Mouse:
-WASD move, SPACE jump, E action, TAB menu
In Fight:
  -MOUSE1 shoot, SPACE reload