It looks neat but I have no clue what’s going on. I did the first few “puzzles” by just drawing a circle every time. I have no understanding of “rules” after doing five or so of them nor a reason to keep doing them, meanwhile the next puzzles already don’t seem to be solvable in the same way but I feel no drive to do them. A more dedicated introduction could improve this greatly.
Viewing post in ⬢ World of Mold: The Chalice of Illusion ⬢ jam comments
These starting hexes are there to familiarize the player with the interface and then later help isolate and exclude a few things that don't work when returned to. It's not really about whether they resolve, but rather how. The entirety of this demo is tutorial content. They are all solved in pretty much the same way. It's hard to know what you even mean by "solvable in the same way" though, and perhaps looking at their resolution as a solution could be argued not to be the right mindset to have for this game. I suppose this isn't as clear with how unfinished the tutorial is, but I guess even then you wouldn't see it anyway if you weren't interested by that point? I can look into your concerns if they are more specific.
What do you mean by "dedicated introduction"? The soul of the game is that of a subtle hostility, so it is tricky to make it interesting straight away without making it feel like it's rolling out a red carpet for the player.
I mean no offense but I’m not sure I understood half of what you said, so I’ll try to answer the question instead.
I understand that the game wants to have a layer of mystery over its mechanics that you simply intuit as you work your way through these first puzzles, but it needs to do something so that it actually clicks in. Doing the same thing five times and then hitting a brick wall is not exactly what I’d envision. By dedicated introduction I mean having a narrative/map progression clearly unlock or progress after you do a few of them. I see a lot of things around this first area but I cannot figure or do much with most of them, and the things I could solve led to nothing. I need something to grab onto so I can derive some meaning from my actions.
I hope this clears it up a bit.