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Control Is An Illusion's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #1047 | 3.526 | 3.526 |
| Presentation | #1149 | 3.474 | 3.474 |
| Overall | #1959 | 2.947 | 2.947 |
| Fun | #2615 | 2.579 | 2.579 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
Every few seconds, you are "out of control" of your player character. When you regain control, you must figure out what just happened.
Did your team create the art for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
Yes
We created all art during the game jam
Did your team create the audio for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
Yes
We created all audio during the game jam
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Comments
I like your glowing art style, and I also liked how the pattern appears in beat with the music.
This game was more frustrating than fun. Sometimes the control is an illusion would happen too frequently, that by the time I figured out what had changed, I was already losing control. On the GYBMRC level, before I was even able to fully view the pattern, I lost control.
I really think that the portal should just stay open once it fills the bar up. I actually like that bar, its a very clever mechanic that works well with your current functionality. But having it fill up, open the portal, start making my way to it, just to lose control, and have the buttons change and the portal close is so frustrating.
I think what makes this game more frustrating is that the player can't work with not having control. Some of the best games of the jams will take control away from you, but in a way that you can work with or around it. This game, felt more like I was fighting it, and working against it. My favorite moments with this game is when the adversary would turn on buttons that I needed. That made me realize that what I think I want is a way to use losing control to my advantage.
My idea right now is being able to see what colors they will change buttons to, so maybe you'd have to strategically position yourself by the correct buttons to make them work with you. Just an idea, and it might take away from the whole "figure out what they did", but as of right now, the game is more frustrating than fun.
I also encountered an annoying oddity. On the GYBMRC level, I'd have the portal open, and make it in just as the clock hit like 1 second, or I lose control, and it'd show the "Progress is an illusion" and then restart the level, so I assumed I had lost. Twice. Maybe that's intentional, but it was not clear.
Thanks for trying the game and spending time to write feedback!
Coming up with the concept, I realised that there's is a pretty high risk that it may end up being frustrating to a lot of people and yeah, frequently losing control is not that fun. The main idea behind this was fighting for control. It was intended that the adversary does not want the player to finish the level so you have to fight against that. Sometimes the enemy might help you since the buttons it choses are random but that in a way makes the later levels more challenging as having twice as many colours per panel makes it half as likely the AI would pick the correct one for a given panel.
But I do agree with you that the player should have more options to work around that. The way the game works now is that when you lose control, there is an AI system that randomly picks a panel it wants and then uses pathfinding to actually run from panel to panel and press a random button when it reaches the destination (you can see that in action on the end screen if you beat the last level). It's meant to give the impression that more time has passed when the player loses control, as if they lost consciousness, since the AI movement is really fast and the countdown goes quicker when you're not in control. What I wanted to do initially is design the levels around that by having mazes that the AI would get slowed by or traps that the player can lock themselves in for a few seconds. This was going to allow the player to trap themselves before losing control to minimise how much damage the AI can do. So it would become a game where you race to activate as many panels as you can but as soon as the screen begins to fade, you'd have to race to put yourself in a position that slows down the adversary. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to add all of that because it would require more mechanics, spending a lot more time on level design, and it would be another balancing challenge in itself. I just about finished this version with one hour to spare so the game ended up like it is now, where you can't prepare much for the switch but you have to recover from it in time. I feel like the game would be far less frustrating if I had the time to add all this since it was in my initial idea but it's something I might just add after the jam if I end up continuing with this...
And you mentioned with the CYBMRC level (which is the last level), the game restarting with one second left. That is definitely not intentional and the game is intended to always move you to another level if the progress text is shown. There is a delay before the level transition to play the progress text animation on screen and I assume the failure text just has a much shorter delay and ends up restarting the level before the code that progresses the level has a chance to run. I don't think I finished any level that close to the time limit in testing so I must've missed the bug, sorry. If you're interested, I have put up a full walkthrough video on the main game page which shows you how it is supposed to end.
I like the presentation and the idea, which really fits the theme, but it needs to be balanced out a bit more to be more player friendly. Losing control at five seconds left with the portal open is frustrating, and so is almost completing the pattern just to lose control and have to go all the way across the level to fix it. The sensitivity made it difficult to operate, maybe just add a small sensitivity slider in the first level or something. I liked how you started involving more than the original 3 colors though and the graphics were pretty.
Thanks for trying the game!
I noticed pretty late that the mouse sensitivity is way too high. Didn't seem as high when I was working on it in the editor but I noticed it was an issue when I already made the final build so I couldn't fix it in time :p
I thought the difficulty may be a bit risky and it seems people tend to agree it's too harsh on the player right now. Too late to edit now but I'm thinking of making another build when the jam is over that has an easier difficulty option which makes the control loss less frequent and gives more time for each level.
Ok it's not ugly at all, the music is should be bigger loops because it is annoying. I don't understand the concept ; maybe we have an answer as we reach the end ? But, honnestly, I don't want to :s... The work is great for a jam but maybe the game design (mechanic/visual) isn't funny enough.