Very well thought out game! The graphics look amazing, both the retro green-on-black CRT monitor vibes and the handwritten notes (with the hand drawn memes in there as a bonus).
I am not quite sure that it is possible to deduce what the branching nodes are branching on. Usually I just assumed it would go a specific way, find out what the input would be for the encoded answer and try that. Perhaps it is meant that if that way gives you an input that is not a word then you should assume it will go the other way? I am curious if I am missing something here.
The only criticism I can find is that the arrow keys work for component selection, but not on the map or in the main menu, so if that is all I can find that means it is a very polished game!
Well done !
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The branching is the only unknown part of the encoder, so they’re there to make things less obvious.
There are several ways to deal with them:
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Unlock the branching info upgrade and use tab to toggle the terminal; you’ll see the conditions list (it doesn’t reveal the exact condition, but rather its kind, like “contains_letter”).
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Usually, a condition is either simple or too hard to be guessed intentionally. Every level should be beatable with backtracking the result even if you don’t know the branching; you would need to compute the parallel branches simultaneously though. If it’s hard, like fnv_hash_even, then you just can’t reliably infer it.
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Some elements apply a transformation that excludes the other transformation, so it should be possible to reduce the number of branches you need to calculate (e.g. 1 instead of 3).
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Some levels form an algorithm like a switch or a binary search tree. If you understand the algorithm, you usually don’t even need to follow the algorithm, just apply the direct transformation (so instead of doing N steps, do 1 or 2).
I haven’t found a way to make conditions better. Maybe an icon could make them more understandable, so branching info upgrade is not needed for that. I wasn’t sure if it would make the game more fun to play. I still don’t have the answer. :D