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A jam submission

Amongst the StarsView game page

Small Rpg Maker puzzle game
Submitted by LunaSkyePA — 24 days, 8 hours before the deadline
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Amongst the Stars's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fan Favorite#622.8332.833

Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

(+1)

Hi there! Here's a video of me playing through this entry, and I'm going to release my full opinions of each after the results for the first round have been published. Until then I won't let on my judging score or overall review, but you can still watch my playthrough if you'd like! Cheers. :)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1106561791

Developer

Thank you for playing through, another person falls victim to the third puzzle haha. Sorry for the devlog-update thing, I can't actually update the game file until the judging period is over unfortunately. Hope you enjoyed what you did play, though! I'll definitely be working on honing that type of third puzzle to be generally less frustrating or at least easier to work with.

(1 edit) (+1)

No worries! Here is my full review, which I am giving to each game now that Round 1 is over :)

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AMONGST THE STARS - A REVIEW
Dear developer! Thank you for making this game :) Here's my disclaimer I'm placing before all my reviews - I appreciate all games, and I consider every creative work a gift from the artist to the audience. The very fact that you made something is worth celebrating! Being a judge of this game, as was stipulated in the rules, I had to play at least up to the first existing hour of every entry and judge the game on that alone - no more than that! If any gamebreaking bugs were found, the game would be disqualified, and I was to judge the game based on the submitted entry by the deadline - without any additional notes, haha! Here is my overall impressions of the game. Again - thanks for creating it! I appreciate every entry, that you gave it your all, and I encourage you to do what you love - if that means making more games, then please do so! Don't let my (admittedly sometimes too brutal) feedback deter you from making future games - I really want you to succeed! Much love, Cash <3

THE STORY - BACKGROUND TO THIS THING!
When Seren tells Lelah that they wish to reach the stars and be taken "back here when we grow old" (referring to a ostensibly lush outdoor region with trees and grass), as soon as they say this, mid-sentence, their entire world disappears. Or rather, it is transformed into a desolate wasteland, for Lelah at least. Seren is nowhere to be seen. We assume the role of Lelah, traversing a tower of puzzles that block you from progressing unless you solve them.

LET'S TALK ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF THE GAME...
To give credit, this is a nice idea for a game. A game where the puzzles would start off easy and then get more difficult as you progress, would be a nice idea for a game. I very much enjoy a really good puzzle game, and riddles are really cool - I enjoy them very much. However, if your puzzle game consists of a linear set of riddles that stop you from progressing entirely unless you solve them - there better be some form of hints or clues that the game gives the player if they're getting stuck!

LET'S TALK ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE GAME... HEHE :)
Here, I stumbled through the first floor, which seemed to consist of four switches and four people that you could face in different directions. Sure, it kind of broke immersion that there's just suddenly four people you can place in different directions (it would have been nice to have some sort of story justification for this!) but then next hour or so consisted of me struggling to process what the first riddle meant by its sentences. They were deliberately cryptic, which is fantastic for a puzzle! But even now, as I'm writing this article, I'm not sure whether the solution that I happened upon was arrived upon the correct way, or if I just chanced upon it by the seemingly endless ways that I could have interpreted the first puzzle.

There were lines saying "the old man faces towards that which no one else does", which I assumed would mean that they face a direction that no other character is facing. There were some good clues, like the woman with the hat "tolerating the engineer", which meant that perhaps she faced him. However, the lines about the "old man and engineer going way back" and "hat woman looking forward to the future and loathing the past" and "blond woman being a stranger" led to me doing a lot of different options for around 20 minutes until I came upon the solution.

Now sure, this could be a great test to see if someone is good at interpreting poetic statements the way the developer intended.

Was it fun? Not entirely! I had a very difficult time doing this XD

But that is merely the design of the game. The riddle on floor 2 was solved in 3 minutes flat. Very very easy!

OOPS! HAVING TROUBLE ON THE 3RD FLOOR NOW! :D *SWEATING, SMILE AND WAVE BOYYYS*
However, the riddle on the third floor took me the rest of the hour that had been allocated to me to judge the game based on, and this made me almost feel as if I was banging my head against a wooden block! XD I had quite a difficult time interpreting, for example, the graphics of the "scales" that the objects were meant to sit on. I had Notepad++ open, doing algebra and ending up with weights that were, like, 8.3333333333333 recurring! It was then that someone in chat informed me that on the gamepage, the developer had said something to the effect that there was incorrect information displayed in-game about weights of certain objects, or numbers of them - I'm not sure, I haven't checked. But I proceeded to ignore this, because the judging process required me to judge the game based on what was submitted by the deadline, instead of additional notes added on the gamepage - the game was to speak for itself!

Needless to say, that given the incorrect information on a puzzle (if I may presume the chat member was telling the truth) - it was going to be impossible to solve! However, I stayed for the full duration of the hour and pushed through despite knowing that perhaps my quest was fruitless.

For example, there were 3 silver on the left of a cross, and 8 gold bars on the right. But it didn't look like a scale! It just looked like gold bars on the floor. I didn't even know if the silver was the scale, or if the distance from the fulcrum mattered with regard to force? Would a scale be made of silver or gold, and would this represent it? I was very very confused why they were on the ground. I assume this is because the developer was using full RTP, but if they were, then my mind was confused by the mixed messages, and I couldn't reconcile it! lol.

SO WHAT WAS YOUR OVERALL IMPRESSION, CASH?

Glad ya asked! This game had a really cool concept, but in the end, became very frustrating due to the nature of agonising over riddles for 20-40 minutes at a time, apparently missing vital information, and also the graphics not representing things very well, in my opinion. My overall experience was that by the end, I just wanted it to be over XD

The positive lesson I would take from this is to please, if you're going to have riddles or puzzles - try testing them out with a group of friends to see if they're fun! Oftentimes us as developers will make something very CLEVER and AWESOME in our eyes, only that when we test it out, it's not obvious at all! It's also a good idea in general to slowly ramp things up over time with regards to difficulty. Also, I would take some time to pursue maybe some custom resources and to improve mapping to better reflect the objects within. But this game would be much better if it were a series of easier, more frequent puzzles, as opposed to 3 really hard ones ending with a... maybe unsolveable one? :D
---------
Thank you for making this game - every game is a gift <3

Submitted(+1)

Is it bad that I was expecting an among us fangame?

very cool tho

Developer

Haha my friend already made this joke, you're not the only one. Thanks for the compliment ^-^

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Unlike GenRex, I honestly found the first puzzle quite easy! It wasn't kidding when it said to ignore information that wasn't relevant because it would try to confuse you. The second one wasn't bad either.

The third one I couldn't do, but it's not because of anything I did wrong: first of all, I think it's supposed to say the left side weighs 210 lbs, not 120. 120 would mean each silver weighs 40 lbs, but they actually weigh 70. I also think you have an error in your initial value for the left side; the change variables command in the event sets it to 21, but I think it was supposed to be 210. I'm not actually sure it's possible to equalise the scales with things the way they are.

It looks like you may have changed the value of a silver partway through, as having a value of 7 *does* line up with the clue for a harp (1 silver + 3 books). But in that case a book becomes 1.7 lbs rather than 8.

Not a bad little set of puzzles, though! Definitely got me thinking.

Developer

Oh haha is a bar of silver 70? When designing this I decided to make the weight of the objects randomly just because it would end up being a puzzle you could just google if you had the answers to each weight. I'll let you in on a little secret-the 21 is representative of the weight of the silver in a measurement of weight different to lbs-something you can find out as you do the puzzle. That 'ignore irrelevant information' line coming into play again haha. Thank you for playing and commenting!

Submitted (1 edit)

If it's meant to be 7 then the line about the left-hand side weighing 120 lbs doesn't work, and a book is described as weighing 1/10 of a silver bar plus a feather, so that wouldn't work either. ^_^

Developer

Yeah, I realized this last night and corrected it-posted the fixed version of the puzzle in a devlog since I can't update the files until the jam is over

Submitted

Oh, is the part about the left scale weighing 120 lbs just another one of those useless pieces of information that isn't relevant to the puzzle?

Developer

Yeah haha. You could theoretically use the pounds to calculate the answer but it overcomplicates the puzzle.

Submitted

In that case I'd consider rewording the rock clue as well, because that makes it sound like the "weight of the two scales" is incorporating that 120 lbs into the calculation.

(+1)

My head hurts from these puzzles(especially the third one) but they were a grand old time, and the story was interesting as well!

Submitted(+1)

I am stupid and cannot solve the first puzzle. You have bested me as I cannot figure out what direction the blonde woman looks at with the cryptic hint. 5/5 Stars. Keep up with the 200 IQ puzzles, someday you'll be the best puzzle maker. For real feedback, I would like to see some original work such as drawn characters or any of the sort. Overall, I really laughed at myself for not being able to solve the first puzzle. 

Keep on creating, friend. (3/5 Stars)