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loppio150 days ago (1 edit)

the isometric visuals and puzzle style definitely stand out but i felt there was a lot holding it back from actually feeling fun for me. i like puzzles and i like the idea of this but the execution on it felt a bit clunky and a little unintuitive. granted, i skipped past most of the instructions at the start but that much text on screen all at once isn't the most appealing to read and i like when mechanics feel right enough that they're easy to pick up on without having to read a bunch of text.

making it faster would've helped a lot, waiting felt tedious and it'd let someone like me trial and error the mechanics much faster too. even if you were a genius you'd have to play the level at least once to preview the other vehicles coming in so, a skip or speed up button? i didn't understand the difference between using the turn signs and just using the green arrows to making connor turn but i did only play two levels. that one truck in the second level i played just stopping by itself was really confusing lol it felt like it wasn't supposed to be doing that, so some sort of visual indication of that being intentional (is it dropping off something? why did it stop?) would help with stuff like that.

also felt like you could lean into the cycling theming more with the objects you could place, design them all after road signage or something and it'd feel a lot more special, like a stop or give way sign instead of a stopwatch, and from there you could get even more creative with mechanics inspire by other signs. sometimes the ui felt a bit awkward, i'd personally make the on screen ui bigger and make the play button even bigger than the others, to give it a sense of hierarchy. also would've been funny to see connor's model kinda fall to the floor or something lol, a bit more visual oomph to losing.

i understand the time constraints of the jam though, what you managed to create feels like a lot! i'm just very particular but the idea for this jam is pretty cool. could come back to this if it feels faster so i could see more of the levels.

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tatahizo147 days ago(+1)

Thanks for playing, and for your feedback! I appreciate you taking the time to give such a detailed review.

I originally wanted to make the tutorial more interactive, introducing the different instructions across a number of levels and with an animation of each one in action. In the end there wasn't time for that but I wanted to at least have something in place, I agree though that it could definitely be improved over the current wall of text! I think that would help clear up confusion over the different instructions that you encountered as well.

The speed has come up a few times and is something I'd like to address once the jam is over!

My idea for the second puzzle was as an introduction to the "wait" command, the truck was intended to stop by itself and the player was meant to work around it with those. I used a sprite of a garbage truck as I thought that would give some indication as to why it was stopping, an animation of people getting out could have been a nice touch though!

The UI buttons could certainly have been a bit bigger, I was trying to balance the size to have readability while also not hiding too much of the game screen itself. Maybe I'll try to adjust the layout, adding the UI to a panel so it isn't covering the map itself. I thought the positioning of the buttons would be enough to give a feeling of the intended flow to the player, but adjusting the relative sizes is something I'll consider too!

A falling over animation for the cyclist would have been good, but I'd already spent a fair amount of time making the sprite and the cycling/idle animations. As a solo dev, I had to balance it with the actual implementation of the mechanics and level creation, so adding more animations to the cyclist wasn't as high on the priority list as making sure there was something to play, but it's definitely something I'll consider adding if I update this more in the future!

Thanks again for all your feedback!

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