I'm honestly a bit surprised nobody else ended up with exactly the same game idea as my team, at least from what I've seen. This one is the closest, but still very different. Other than some criticism that's already in the comments, I'd say press space to separate prompt on level 2 would be helpful, thankfully it is in the description, and the game doesn't allow you to progress until you figure it out. Oh, and your screen transitions are awesome.
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Grandcestry's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Enjoyment | #94 | 4.156 | 4.156 |
Creativity | #126 | 4.313 | 4.313 |
Overall | #195 | 4.094 | 4.094 |
Style | #1122 | 3.813 | 3.813 |
Ranked from 32 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?
The player must coordinate and navigate four statues of significantly different sizes to complete each level.
Development Time
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
See description for full credits
Comments
Really cool! Very clean, I like the game in general, it feels well polished and the puzzles are quite good! :)
Whoa this is a really awesome take on the theme! The music and movement sit RIGHT in that sweet spot where I could play this for a good few hours. Add some lore and some more puzzles or mechanics and I would pay real money for this one
Very cool idea and I loved the levels! Only 2 things kinda annoyed me but otherwise, great job!
1. When you're small it's sometimes really hard to see the rest of the map
2. It's not obvious where the smaller doll will come out from
Loved the game, I had though about doing a mecha on mecha loop game at one point, loved the babushka doll concept. Only thing I would change is when portals are left under moving blocks, to show them, as I had to restart a level and pray I was not covering the final portal again. Really nice art and sound design.
Very nice game! I especially like the great take on the theme and how this seemingly simple idea could be made into such clever puzzles. Played it to the end! The only piece of feedback I have is the position of where the smaller version splits from can seem random at times. I also encountered a bug where I could walk through the bigger dolls as the small one. But other than that, great game.
Simple yet elegant and interesting!
The only reason I didn't finish is because I pressed 'q' and for some reason the game just froze forever. I had cleared like 10 levels or so? Idk. But if it was not for that, I would have kept playing.
Some points that made my experience a bit frustrating:
- When small, you cant see much of the board
This sells the scale experience in some way, but it is very frustrating to retry a level, forget some part of the layout and have to collect some idols just to be able to see a part of the map, and then decide: ah, I have to split to go there, let's go back and redo.
Maybe add some way to inspect the level when you are still would solve the problem
- You don't know where the carpets will be placed until you collect the horn
This is interesting at the start on easier levels with less steps, creates things to process in the mid of the level, but on harder, where you play for 1 minute to collect the horn just to realize that you should have done things differently and was not your fault, was a small point of frustration to me
- The logic behind where your smaller version will spawn is a bit cryptic
I sense there is a sequence of priority directions, but I cannot tell that, and sometimes you just expect to split a certain way and It doesn't, and then you see only then that you have to plan your path again
But look, I took the time to write all these feedback because I really liked the game! I wanna see it get better in the future. It is a know genre, but the twist is welcome and charming, and the project well is executed, with simple but clean and readable graphics, a great atmosphere with the soundtrack, sound effects and style of animation. Great entry! Congratulations!
Simple but challenging! The style and concept of the matryoshka-looking statues are just adorable, and they provide unique puzzles. It's also nice how you can feel the difference in movement and screen view from each of them: that was nice touch. The main problems I had was that there was no undoing, which would be useful in cases where you can't see the screen entirely, and that the shape of the statues didn't fit the square collision box well, so there were some confusing moments. There were also some weird cases where the separation caused an overlap of statues. I also solved two levels in the exact same way, and I'm not sure if this was a mistake of duplicate levels or if there was some difference between them I didn't notice while playing. But all in all, great puzzle game for the time limit.
Thanks for the great feedback! An undo buttons was definitely something we wanted, but didn't have time to get to it. Same with making the collision better match the statue shape. There are two levels that are nearly identical early on with the key difference being in the first one has a 1x1 block you have to push while the second has a 2x1. This was supposed to illustrate the idea that you can only push a block if you are the same size as the side you are pushing against. It sounds like that moment could be clearer though.
Loved the game. It's a very nice take on sokoban puzzling and scales. One thing I'd mention is that usually sokoban puzzles show the entire puzzle at once. I like the idea that the bigger you are the more you see, but it led to a bit of frustration that there was an extra phase where you had to discover the puzzle before you can solve it. Also there wasn't much of a tutorialization that explains the block pushing mechanic that is tied to the size, or I just missed it. The idea is great but maybe a bit more of an explanation is needed for it to be obvious. But overall nice presentation and putting 4 pieces into their places back-to-back was very satisfying especially with the neat sound effects.
Thank you so much for your kind words! As you get larger, revealing the map was a pivotal design decision early on. However, we realized some frustration that might come with it and tried to soften it by easier retry buttons and skipping levels for any that don't resonate with the player.
For the block pushing, yes, the first order of business when expanding this is to further sharpen the materialization of the block pushing mechanic. Thank you so much for trying and providing great feedback! Cheers!
Nice game, I liked the how block pushing mechanics only let you move themwhen you have the appropriate sized doll for the side you're pushing on
Great submission! The central mechanic is interesting, the rules of the puzzle is pretty intuitive and the levels do a good job of easing the player into more challenging puzzles, and introducing concepts and the mechanics elegantly.
Nicely done! Very smart use of the dolls and puzzle are really neat and well thought. good job
Matryoshka dolls is a smart take on the theme. This is one of those jam games you can see being expanded in to a full title. Great work. 5/5. GG
I loved the visual style of the game and the puzzles were well thought out. It reminded me of Patrick's Parabox with the changing scales :)
Creative concept and nice execution! The puzzles are well thought out for such a short development time and the game definitely has the feel of something that could be developed further past the game jam.
One minor feedback though is that it would be great if we could influence the direction the smaller doll “jumps” out of the bigger doll from, because there were some puzzles were the seemingly arbitrary exit direction made completing the puzzles a lot more tedious due to where the previous dolls were left.
Very cool mechanic that reminds me of russian dolls and snappy gameplay to go with it.
Also, great music choice that matches the environment.
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