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Hello there, I uhh yes feedback! woo! Steam? maybe? idk I'm writing this intro before looking at the game. Also I'll be extra harsh because of the Steam thing, the people are wild out there it's insane!!

Gonna start with screenshots: It's hard to tell who the main character or characters are? I think it's the scientist looking guys? But then there's multiple of them? idk... Graphically the screenshots do look nice although the environments don't have that much variance in them, indicating that this will be quite short (from a Steam shopper's POV on a Steam game). (after playing the game: please choose screenshots with different environments because YOU ALREADY HAVE THEM LMAO)

Alright let's start playing...

I like the "intro", it's a nice way to introduce game mechanics. The sound design was also pretty good, music is bangin'. 2nd level is already giving me trouble because of these controls. I don't understand why I can't slow down since trying to go the opposite direction seems to keep accelerating me weirdly. Somehow the 3rd level was easier, so I'd say there's definitely stuff to tweak in terms of difficulty progression. (I managed to understand how it works in the later levels which gave more room to move around in. Would definitely make the 2nd level a lot larger in size!)

So far the mechanics has been easy enough to understand, let's keep going.

I don't like the sudden camera changes in lvl 8? 9? idk I lost count and there's no UI that would tell me. I would make these more dynamic by slowly moving the camera towards the player once they start reaching that new area, and keeping it focused on the player while reaching the new area, then finally moving to the intended position. Just a bit cleaner and the player won't get as disoriented.


Would definitely like to see some UI showing the level count and maybe a unique name for each level. It's the sort of thing most puzzle games have. 

Also there's a mix of elevator and door exits for levels. I feel like the elevators should be open and have a sign above them that say "EXIT". (in later levels the elevator was open? so there's some inconsistencies here, shouldn't be that hard to fix I'd assume)

So there's definitely more platforming than puzzles. The puzzles being very easy but I'd rather have easy puzzles than hard ones and get stuck. The Steam audience would probably appreciate more harder puzzles tho and less platforming, otherwise I'd consider this closer to the platformer genre than the puzzle one. I don't really play that many puzzle/puzzle platformers but I'd recommend looking into Mind Over Magnet's devlogs/game design videos since those seem to be very valuable for puzzle platformers.

(this is a playlist, would recommend watching from the linked video

)

Overall, it's a solid, bit too easy puzzle platformer with great graphics and sound design! Another game without many design flaws other than difficulty.

(1 edit) (+2)

Thanks for the review lol- I agree with a lot of your takes, some of the choices here were made because of the gamejam format like the easiness (I value people finishing the game a Lot so its something of a prototype of mechanics that have been put together rather than true puzzles- Id say the last level before the ending is the only true "Puzzle" in the game) so I agree that the general vibe would change for a full release. I agree that some puzzles order isnt perfect wrt difficulty, Im already thinking a bit about things that I would improve and cut out if this was a "first chapter" of a bigger game.. in an ideal world I think a full version of this game would start again from the beginning since this is like a condensed mechanics showcase but I know Lyoko would kill me if I made him start again so we'll see on that :) The devlog series by GMTK looks fun so Ill check it out!