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Square Escape's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #122 | 4.099 | 4.099 |
| Overall | #629 | 3.817 | 3.817 |
| Creativity | #878 | 3.824 | 3.824 |
| Style | #1774 | 3.528 | 3.528 |
Ranked from 142 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?
Collect Plus and Minuses that change your shape to Escape every level
Development Time
96 hours
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Comments
I liked this puzzle a lot! I'm not sure if it's an existing type of puzzle or you made it up, but this design is brilliant. The game in general is also polished very well, all the menus, stars, animations and SFX, works perfectly together. And you cooked 45 levels, what??? The only concern by me is very low inmportance of +/- signs, as it seem to be the only connection to the theme, and most levels completely misses it. Overall great job, thanks for making this game!
Thank you so much! The whole sliding box mechanic is pretty standard, but comining it with changing the shape of the box is an unique idea, or at least, I myself have never seen it anywhere else :) how many levels did you play? Because after the first page all the levels have +/- inside the levels
Yeahhh maybe it's a problem with game jams, you aim for short play time because there are a lot of games and peopley play and rate it very fast. I played almost entire sheet 1, then used "jam cheat" and took a sneak peek at some later levels. But still got a feeling that there's a general lack of +/- signs Now I see it's quite abundant.
You did incredible job of adding new mechanic, it fits perfectly and works very well. I may reconsider my rating, however me not finding all those +/- levels must be a feedback on its own. I would wish these signs to appear early and never leave, and all temporal and death blocks to be introduced later on top of that.
Also, how do the locks work? Do I need to collect all plus signs? Or do I need to become a certain shape? I would clarify that part a bit more as well. This game and it's mechaninc is incredible nonetheless, I liked it a lot.
That's totally right, if you had that impression it is totally right that the introduction of those signs should happen earlier, I think the main problems are level 7,8,9 which don't have any of the more interesting mechanics, my idea was to include them as a sort of a challenge to check if the player "mastered" the basic movements without all the other mechanics involved, and after those it can move on.
The Levels on the other pages unlock even when you did not complete all the levels in first page though, did you get a chance to see that? I am curious how your playthrough went to better understand how we can improve the progression
As for today, I have a lot of games to rate, have to rush and don't have time to test all levels for too long unfortunately. If you're willing to develop this game further, 1). you aren't tied to the theme anymore (though focusing on +/- helps to stand out above other sliding box puzzles a lot), and 2). you really need a proper testing team to tweak and arrange that many levels, with trailing mechaincs and concepts in consequent levels and gradual difficulty increase. Sadly I don't think I'm the best candidate for that, with all my own projects and busyness.
As for my short playthrough, the moment with "-" sign deleting part in the middle, and moment with using L shape to complete a level was "WOW" moments for me, good experience. If I ever find time to play more and have more feedback, I'll let you know. Good luck!
This is a really good puzzle game. Easy to understand and the progression of each level is well thought.
Thank you so much!
The only obvious thing I can think of improving is buffering your inputs, and maybe varying the sound fx slightly so its not so repetetive. It get incredibly difficult very quickly.
Thank you so much! Yeah buffering could be a very nice addition, we don't really know how to do that though ahahahah also varying SFX definitely would add a bit of variety. Is it a good thing that it gets very difficult very fast? Ahahahah
How the heck is there this much content made in four days?? This is really good, could absolutely see playing through a more polished-up version of this with a few more mechanics for hours on end. Really great, simple, easy-to-understand puzzle game that's very fun to get through the entirety of.
Thank you so much! We definitely plan on updating this when the Jam is finished, how would you polish this even more? Consider joining our Discord to keep in touch with us!
If it were up to me, then extra animations (namely making the block smoothly accelerate to max speed, then flatten out a bit before coming back to full size upon hitting the wall), some particles and slight screen shake when you hit the wall that increase when you have bigger blocks, and a few more sound effects, just to make the base gameplay even more satisfying!
Very cool game. Would have preferred more + and - tiles. also a level select screen to backtrack levels
Thanks a lot! There is a level selection screen, press backspace to return to it. How many levels did you play? Because after 9 basically all of the levels have +/-
ah i was trying to esc for level selection. And i played 7 levels i think so that'll explain it 😅
yeah it was said in the tutorial that backspace is also for exiting, esc otherwise makes you also exit from the fullscreen, so we removed it
Very good Puzzle game the music , sound effects are great ! vell polished no bugs or glitches
Very good Puzzle game the music , sound effects are great ! vell polished no bugs or glitches
Thank you so much!
Was stuck for a bit with this one. Very well thought puzzle concept. Incredible game!
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it
Feels like a complete game, good job! Some death animation would be nice other than that you balanced it pretty well never needed a tutorial to understand what I had to do when new types appeared. Well done!
Thank you so much! We never thought about a death animation, as it is not really an action game and you should think ahead instead of dying by accident, but I guess we could add one for sure!
Had a lot of fun playing this on stream! It was so satisfying to finally work out each of the puzzles. Ended up getting stuck on one about halfway through but I would happily have kept trying to beat it all night haha. Altogether very solid puzzle game. It made me think but wasn't frustrating. Excellent work!
Thank you so much! Really enjoyed watching you figure out the puzzles, especially in those "eureka" moments
At the beginning I was like well the solution is obvious, there's only one way to go that'll get me anywhere. And then there were multiple options and my brain went oh no :) Designing levels for this game must've been hard. We made a more traditional puzzle game and I still spent hours on some of them.
Thanks a lot for trying out our game! Yeah the first ones are meant as introductory ones, tutorials, then the challenge begins lol
Great game ! I had fun and forgot that i was playing for too long hahaha however you really did a great job ! Well done :)
Thank you so much! This is probably the best comment I could have received! I miss those days when I was a kid and time flew by without me even noticing, I research that same feeling in any game, and for my game to have gifted some time with an empty mind truly means the world to me!
Wow, this is a REALLY GOOD game. The puzzle mechanics are taught well to the player, and the stars are lovely. The difficulty felt very well adjusted. The level design is immaculate. I couldn't possibly comment on how to make it better, or even make a fraction of it myself.
I'm retrying levels, enjoying mechanics, trying to up my best move count. So far, I've only cracked the first 12 levels, but it's been really enjoyable, and I'm trying to maintain a 3-star streak. And to think there are a hundred or so?
You mentioned this is your first game jam entry ever. Well, this is incredible work. You have a great start, and I think you should keep the momentum up. All the best!
Thank you so so much! I am so honored to hear all of this! Really I don't know what else to say!
There are 45 levels, 5 screens, wish we could do more but didn't want the game to be too long, as there is a bit of a surprise at the end which is worth checking out, and I didn't wnat to lock it under a lot of difficult puzzles. Maybe 45 is already too much ahahahah but I like it being difficult to get to the end, feels more rewarding once you finally do. Consider joining our Discord so that we can keep in touch
Really good game with some satisfying puzzles! You had me retrying every level to make sure I got the highest rating!
That's definitely the goal! How har did you get?
Finished about 15 levels I think before I decided to stop and try out some other games. I'll probably come back to this one again though! Try out my entry btw if you want some chill puzzles to solve as well :)
Amazing 15 levels in one sitting is definitely a lot! You are pretty good at this! will definitely try yours as well
Loved your game ! Spent a lot of times getting all the stars, really good use of the theme.
If I had to find something to improve on it would probably be the visuals, perhaps a cleaner background, a bit more detail or shades of grey. This would give a good contrast, but without being harsh. 5/5/3 for me ! :)
Amazing! Thank you so much for the feedback! I definitely agree that our art department is the one which is lacking the most, we should probably search for more artists!
So good that it feels like it took more than 4 days XD! I love puzzles. If you have time after I recommend to expend the game after the jam and to publish it to the play store with mobile support(swiping to move)! Hope to see you in GMTK 2025!
Thank you so much! It already kinda works on mobile as well (on webGL it works just fine) while on the playstore it seems a bit buggy but still playable, you could join our Discord and become an alpha tester! We are definitely going to expand on this, thank you so much for the kind words!
you have a discord but the link doesn't seems to work? I would LOVE to!
Awesome game for a first timer. level design is great but level difficulty scaling is off the chart and weird at times. SFX are awesome. BGM is also great. over all awesome job on working on the details and as your first game jam. WE enter into the Game Dev Hell Togetha
Awesome game for a first timer. level design is great but level difficulty scaling is off the chart and weird at times. SFX are awesome. BGM is also great. over all awesome job on working on the details and as your first game jam. WE enter into the Game Dev Hell Togetha
Thank you so much! Where exactly did you find it weird in the difficulty scaling?
Once you get the first level done the next 4 get very easy. and then another level that's difficult but has the same core level mechanic as the first level.
there is a non linear difficulty scaling, the first 6 levels are basically tutorials, after that they are mostly all challenge levels, the thing with puzzle games is that difficulty is very subjective, for someone an intuition may be obvious for others impossible
Fair Enough
Firstly, you did a bang up job for your first time - welcome to the club! There's no going back from here, you have now invited a few sleepless all-nighter weekends into your annual schedule to stay. Secondly, this was a thoroughly enjoyable game with beautifully crafted levels. That said, I did get stuck on a level for a long time, so would probably suggest a slight levelling of the difficulty curve, although that might just be me. Would love to see this as a fully-fledged game! A lot of love and attention to detail went into your entry and it shows! Well done, indeed :)
Thank you so much for the kind words! I am gladly accepting entering the game jam club ahahahah I always wanted to develop games, and finally me and my team decided to take things more seriously. On which level did you get stuck? So I can better look at the difficulty progression (for me it is very difficult to understand how difficult the level is, has I know the solution before hand, that is probably the biggest issue in balancing a puzzle game)
The scaling really makes a difference in this game! And I love the fact I can clearly see where i should reach! great job!
Thank you so much for the kind words!