I watched your VOD and you did a great job! You understood the mechanics immediately. Even when you got stuck at the items, you asked Dedu for help, without hesitation. You also solved the clock riddle in one go (a few people struggled with it) and you got that the SOS was in Morse code. I'm very pleased with how you perceived the game and your reaction to it. Thank you for streaming!
Honestly, when I asked Dedu for help it was an accident. That said, it likely helps that I've played a lot of of number puzzles like this. Picross (though some call it nonogram), sudoku (and killer sudoku which is way harder) and kakuro are among my favourite puzzle games. My experience with those games helps a lot. I also think I got lucky with the clock riddle. XD
I would like your opinion on something that haven't been addressed yet. At first glance this game looks like Picross (too many clones out there). But soon enough, players realize that it's something else.
But despite the graphics, the characters and the story, how does CypherGrid hold up, comparing to Picross? Disorienting at first, because you expected it to be something else? Harder to understand or play? Did you enjoyed it more than Picross? Do you find it to be original?
Since you have played all these other similar games, any comment regarding the puzzle mechanics would be extremely useful for me, moving forward with this formula.
You want to know what I think of the puzzle aspect of the game and if it felt like a fun number game. I'll give you a TL;DR version first and then a long version after.
TL;DR - I think CypherGrid is a fantastic number puzzle game. It's fun, original and you should keep at it.
Long version being written.
It was disorienting for maybe a moment, but I was very quick to get my head around that. As I began to understand more, I found myself more interested in the puzzles and wanting to know more rules and try harder puzzles. And this wasn't just for the fun of completing of the puzzle but to figure out what it was supposed to mean. I know the latter part is more on the story, but part of me almost feels like it should be part of the process. Like, if it existed in newspapers you get a word with so many letters you're trying to guess. To get the answer, you have to look at the picture formed by the CypherGrid, but first you gotta figure out the number puzzle first. These two separate puzzles feel like they need to go together.
I don't feel at all like it was hard to understand. If anything, I think my understanding of those games vastly sped up my understanding of this. It was actually easier to understand. With Picross, you have multiple numbers but you're trying to determine where the blocks go to fill those numbers. With CypherGrid, you're just looking for the first instance of any crossover of numbers adding to the sum. Once you hit it, the numbers are out of play. This feels so much like sudoku. So while it was Picross that taught me what filling in the boxes was to do, sudoku taught me how to figure out what boxes to fill. This is such an interesting cross those two puzzles which, I think, is why I think the word association thing should still be part of it. It does a picture, a number and a word puzzle all at once. I absolutely enjoyed it far more than Picross both just as a CypherGrid and with the word solving also part of it.
I think the number one that would be useful is that if a row or column only has one or less numbers remaining, the empty tiles should change colour to indicate they cannot be used anymore. If this sounds too much, then just a function to mark them off. To explain what I mean..
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So in this scenario, there are no usable numbers left in the one row. When this happens, the entire row is grayed out. In a manual check off system, the user would be able to right click to put an X over the square.
Considering that there are consequences on other game levels for placing incorrectly, I think the automatic system is better. Doing this would make it so that sort of mistake can't happen. The red X would just be more for situations where the only bad to happen is you don't solve the puzzle.
Took me a while to reply because I was working on updating my game. Thank you for your detailed feedback. You really helped me improve my game. In the latest version (v1.7) I have you on the end credits, with a link to your twitch channel!