Just finished testing the game! :)
Various on-the-fly comments:
- Ah, I see the game really switches the screen resolution (first one that does it to me !).
- Some texts overflow a bit out of the screen (such as what I infer is ‘progress’ in the instructions).
- You even included a level selection screen, nice! :) I think the menu is nicely detailed, especially the instructions.
- I think it is a bit harder to get the configuration of the die in top-view 2D instead of (pseudo-)3D, although the die net/pattern is a great help. Actually, I had thought (and tested!) putting such a pattern in my own game, and preferred the alternative pseudo-3D display of a cube (my version — which is a bit rough and could be enhanced — can be seen in the screen captures, if you wish to see what I am thinking of).
- I think the red square showing what the next top side will be is a great addition. For the record, Marimbla goes out of its way to give the player the projections of the die according to all movement possibilities; your idea is also useful.
- Ironically, the mouse control you decided on would help those people that have trouble getting used to keyboard controls in (pseudo-)3D perspective, but keyboard controls would have been totally fine in such top-view 2D. XD Nothing serious, I just got accustomed to keyboard controls. :)
- Great that you put the main gameplay sounds, too (movement + defeat + victory). It helps understanding what happens.
- Oh, because of the ending drawing, I thought you needed to have a 3, but you don’t! Maybe change the ending drawing so that there is no possible confusion?
- Very innovative: most puzzle games I saw were asking for a specific value to be reached for some tiles, but yours asks for broader conditions! :)
- The drawings are intuitive (value + comparison operator).
- I am solving the levels on semi-intuitions. Relatively often, you can guess that you will have to roll on a 2x2 zone to get the right die configuration. (Guess what? The same is true in my game. ;))
- Level VII (with conditions =4, <3, =5) gave me some trouble! Probably because of more possibilities for rolling the die on the initial 3x3 square area. I had to think more of how to get a correct state for passing the first conditional tile, although I still thought ahead on a semi-intuition instead of careful planning.
- I realize this was the last one! XD So, the difficulty progression seems fair. :)
- Technical note: quitting the game, I see everything went back to normal resolution-wise (including the desktop icons); I was afraid there would be a mess, as this sometimes happens with ‘true’ fullscreen. ;)
Takeaway: this was a nicely presented puzzle game, where I see the main idea and innovation is to use comparative conditions. The levels were also relatively difficult if you try to solve them legitimately/fairly, I think. Even through intuition / brute force, it was not that obvious.
Sorry you had this technical problem… <:( Since the voting is over, I give you what I think I would have chosen, for feedback purposes (so you can try re-computing the final result counting it!):
Enjoyment: 4 / 5 (the level design was fair to good; not 5 because maybe more variety or a way to have the player not use brute force easily but still be able to solve would have made it even more pleasant)
Creativity: 4 / 5 (because: clever core mechanic for the tile conditions, although several entries also thought of the classic rolling die with printed tiles; not 5 because of this latter classic aspect)
Presentation: 4 / 5 (the tiles are simple, but you managed to take care of a clearer UI related to how the die moves, the menu with instructions and level selection is nice, the sounds are functional, the tiles are functional including using an implicit colour code; not 5 because some solo entries were prettier — animation, colours… I am thinking of the beautiful diSe)
I realize these are (very) good marks, especially considering you were alone in doing this and this is your very first game! :) And this is yet a different take on die puzzle games; all I saw were different. (DOS, mindDie, Marimbla, Face Value, diSe, very good game, and mine.)
Great job, it was a totally worthy entry. :)