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Simon Says's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #1 | 4.346 | 4.346 |
| Execution | #2 | 4.577 | 4.577 |
| Game Design | #2 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Audio | #3 | 4.192 | 4.192 |
| Graphics | #6 | 4.115 | 4.115 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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I like the vibe! I see, I spotted a fellow Remedy-head 😎 The Eyes are well animated, and the little graphical flourish that appears when they communicate is great. It’s nicely unnerving in a non-grating way! The music adds to it, although a few more music tracks would have been nice. The game introduces new mechanics gently to you. Great onboarding! I played until squeeze, where there was just too much going on to fit in my head without it feeling like homework. Maybe a hint system would have been nice?
I also spot a little bit of ludo-narrative dissonance in the question of who exactly we, the player, are. The UI points towards us being some kind of controlling entity, maybe similar to The Eyes. I say this because the “Simon Says” screen is directly controlled by us. Well, assuming that “Simon Says” refers to the commands themselves and not the “max 8 commands” and such restriction. This implies we are the metaphorical “Simon” controlling The Dude that needs to reach the goal. This is further reinforced by there being a ludic disconnect between our commands and what The Dude does, as we cannot control his movement directly while in motion, but only indirectly, strategically.
On the other hand, The Eyes seem to imply that we are in fact The Dude. They say things like how we are there to entertain them while directly watching The Dude. In fact, their tone of voice fits a scenario where they have captured us for their own reasons, which visually fits The Dude’s situation. In this case, who is the metaphorical Simon?
Maybe we are supposed to be an incorporeal entity that is being held captive by The Eyes and The Dude is just a figurine that we ultimately move on a board, and the reason The Eyes look intensely at them is because they yearn for entertainment? Similar to when we look at a stage magician, we don’t look at their faces, but at what their hands are doing and at what gadgets they are handling? This argument is supported by the fact that The Dude does not have any animations, as you would expect from a figurine. Or The Eyes are breaking the fourth wall and addressing us, the human, directly?
Maybe this is all supposed to be ambiguous, but for me personally it feels like something that is not entirely cleanly communicated.
Over all, I enjoyed my experience with the game. I usually don’t like puzzle games much, but I played this one before going to bed and then decided I needed to play some more right when I got up :D
Fantastic and well thought out puzzle game. Nice ambiance and tonnes of puzzles. The mechanics were introduced at the right pacing.
I ran in firefox without any audio stuttering.
I did find a bug that if you use the hamburger menu to switch levels while a level is animating in things go pretty wrong and it gets stuck :D
Hey Wilsk, thanks for the review! Would you mind sharing your Firefox and OS version so I can try and narrow down the source of the stuttering issue I’ve been experiencing with Firefox. I’m on an M3 MacBook Pro, so perhaps it’s specific to Firefox on Mac.
Windows 10 version something something Firefox 128.0.3 (64-bit) AMD CPU Nvidia GPU
i love these kinds of puzzle games! and its incredibly well made <3
I was surprised to discover that the eyes in the background aren’t just a static image. The VFX and sound design for the eyes is top notch, and the writing is pretty good too. The UI is plain but surprisingly complete for a Bevy game. Reminds me of The Talos Principle. Also I see we interpreted the theme in the same way c:
As for the nitpicks: the ambient background audio gets repetitive after a while; the player model looks out of place with the rest of the game; and the puzzle difficulty spikes way too hard (even if this wasn’t a jam game), especially with the rotating tiles.
Also I found a crash: I tried to change to a different level during an ongoing level transition, and got “Attempting to create an EntityCommands for entity … which doesn’t exist”. But the game remembered my progress on refresh, which is great.
EDIT: I see this is already a known issue :)
Hey Pyrious, thanks for the feedback!
I definitely agree with the difficulty spiking too hard with the rotating blocks, most of those puzzles were made very late in the Jam and I didn't have enough time to get people to playtest and refine them like the earlier levels.
Regarding the music, I actually wrote a few more tracks but didn't have time to integrating them into the music system which had already ballooned significantly in complexity as I'd never implemented an audio system before. I hope you were able to locate the mute button in the settings / level selection menu and listen to your own music after it got grating.
If you didn't already you should check out the last level "Transcendence" as I'm particularly fond of how ridiculous it is.
Amazing submission, there is so much about this that I like.
The graphics are inspired, the audio feels so clean and the game is quite fun. (You knew your audience would be programmers so mechanics like this are a shoe-in)
Well done
This crams in a lot for a jam game. Quite polish with very nice UI (esp. for a bevy game) and a good deal of QoL features.
The audio is unnerving, so I'd expect the visuals to be darker/brooding to match it. Also regarding the aesthetics, while the angled view looks quite nice, it messes with my sense of direction, so was swapping left & right quite a bit. That might be just a me thing tho as I'm not very good at spatial puzzles and when you add in rotations, my head just starts spinning. I have finished most puzzles, but stopped playing once I realised I was brute-forcing some of the puzzles. The parsimony requirement was actually a driving factor in this as when I saw a low enough number (3 or below) I just lazily started trying combinations. I think hiding those requirements and also allowing me to step through would help alleviate that urge.
Overall it's a great entry and at least some of my issues might be just a skill issue.
Hey SecretPocketCat, thanks for the review! The angle of the camera was definitely something I went back and forth on. I too struggle with messing up Left / Right and with the player character facing Left->Right across the screen for most puzzle’s there’s an implicit 90 degree rotation you have to do in your head. I ended up leaving it because a) in most games the character goes from Left to Right, it’s an intuitive goal for players and b) the finish tile was more easily visible in most levels from a side on angle. I think I’ll make this a configurable option post Jam as once you have all 4 commands the starting orientation of the player doesn’t matter mechanically. Perhaps being able to issue commands with WASD/Arrow keys might also help.
As for the brute forcing, I definitely feel the same way for some of the later levels. I wanted even the complex levels to have at least one simple, but inefficient solution, and hoped the alacrity goal would drive people towards finding the faster solution after discovering the simple one. There is one level “Spinors” which is intentionally so complex with all the spinning pieces that brute forcing its 2 command solution was kinda intentional, I didn’t consider that it might have a demotivating effect on people given it’s right at the start of the rotating pieces puzzle section.
I think as you pointed out, a step debugger is really needed once the rotating pieces are introduced as the player moves so fast it’s hard to grok how the rotation and action plan are interacting. That and drag and drop I think are the biggest missing QoL features.
A topdown view would be way easier to read IMO 🙂.
Spinors is def the main offender, but I realised my frustration on Samsara.
The commands don't get reset when switching levels btw., so starting a lvl, then switching to a different one will keep the commands (even beyond the lvls max, so it could be used to cheese lvls).
BTW. just got a panic when quickly switching levels.
panicked at game/src/player.rs:336:22: Attempting to create an EntityCommands for entity Entity { index: 423, generation: 7 }, which doesn't exist.Thanks for the bug reports! Unfortunately I discovered both of those problems after the submission deadline.
The later levels definitely feel qualitatively different from the earlier levels because they were all made on the last day after I was happy with the QoL features in the UI. I think I made the multiple player character levels just a few hours before the the deadline. As a result they didn't get any real play testing and so don't feel as refined / intentional in trying to teach you something as the earlier puzzles.
I've also realized that the "turning" blocks are very very hard to intuitively reason about their behavior and they should be used a lot more sparingly and require a lot more training puzzles to teach you tricks about how they work, especially with how they interact with walls. Because if you can't intuitively reason about them like you can with Ice then you resort to brute forcing like you mentioned.
I think I few things could help with the apparently complexity of the turning blocks, a step debugger, and a "ghost" projection that plays out once cycle ahead would help a lot I think, but in general they need to get tuned down.
It's also hard to visually distinguish between the clockwise and anti-clockwise rotating blocks, I think their color schemes should be inverted so it's easier to tell at a glance which is which.
I enjoyed the different challenges that force you to approach each level differently on a second replay!
I liked the level design, each level taught something specific! And the Control homage was fun ▽. A lot of nice polish.
Nice atmosphere, a bit like Monument Valley, which I love! The UI is clean and intuitive, especially if you played something like while True: learn(). (although I was never able to click the reset button - it was always disabled for me).
In terms of experience, there are cases where you can complete the game in less than the maximum number of commands, which is currently never acknoledged by the game; a little feedback on this could make the game even better.
There aren’t too many levels, and they aren’t too difficult either, but in the possible future an option to speed through the steps might come in handy if you get stuck and have to try several times.
A restart button and the end and audio on/off would also be nice.
Overall, a lovely puzzle game.
Hey moshyfawn, thanks for the feedback! Would you mind elaborating more about the reset button? Are you referring to the button next to the start button? It should be enabled (and colored red) whenever the player is executing the command cycle. If not, would you mind sharing your browser version with me so I can try and reproduce the issue?
> In terms of experience, there are cases where you can complete the game in less than the maximum number of commands, which is currently never acknoledged by the game; a little feedback on this could make the game even better.
I totally agree and this is the first thing I'm implementing tomorrow morning. The maximum number of commands is always one less than the number of commands required to walk straight to the finish but most the puzzles (other than the beginning ones) are definitely possible to finish in fewer commands. I plan on adding two "challenges" to each level, 1) The minimum numbers of commands, 2) The minimum number of steps. This should help communicate more clearly to the player that smaller solutions are both possible and desirable.
> There aren’t too many levels, and they aren’t too difficult either, but in the possible future an option to speed through the steps might come in handy if you get stuck and have to try several times.
Please come back at the end of the Bevy Game Jam (Monday) and check it out again, there will be lots more levels. I have loads sketched out on paper.
> A restart button and the end and audio on/off would also be nice.
I plan on adding a Puzzle Selection screen. With the audio toggle, do you mean just music, or the sound effects as well?
very clean UI and fun game.