A nicely designed puzzle game, with an intriguing story.
Art direction: I'm not a fan of anime fanservice, but I understand the appeal for the target audience. The style is ok and overall coherent. Puzzles are easy to read. Maybe a bit of polish in the UI and QTE section could help.
Game loop: puzzle design is solid, I love the idea behind it. I enjoyed the more complex puzzles with a timer in the second part of the demo, as they require quick thinking and planning. The mix of Sudoku and Picto is clever and works really well.
Audio: the weakest part of this entry, it does its job but does not stand out.
Controls: controls are fine, but a keyboard key bind for dialogue skip and the QTE section could help immensely. The dialogue manager could be improved by not skipping the entire dialogue after clicking the arrow but rather having it finish to appear (this happens in parts of the demo, like the tutorial, as in others the text just appears immediately).
Side note, I encountered a couple of minor bugs:
a) when you are doing the first tutorial room with 4 puzzles, after failing you have to go through a dialogue. In the last sentence, even after pressing the arrow, the game does not continue. You need to go back to the menu and insert the relative password to get back.
b) the tutorial puzzles can be brute forced by closing and reopening them: the game does not keep the progress.
Other than that, I have a small suggestion: the password system is fun and a refreshing way to replay previous sessions without having a dedicated save, but it could help in being randomly generated, otherwise one could just skip everything with a guide.
Overall a really nice puzzle game with clever and refreshing rules. Good job!
Viewing post in CypherGrid jam comments
Thank you for the long an honest review!
I actually worked hard to make a keyboard key bind for dialogue skip, but it ended up being complex and inconsistent, so I dropped it. The QTE section could benefit from it, as it is now. But I want to expand the game and have the QTE button appear in various parts of the screen, so even though keyboard controls seem sweet, they would conflict with future plans. This ended up being a mouse game after a lot of thinking. and inner debate.
You are right about the bug in the 1st tutorial room. I saw it just yesterday myself and it was a product of experimentation. This bug won't exist in v1.63 and above. Nice catch!
Indeed the tutorial puzzles can be brute forced. I'm not sure if I mind that, since I want the tutorials to be easy, and give the players some leniency. The same goes with the password system. If someone wants to understand or play the game, they won't cheat. If you cheat, you'll miss the tutorial (you won't learn how to play), the story and the animations. These players either find the game hard, or they don't care, so I don't mind them cheating. Also, it doesn't matter what save system I use, as all the puzzles are pretty much fixed. The solutions will always be the same. Any guide posted online is a potential cheat. And I'm fine with that. I trust that the players know how they want to experience the game.
I love that you went quite deep in your observations. Most of all, I love that an analytical mind like yours liked the puzzle mechanics!