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8_bit_BEAR1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

I had difficulty really understanding what I was meant to do this in this game. I think the concept of building a gear box is cool but besides that and connecting it to the bell gears, I didn’t really understand what was meant to be done here. I do think your usage of gears and how they couldn’t form a locking pair was well implemented. I also didn’t really understand what the 4, 5, and 6 sprocket gears were supposed to do, I assume it had something with increasing or decreasing the speed and torque?

Suggestions/criticism:
- this game really could use a tutorial or some kind of information to let the player know how to play and what the end objective is. 
- The game also does not run well on hardware and needs some improvements there to have it run more smoothly. As others have said it’s likely an issue with the physics simulations.
- Without really knowing the goal of the game I would say that it would be nice to have different levels to complete. I do think you put in a good bit of work with randomizing the levels.
- I feel that it is tedious to pick and choose each gear. Maybe there could be a level editing mode that allows the player to select what gears they want with the crank and the options could be highlighted using the bottom existing row. Once leaving editor mode the player could then turn all the gears.

Overall I would be happy to play this game in the future if the game could get some overhauls to what is currently there. I think the game you currently have shows great promise and I hope to see more from you :)

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remco1 year ago(+1)

Thanks so much for the torough review. I see that you did this for most or perhaps all of the games. I really appreciate people doing that in general, and you don’t even have ‘a horse in this race’ so to speak.

For what you’re meant to do; connect all the gears and belts up (from the driving gear on the left to the ones controlling the height of the hammers on the right) in such a way that the bells strike between 11:30 and 12:00. (Though take note that time only advances as the gears go as well – and even backwards when in reverse.)

As you can probably guess given my answers to the other commenters, I agree with basically all of your points:

It’s badly in need of any kind of tutorial (though the game page does offer some explanation if you do follow that link).

While I could optimize the game – I think, if I where to continue with development, I’d jank out the physics entirely.

Lastly, just as I was revamping the control-scheme to have B toggling between all possible things you can place, rather than ‘physically’ placing the cursor there and selecting with A, my ‘time was up’. (B now only toggles between vertical and horizontal placed rubber-bands.)

I haven’t decided yet wether or not I continue with this jam-prototype, but bespoke levels instead of randomization seems like a good way to go indeed.

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