itch.io

Incredibly well made puzzle. I seriously underestimated it at the beginning, thinking everything was about to easily fall into place, but then I realized just how in depth the puzzle was. Great work!

I haven't quite finished every game on the calendar, but this is easily one of my favorites. Great use of an easy to understand mechanic to create situations where the correct move is difficult to find. Also there is A+ use of misdirection throughout, I think I fell for every twist you included. Great work!

He has! I got his permission to adapt it before the jam and he recently played and enjoyed it. I chose this cart because, to me, it already said a lot about what kind of gameplay it could have, and like it was the kind of game I'd like to make. Thanks!

Thank you! I hoped players would forgive the tank controls after finding out why they are necessary :P

Here is a hint, there is no spoiler tag so copy it to rot13.com to read: Gur svefg guerr zbirf ner yrsg evtug evtug

Correct! Just wanted them to stand apart from the already entered information.

Thank you! That hint is only helpful for one possible way someone could arrive at the solution. rot13: Ryvzvangvat pbagenqvpgbel fgngrzragf nyybjf lbh gb svyy va fbzr oynaxf jvgubhg haqrefgnaqvat gur ehyr. Ohg V svaq gung zber crbcyr guna V rkcrpgrq haqrefgbbq gur ehyr orsber gurl arrqrq gb qb gung.

Brilliant mechanic, and felt very satisfying to solve.

Thank you so much! That level onward was an interesting process to make. I made the game for the Ludum Dare Compo and was strapped for time. I first implemented the mechanics of the game as I imagined them, then spent time exploring them to find interesting results. The mechanic used in that level is unintuitive, but logically consistent with the system I had made, and I felt that it was too late to prevent the interaction, and the interaction was impossible to prevent in future puzzles, so I figured it would be a waste to not deliberately take advantage of it. Not sure it was the right choice, but it was an experiment for a game jam. If I could go back, I would have worked out a better interaction. Thank you again for the kind words and for playing my game! I am a huge fan.

You bring up a good point: Free games can be a part of a bundle, and I believe pages without any downloads can be added to a bundle. From a site perspective, it seems easy to do what I am asking, I was simply checking if there was any rule against doing this. I will most likely work out an alternative to make all games available at the time of the bundle's release, but I wanted to know out of curiosity if this was allowed. 

I could not find an answer on this in the forums or FAQ, the closest thread I found was this: https://itch.io/t/3575159/can-i-add-content-to-an-existing-co-op-bundle-on-itchi...

One of the games in a planned co-op bundle needs to release 2 days later than the bundle itself, but I would like for itch users to be able to buy the bundle as soon as possible, then come back later once the game has been released.

Of course, this would be made clear to all users before purchasing the bundle. It will say exactly which games are available now and which are coming in a few days, but I wanted to make sure this was allowed on the platform. Users will buy the bundle with a clear disclaimer that one of the games will be available for download in two days, then they can come back and download it when it has been made available.

Can anybody confirm if this is an accepted practice? Just want to make sure I'm doing right by itch, thanks!

Thank you for the feedback, I definitely agree that the mechanic you are referring to was unintuitive. I realized it existed towards the end of the jam and, since it was consistent and logical and led to some interesting puzzles, I decided to leave in those puzzles that used it. If I were to go back, I would have changed up how the mechanics work, but that's part of the fun of a 48-hour jam. I implement a rough idea, then spend some time exploring it, meaning I also find the problems in the system lol. Thanks again.

Forgot that was a thing in PuzzleScript, thanks!

Yes. Funny enough, the first thing I googled for a pixel art pufferfish reference was Minecraft :P

Lol, Ludum Dare's theme "Tiny Creatures" is of course where the idea came from. I wondered what it would be like for a Sokoban character to grow/shrink to relate to the word 'tiny' and a creature who can do that irl is a Pufferfish. From there, I just wondered about what kinds of weird behaviors might result from the growing/shrinking characters, and there were enough interesting things that I knew I could make a few puzzles out of it. Thanks for playing!

Easily a favorite from the jam. I've played the Witness so much, and played so many fan games, I really should have seen the twists coming but didn't. At first I wasn't sure, but as I went on it became more clear how 'scale' played into the game. For a puzzle game created in such a short time frame I got an incredible amount of playtime out of it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Like any puzzle game made in such a short time frame though, there were minor annoyances and bugs. I found that the save and load system introduced a lot of bugs. Loading a save caused certain blocks to no longer be able to be dragged, and stairs to not open. Restarting the game and loading a save fixed this. My biggest complaint is that there really should have been an auto save before reaching the top of the tower. After that point, the majority of moves that I was able to make resulted in me becoming soft locked. I replayed from my last save and made a save up there, the kept reloading it to experiment. Making a game this ambitious in such a short time frame is sure to lead to some quirks like that, but the game you've made here is incredible. Great job!

Good game! Like others have said I found it was easy to softlock myself by pushing crates a little too hard and having them slide off into a wall. Good use of the theme, I especially like how becoming heavy to break floors is sometimes desirable, e.g. when it lets you pass into another area, and sometimes adds extra difficulty when you are trying to platform on them. Nice work!

Thank you! To be honest, I really didn't understand what was going on anymore when I submitted the game : P I have fixes ready to go when the rating period ends, thanks for playing!

LOL instructions were definitely unclear, and bugs have made the market quite wacky. My favorite bugs are competitors selling products for negative dollars (an appealing deal) and the lot listing a collection of 0 items, for which your competitor bids a single dollar and wins. Hope the bugs at least gave you a laugh, thanks for playing : )

The learning curve was steep, I was confused by the drainage pipe obstacles until the later part of the game, but once I understood everything the level design came together, and seemingly got better as I progressed. The way you are punished with long falls reminds me of Jump King, an unconventional platformer that I'm a huge fan of. After a particularly brutal fall through three layers of drainage pipes I had to call it quits before I broke my laptop, but I may come back, these sorts of games tend to do that to me :P Nice work!

I also noticed this strategy. The opponent AI is so bad that often just letting them try and run their business will cause them to lose money faster than your rent will deplete yours lol. The AI needed a lot of work and I ran out of time.

You're completely right, my attempt to fix the issue failed again : P now that ratings for ludum dare are over I can make another update. The idea is that you were supposed to be required to use the mechanic to complete (ROT13) gur ebbz jvgu bayl oyhr naq terra. Thank you for playing and for the feedback!

Good point, totally reasonable to assume that. Unfortunately PuzzleScript doesn't let you customize that part of the menu. Thanks!

That’s intentional! The game never has any need for undo or restart since all moves are reversible. The only exception is in the very top room, you can press r to exit.

Thanks, didn't realize that was a feature! Just added

Last level was brutally difficult, but so rewarding to complete. These mechanics are so good, and could carry many, many more levels imo. Awesome work!

Gah! Sorry for that, I think I know what happened, but I thought I had fixed it. I’ll add a note: if the game ever freezes for you in the eternal suffering room, you can press R to exit the room and maintain your save. Also, if you try reentering the room after that, it shouldn’t freeze again. I’ll look into a better fix. Thanks for the report! Hope you’re still able to enjoy the game!

Thank you for sticking with it! An earlier puzzle was meant to illustrate that key insight:





That blues can "conduct" greens, but it was beatable without using that mechanic, I've since patched it. Thanks!

Thank you for your feedback! I wasn’t able to do quite as much with the procedural generation as I wanted to, I guess I overestimated puzzlescript’s abilities, and also was running out of time for Ludum Dare. I would have ideally liked the top to have multiple rooms you have to complete under time pressure, leading to a secret ending, but I just couldn’t get that working. In the end, I thought it was fitting to loop a single basic room, and call it “eternal suffering” lol.

You are correct that undo/restart is never necessary! That was one of the first principles I wanted to explore with the design; in a variant of Sokoban in which every move is reversible, how can I still make interesting puzzles? The lack of undo/restart also made it possible to have the structure the game does where you can freely walk between multiple puzzle paths while knowing none of them can be stuck. It also is what made the method of procedural generation used here possible. The game simply places sigils in a valid position, then randomly moves the player character around to scramble them, with the knowledge that any move made can be undone.

Thanks again for playing!

thank you!

I appreciate your excitement! Over the last year the game has been in and out of development due to personal reasons, and I haven't been posting much about it. Development has recently been back in full swing, and you can expect some new announcements very soon :)

SPOILERS




















Competor posted a blind playthrough. It is in Japanese, but the English auto-translate feature is pretty effective for understanding what is said :)

Exactly!

HINT BELOW:





















There is something intangible that needs to pass through one wormhole to the other.

It was! That was one of my favorite puzzle games of the last year, but I felt cheated that there were no actual wormholes in the game so I made this lol.

Thank you!

Thank you! Simplicity and consistency in the mechanics was definitely a goal. Thanks for playing.

Liked it! A good narrative wrapper to put around a logic puzzle of this kind. I've seen these tricks used before, but it's always remarkable to me that you can find one specific 4 digit number from what seems to be so little information. Also, I expected "check solution" to show me the solution, clever idea having it require me to enter the password!

Thank you, I forgot to hide the game from search results. Consider yourself an early tester :)

Thank you! I also have to ask: how did you manage to find the game? Lol, it’s been hidden both from being sent as a notification to my followers as well as being hidden on my page.