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JMS4 years ago(+1)

I liked the concept and the puzzles were nice.

I couldn't understand what the voice was saying. I wasn't quite able to pick up on what the voice was saying due to how low volume and distorted it is. But that's just me, who always turns subtitles on, and I don't blame you for not adding subtitles in a jam game! I just think that I probably missed out on some interesting story bits (maybe even hints) because of it.

I think that the tutorial could have been better explained: I didn't know you could pick up objects and so spent a lot of time on the second (I think) puzzle, where you have to do it for the first time. Maybe a prompt could come up whenever you face one of the cubes in grabbing distance to tell you "Press E to Hold"! A lot of games do that and it gets the job done, that way you wouldn't even have to do it in the tutorial!

In one of the levels I spawned outside of the play area. Was this intentional? I had to enter it again and then solve the puzzle to exit it... it was a bit strange willingly entering an area I will need to escape afterwards. I would either make the player spawn inside of the play area or maybe trick the player into wanting to go in. Maybe a big bright button and a sign saying "You win if you push this button" or something lol. But maybe the voice acting has more context that I wasn't able to understand.

Overall I enjoyed it. Well done!

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Oggal4 years ago(+1)

I had my friend who was supplying the audio add a reverb to give the feel of it being played in the large open field(Then learned about unity reverb zones as I was working on the project), between that and having to record quietly at night due to limited availability with the jam lead to using what I had rather than getting new audio. There's some small story hints but nothing major for gameplay. 

Controls and communicating them to the player is something I really have noticed I fell short on. I modeled the control layout after source games such as Half-Life2 and Portal and hoped that players would be previously familiar with such. This was a failure of judgment on my part and I'm going to have it corrected in future versions. Prompting the player is the plan right now, but I do want to avoid prompting for every cube and so I'm planning on doing more simple puzzles only really involving moving cubes. I hope prompting here will give players a chance to learn control with out having basic gameplay waved in their face the whole game.

The last area I start the player outside a door way that leads into the play area. Design-wise there wasn't any reasoning to it. Really it is just where I had started the player as I was testing the puzzles. I never moved the player when building the level and when having a friend test it I didn't have issues with players wondering off so I just hoped that most players would do the same and I could cut corners there for the jam.


Thank you for your feed back and sorry I left such a long reply, I get really into talking about the process that went into this. I enjoyed creating the whole project so much! I'm working on a patch for after the jam and thinking about doing a postmortem on the build submitted here.

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JMS4 years ago(+1)
I modeled the control layout after source games such as Half-Life2 and Portal and hoped that players would be previously familiar with such. This was a failure of judgment on my part and I'm going to have it corrected in future versions. 

Well, not entirely. I have played at least both Portals, so the control scheme wasn't weird. But for some reason I thought you weren't able to pick up the boxes! I think part of it is that the first puzzle is completely doable without picking the box up, just using the time rewind; in fact, if memory serves it's the easiest way to solve it. I think I tried picking it up but failed due to some bug, which made me believe you weren't able to pick it up.

Another thing that may have contributed is that the boxes look super heavy, like just a solid block of metal. There seemed to be no way that a normal person would be able to pick it up. I never played Half-Life, but in Portal the companion cubes (despite also being blocks of metal) have this sort of lightweight look to them, so it's not too surprising that you can pick them up (even if the character didn't have a specialized tool to pick them up, I feel that if I walked up to a companion cube I would be able to pick it up effortlessly). Your cube looks super dense, so I just assumed that the player would have to find ways to solve the puzzles without picking up the cube. 

Maybe it was also a mistake on my part! I only saw one other comment about picking up cubes and it seems like a different problem, so it doesn't seem like a widespread issue. Don't worry about the long reply, I liked reading it, I really enjoy it when a dev takes the time to talk about the process of designing and creating the game. Good luck getting those final ratings!

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Oggal4 years ago(+1)

The cubes all in all have a number of small issues that really added up here. I have loved the conversation and the part about the boxes looking heavy is excellent feedback and guidance! I was never super happy with the look of them but called it good enough for the jam. I now, thanks to your input, have an idea of how I want to redesign them to look more light and able to be grabbed! I still intend to get some control prompts as I was wrong to assume most people have played Portal, but I now also have a plan for the new visuals on my cubes! Thank you so much again for the feedback!

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