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This is a super solid start to a great puzzle game, and it's executed very cleanly here.

You say this is your first jam game, so you should be so proud of yourself for scoping responsibly, and btw huge props for actually coming up with a bespoke puzzle mechanic within the jam window (that's not easy)!

If this was ever to be extended with some new mechanics, I would absolutely play it. The jam version has issues with a simple dominant strategy* working for every puzzle, but that can be corrected with some meaningful new mechanics that complicate things.

Congratulations on the submission! I hope you keep making games  :)


*No paths need to be evaluated by the player. They simply need to find the 1 tile no other tiles point at, and that tile is the correct first-click every time (this can be done surprisingly quickly). Because of this, the 4-way and "jump" tiles aren't meaningful mechanical additions because they in no way change the player's approach to solving the puzzles. 

Some other players have noticed they can brute-force the puzzles by clicking randomly, observing which tiles weren't activated, and narrowing down from there, but this is actually enormously slow in comparison, so it's a lesser concern (and can be addressed easily later with some minor design tweaks.)

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Thank you for taking the time to write such detailed and insightful feedback! I had decided not to participate in this jam due to lack of time that I could dedicate to it and my lack of experience, but I found the theme very evocative and spent some time coming up with ideas for it purely as a design exercise. One of the ideas I had was this tile puzzle and it was so simple I thought I could keep the scope to a level that I could complete in time. It required no animation and almost no art and only takes a single click from the player as input on each level.

My main goal with my first jam was really just to deliver a complete experience that fit the theme. I've mostly only done little prototypes and haven't done the end-to-end building of a full game and publishing it. I thought this would mainly be a learning experience for me and I was frankly surprised to hear that people enjoyed it given how simple it is. I think part of that is just the inherent satisfaction that one gets from watching the chain reaction with its little pops :)

I don't really intend to build on this further, at least any time soon, but if I hadn't kept the scope so limited, I would have added in tiles that the player would need to rotate and/or empty spaces that the player would need to select tiles to fill, in order to make a viable solution. I think that would have added the missing complexity you're talking about.

Thanks again for the feedback and encouragement! This jam and comments like yours have given me new confidence and I'll definitely keep making games :)

Those sound like they would've been perfect additions! Great thinking.

Looking forward to your future experiments. Good luck!