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A jam submission

Of bots and mirrorsView game page

Puzzle your way through dimensional collapse
Submitted by gemaco1397 — 19 hours, 20 minutes before the deadline
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Of bots and mirrors's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#184.0034.154
Gameplay#323.1873.308
Innovation#343.0393.154
Graphics#383.1133.231
Overall#393.1133.231
Audio#602.2242.308

Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

Well executed.

I was a bit confused by the coloured tiles. I’d have expected more of them to be blocks for a bot (esp. once the keys were introduced).

I enjoy puzzles like this.

Submitted

Played this on stream. Check out the vod here for my thoughts. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1005576731?t=01h11m20s

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Hey! First of all, thank you very much for the work you've put out, from what I've seen it seems you do this to every submission, which I really appreciate. it's really good feat back you've provided.


I also want to point out that what happened at the end was a bug, it's not supposed to brake the game the way it did. You're supposed to be able to press r to reset if you get stuck in a wall. I think I know what causes it, and it's an easy fix, which makes it kinda sad that I didn't catch it. I would like to mention that there is a level select, so if you still want to see the rest of what the game has to over you can use it to continue off. You stopped in level 14 out of 15, so it's really nearly done.


As for the move counter, I understand how it would be frustrating, and I probably was too tight on the moves. It was something I added to add some form of failstate to the game, make it possible for you to move. I honestly never realized just how different it is to play this game for the first time, compared to having stared at it for days, and quite literally knowing it in and out. Another reason was to give me a way to control which ways you can beat a level. I will definitely consider it in the future.

With the sound effect of the movement. I tried making every sound myself, as part of the challenge. I took a lot of time trying to think of a sound until I settled on the sound on an electric motor. the only thing I had for that was an older camera lens, that has a really audible focus motor. that's the sound you hear, sped up to fit the length the bots take to move, and pitched up and down a bit to make it sound a bit different every time.

The random dotted floor tiles were meant as a visual way to say that the two dimensions are starting to seep into each other. The solid colored tiles are actually the background 'void', meant as holes in the floor for only one of the bots. sorry if it wasn't very clear.

The keys were also a bit badly explained it seemed. It's based on the floor tile, the key for the blue guy is on the blue floor tile (And pink so you can actually see it), vice versa for the pink key. Same as the end points actually, which i guess I should've explained better, I was honestly kinda afraid to over explain everything.

With the entire stage not being visible, I was honestly feeling very constrained in the puzzles I could make and the ones I wanted to make. I tried to make every room it's own puzzle, have the progression of the doors and keys take place across the screens. Besides that I don't know how to make the camera do more that move in these grids (yet).

The timer for the teleport, I wanted to make it so you couldn't spam it back and forth, that felt wrong to me. I implemented the same thing I did on the moves, you actually can't move for 0.5 seconds after the bots finish their move. In this case I wanted to give it a bit longer to make it feel like it needs to actually charge up, and gave it the visual feedback so you're not ramming the controls, wondering why it isn't working.

Sorry if the Q prompt was a bit unclear, I had a lot of trouble finding the right words to explain what would happen. In the next screen, it  did explain that there's a little hand mirror in the top right that show's the current orientation.

With both of them having to go through at the same time, it's more to keep both bots in the current 'playspace', so you don't have a rogue bot on the loose. That's how you get an evil AI.

But, honestly, thank you very much for all the time and effort you put into this, I really appreciate the feedback! Sorry for the wall of text.

Submitted

Cool game with nice puzzles to wrap your head around! I really liked how you introduced constantly new mechanics. Maybe some music would add a bit more atmosphere to the game. When you introduced the "bot can only interact with his colour", I was a bit confused about the colour of the blue bot. It looks more greenish for me and it was not directly obvious with what this bot can interact. I have a very slight colour-blindness, which might explain that :).

Developer

Hey, thanks for the response. I'll keep the bit about the color in mind if I do something similar to this in the future, because now that you mention it, I can definitely understand that it can be frustrating or difficult to use. As for the music, I honestly couldn't find something that I felt would fit, or teach myself how to make music from scratch.

So in the end I decided no music would be better than mismatched/bad music.

Submitted

Speaking of colour blindness, I noticed, that Storybook offered overlays to simulate different ones.

I digged into the source code and discovered, that they use SVG for it! https://github.com/storybookjs/storybook/blob/96a8552aef9895873de360f98005952151d246ca/addons/a11y/src/components/ColorFilters.tsx

Applying a filter: url('#<the_filter>') as seen in https://github.com/storybookjs/storybook/blob/96a8552aef9895873de360f98005952151d246ca/addons/a11y/src/components/VisionSimulator.tsx#L34 could give you an impression on how the visuals might appear to these users.

Submitted (2 edits)

Very cool little game! I especially liked the transition showing up on a level complete. 
As a suggestion it would be great to add some background music to be more engaging

Developer

Hey! Thanks for the kind words. As for the music, I did want to implement it,  I ran into the choice of either learning to make music myself, or get a pre-made piece of music. I tried making music for a little bit, but I figured I'd need a lot of time and practice for that. As for pre-made, I couldn't find anything I liked or  felt would fit the game.

Submitted

Yeah, I see. Music is difficult subject indeed