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Water Jug Puzzle's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of the Limitation | #79 | 2.055 | 2.600 |
| Concept | #80 | 2.372 | 3.000 |
| Enjoyment | #82 | 1.581 | 2.000 |
| Overall | #82 | 1.818 | 2.300 |
| Presentation | #85 | 1.265 | 1.600 |
Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Team members
lemitch (itch.io username)
Software used
HTML and Phaser 3 (frontend and programming); VS Code (IDE); ChatGPT and Github Copilot (for template generation and code assistant)
Use of the limitation
In the game, one has to partition water - the sole resource - among jugs (the water jug puzzle)
Cookies eaten
None
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Comments
Brings me back to Professor Layton :) Would love to see how this game could introduce variations from level to level on the original puzzle idea
Glad that the game's evoking good game memories for you!
That's something worth thinking about and implementing. Right now I'm developing better graphics for the game: due to the tight jam deadline, I had to put out what I had. Expect that and the other suggestions you guys have been making!
Thanks for the feedback!
It's a fun concept and I enjoyed the first level, logic puzzles are fun. There's some issues with the menus though, and I'm pretty sure level 2 is impossible because it needs 5 in one of the jugs and 6 in another, which totals to 11. But you only have 9.
Oh, glad that you enjoyed the first level!
Yeah the deadline was very close when I had to set the objectives of each level, so I had to put something together quickly. Don't worry: now the jam's over, I can more thoroughly create the level objectives.
Thanks for the feedback!
This game seems to have some bugs with the level loading which makes this a little bit frustrating to play, and I think for people who don’t know how to solve the puzzle the time limit is a little bit punishing. With that being said there is definitely room for improvement and this could be the base logic to a nice puzzle game.
Can you further describe the bug with the level loading? This'd help with debugging.
Yeah that's fair. Now that the time pressure of the jam is over, I can better balance out the difficulty of the levels. Implementing a hint functionality would help.
Thanks for your feedback!
I am a big fan of logic puzzles, so I actually realy like the types of puzzles, and this variant adds additional limitations that are normally missing. There's no dumping water, or filling the vessels to the top. The pause mechanic (you could call it a thinking mechanic) is actually really central to this, and could have used a dedicated icon. Unfortunately there's a problem. Unless I'm missing something in the way this works, it seems very much like every puzzle besides the very first is impossible.
You see, since this version has no way to dump or add water, the total water volume in the puzzle has to equal the water volume in the goal. Also since you're either emptying or filling a jug with your last pour, one of the goals has to be entirely empty or entirely full. That doesn't necessarially mean having those properties makes it solvable, but it definitely isn't solveable without one of those properties.
Given that it seems like each pot has a specific goal volume, it would be nice to have those goal values graphically next to, or part of the buttons. (Ex: 2/ 5 - Goal 4). I'm a big fan of the concept in that I like these sorts of puzzles, and this interpretaion works alright for me. We have a set volume, and the game keeps track of the contents as we work. The timer... well I suppose it prevents endless random shuffling, and with the pause mechanic it works well. You could also choose a maximum move count, or even just give a clear rating based on the moves left. (Keeping track of cleared puzzles / ranks would be nice in theory if you continued this.)
Let me know if I missed something! The first puzzle works perfectly,
Indeed the close deadline of the jam prevented me from balancing the levels' difficulty; sorry about that. Will definitely engage in that.
Yes your goal value idea is good, and your max move count is excellent; will definitely incorporate them. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if the pause mechanic actually defeats the point of the timer: I put the latter there to add an extra challenge to make the player think quickly, but all that can be annulled with a press of the key F (pause button). But your comments about pausing's utility are interesting. What do you think about this?
Thanks for your detailed feedback!
Well, a max move count would prevent spamming to win, so you could eliminate pause and give a more generous timer. As it is, for me anyway, the timer isn't nearly enough time to think through the puzzles! There is another problem then - if I recall correctly, the puzzles are static and you can retry them any time. In theory you could think about them forever, then try them again after failing. One way to approch this is to make the time requiremeent soft - give a set amount of score for the puzzle, that counts down to 0 as time passes. When it hits 0, you just don't score any points for that puzzle. Sort of similar to the time pressure system used in escape simulator.
Hm that 'soft' time requirement's a good idea! Will definitely implement.
In fact would you want to receive pre-final-release builds of the games for your testing and feedback? I have a feeling your insights would be wonderful! Thanks