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(1 edit) (+3)

I was having fun up until red doors were introduced. Not because the red doors weren't fun or anything, but aside from the tutorial, it didn't seem like they were used at all? Like, I literally never needed the pieces in the giant level or the other one with a red door after that. Also, throughout the whole thing, I spent way too much time pushing boxes. It makes me sad, since there seemed to be many more ways to interact with the pieces that weren't explored. So, I guess my suggestions would be:


- Chill on the boxes. Heck, maybe even remove them altogether. As it is now, it feels more like Box Genocide Simulator than Key Forging Puzzle Game.


- Reduce level size. A lot. That should help prevent some of the tedium that came with the larger levels, ESPECIALLY the one with 5 red doors. (Seriously, why did that exist?)

-Perhaps along with that, remove a stage or two of the iron being hot to accommodate the smaller level size?


- Try to focus the levels on funny interactions, like the last level before the red doors (although it seems weird to me that that one had two at once?)


I know this is really critical, but I really do like the idea, and as I said at the start, I was having fun, despite the excessive box murder. I do hope you'll come back to this and revise the levels at some point!

(+2)

I've been worried about a lot of your feedback for a while, particularly the box spam- I used it during the jam because it's a quick way to make puzzles that feign actual difficulty, and it managed to fool a couple people then, but now that I have more levels and time to work on it people are starting to catch on XD.

I'll probably end up phasing out crates altogether by the end of Day 2, but I'm keeping them around in the earlier levels, both to introduce newcomers to block-pushing games and to strengthen the theme of a cluttered workspace run by a grumpy master who is too experienced and enlightened to bother with material matters like tidying up. With more time I'll be able to tighten up the rooms and practice using the key mechanics more - the level you mentioned at the end of Day 1 was my favorite to design and definitely my best puzzle because it focused on keys and not crates.

Red doors were just completed, so I haven't come up with a lot of good puzzle concepts yet, but I'll definitely go a lot more in-depth with them before moving on to my plans for Day 3 and Day 4. The 5 door level was designed as a tutorial for the dungeon locks (demonstrating how they can allow you to move fragments without permanently affixing them to your handle) and has some interesting pit puzzles, but it can absolutely be made way smaller and less painful to push through.

Not reducing the weld cooldown- in fact I've been considering increasing it to make certain welds possible, but reducing it even by one turn breaks almost all my puzzles as is. Even with smaller levels I don't think it will be necessary.

Thank you for your very detailed criticism and advice! This may be the longest reply I've received to date and will help me a lot with the next few updates.

(+2)

I'm glad I can help! Regarding the weld cooldown, yeah there was a reason I put "perhaps" there.

I think the main problem with the 5-door level (aside from how incredibly tedious it is) is that it just feels like 5 separate normal puzzles, probably catalyzed to some extent by the fact that having multiple yellow doors in one level has only one level associated with it, if I remember correctly.

If you intend for the later levels to have no boxes, I would think it'd make more sense to have useless key parts scattered around than wooden boxes; maybe roundish chunks of metal, idk.

Unrelated, but maybe the red doors should have something to visually distinguish them from the yellow doors other than color?  I'm not exactly sure how hard colorblindness would make this game right now, but it couldn't hurt.