Links

• Play the game on web Chrome or Firefox on desktop highly recommended. Chrome supports gamepads and Firefox has better performance. PC version coming soon.
• Discord
• TikTok
• YouTube
• Twitter

Feedwater

Feedwater is a top-down puzzle game where you must use your wits to escape deadly booby traps and set off complex chain reactions. Circular saws, dynamite, arrows, conveyor belts, and many other threats stand in your way, all of which can be connected to switches and circuits.

The game currently has 16 levels, and offers a Level Editor for you to design your own and share them with others. You can share these levels on the Discord server.

I describe the game in more detail in this video:

Development

I’ve been building Feedwater in my spare time since the end of 2022. I update it on Itch.io every 1-2 weeks and share regular devlogs on TikTok, YouTube, Twitter and Itch.io. I still consider the game to be a prototype as I’m still “finding the fun” and figuring out the game’s theme.

In terms of community, I have two objectives:

1. Build a level-building community where players share their level designs. If you design an interesting level, I may add it to the game!
2. Playtesters playtesters playtesters: I listen to my playtesters carefully and have already applied their input to make the game more fun. I welcome your feedback with open arms - together we can make Feedwater a great game.

If you want to help improve the game through feedback or level designs, or if you just want to chat about games, join me on the Discord server.

James

I’m working on connecting the levels of Feedwater with an elevator and “floors” of an underground facility. This is the first draft of “Floor 0”, the ground floor where the demo will start.

Feedwater 0.32 update The biggest update so far is live! (play here) It connects the levels of Feedwater into one world with a progression system that gives the game a beginning and an end. Changes:

• Levels are connected to “floors” of an underground research facility
• Floors are connected by an elevator, which requires keycards to unlock new floors
• Progression system in which levels and floors are unlocked by beating previous levels. This progress is saved between play sessions
• Basic story to start and end the demo, giving some context to the world of Feedwater and a reason to unlock the door to the outside world
• Ambient music that plays in menus
• Levels “Kaboom Room” and “The Core” have been removed - they need some improvement before returning

Playtesters can still unlock all levels by pressing ZXOP in the main menu.

This is a huge step for making Feedwater feel like a cohesive world and an actual game! I’d love to hear what you think of the changes and look forward to expanding upon them further.

Feedwater 0.33 update

Two of the Switches tutorials have been improved based on playtester feedback:

• Switches I now introduces the concept of doors that boulders can pass through but the player cannot. These are used extensively in harder levels and now have the introduction they deserve
• Switches III now teaches the player that wall buttons can still be pressed even when an object is directly in front of them. Again, this is used later on in harder puzzles and was missing an introduction
• Switches III’s middle puzzles have been modified to be simpler and impossible to cheat like they were before

In addition, level doors now indicate the status of the level to improve readability:

• Locked levels have a padlock indicator on their door’s action prompt
• Beaten levels have green lights outside their door

Feedwater 0.34 update Arrow bending is a new mechanic that changes the direction of an arrow. This is performed with a new tile, the “arrow bender”, which can be turned on and off with switches. This enables puzzles where the player must carefully guide an arrow through the correct path, and death traps with forever-looping arrow gauntlets.

Two new levels introduce this mechanic:

1. Arrows II: the arrow bending tutorial. Gradually builds the player’s understanding of the mechanic before testing both their problem-solving skills and arrow-dodging dexterity
2. Escort Mission: a single arrow must be guided through the entire level with the goal of breaking through to the exit

Both of these levels can be found in the main game on Floor -5. Alternatively, you can unlock them by pressing ZXOP in the main menu and finding them in Level Select.

Other changes:

• Levels reordered across floors of the building to make clearer themes on each floor and distribute the optional Hard levels a bit better
• Fixed a bug where the bubble shield could be affected by conveyor belts and one-way doors

Feedwater 0.35 update Update 35 makes some small tweaks to earlier levels to smoothen the early game experience:

• Boulders has been re-designed to give more examples of “one boulder, two buttons”, one-way doors, and a more intuitive example for needing to sacrifice a boulder
• Switches has been tweaked to make it harder to accidentally get boulders stuck
• The annoying penultimate puzzle of Switches II has been removed

Feedwater 0.36 update For custom level designers, you can now add checkpoints to your Feedwater levels inside the Level Editor. Just choose the “C” in the palette. Wherever you place the tile is (a) where the checkpoint is triggered and (b) where the player will respawn on that checkpoint.

Checkpoints override previously visited checkpoints. Previous checkpoints cannot be re-triggered, so a linear path through your checkpoints is recommended. Support for non-linear checkpoints will come in future.

This should make it easier to create levels that aren’t overwhelmingly difficult for players. I look forward to seeing what you can create!

Feedwater 0.38 update

Update 38 adds some quality-of-life improvements based on some valuable playtester feedback:

• The three “optional” levels House Of Flying Arrows, Mind-Toggling, and A Switch In Time are now only unlocked after completing the main game. They were simply too frustrating or unfair for new players and too easy to unlock early on. All of the levels have interesting concepts that I will continue refining, but they have design flaws that mean they aren’t ready for the main game yet
• Guardian‘s timing has been made slightly easier, on account of it being a punishing level to die on, especially when players can see the solution but can’t execute it
• Placing objects in the Level Editor is much easier. For example, you can place belts, fields, and buttons without needing to clear away walls first. The general rule is that any objects that cannot share a tile with the object you’re placing will be automatically cleared away

Quality of life is going to be the theme for the next few releases. Fairer level designs and a more user-friendly Level Editor to come!

Feedwater 0.39 update

Update 39 adds something I’ve long anticipated: a community level! Babaisyoo joined the Discord and, after some great suggestions for the game and its level editor, made a level called Disabled. You can unlock this level from Escort Mission on Floor -5. It makes great use of arrow benders, including a tough puzzle that had me stuck for more than 30 minutes.

It’s community contributions like this that inspire me to invest more time into the level editor and make it easier for others to make levels. That brings me to some of the other changes:

• Level Editor now loads in <2 seconds for most levels rather than the >10 seconds from before
• Level Editor has some basic sound effects when placing/deleting items

I’ve also re-introduced Mind-Toggling to the main game - it’s not as unfair as I thought it was.

One final note to say that Firefox has a bug when pasting in level codes - the keyboard stops working and the game becomes unplayable until refreshed. This makes level sharing a non-starter on that browser, so for now I recommend Chrome for playing custom levels. I’ll be looking into this bug shortly.

Feedwater 0.40 update

Version 40 adds the first of many Level Editor improvements. It adds a selection tool that allows you to move regions of the level around, as well as copy and paste. This early version of the tool is keyboard-only while I re-organise the UI - buttons will be coming soon! The tool can be used as follows:

• Alt + M: switch to Selection Tool
• Alt + B: switch to Brush Tool (default)
• Alt + D: clear selection
• Alt + C: copy selection
• Alt + X: cut selection
• Alt + V: paste selection
• Expand the selection by dragging a new region outside it or clicking on individual tiles
• Selections can be moved around either with the arrow keys or by dragging them with the left mouse button

This should make it easier to re-organise your levels when you run out of space or want to move rooms around. More Level Editor features to come!

Feedwater 0.41 update

Another step towards making a powerful Level Editor that is easy to use.

In the old Level Editor, you would have to search through a long list of tiles to find the one you wanted to place. Now, tiles are organised into categories and tools have their own buttons. The selection tool is now available in the UI, unlocking the ability to move regions around and copy/paste.

The hotkeys and tile descriptions are now displayed more clearly in the Level Editor UI to help you get familiar with the building blocks of levels.

As a bonus, a new level Tongjiang has been added to Floor -4 (requires Arrangement to be beaten to access it).

Version 42 brings a fairly major quality-of-life improvement for level designers: undo! Press Alt + Z to undo or Alt + Y to redo a tile change in the Level Editor.

Apologies for the lengthy hiatus - I’ve been moving house. The move is complete now, so I will start to return to my normal weekly release schedule.

Version 43 adds some new tools to the Level Editor that allow you to resize your levels:

• Insert Column (Alt + Plus) and Insert Row (Alt + Shift + Plus) expand the level with a line of wall tiles
• Delete Column (Alt + Minus) and Delete Row (Alt + Shift + Minus) shrink the level by removing a line of wall tiles
• Levels can be resized to a smallest grid of 20x20 and a largest grid of 100x100

In adding this feature, I made the painful decision to remove a small quality-of-life feature from the editor. Previously, the editor would ensure that only one spawn point was on the level. When you moved it, any tile that was previously underneath the spawn point would be redrawn. Supporting this feature alongside Undo/Redo and the new tools was making the code for the Level Editor too complex. To make my life easier, multiple spawn points can now be placed without restriction (the top-left one will be used as the actual spawn point). It was a trade-off between user convenience and my ability to keep building the game and I chose the latter in this case. If you want me to add that feature back, give me a shout. ;)

The Level Editor is really shaping up now. Before I add some fun new tools like Flood Fill, I’m going to add support for multiple levels to be saved. It’s currently difficult and unintuitive to create and maintain levels as a user and I want to change that. Stay tuned!

You can now build and save MULTIPLE custom levels.

• There is now a way more obvious button to create a new level (in “Custom Levels”)
• Your list of custom levels can be accessed via “Your Levels” (also in “Custom Levels”)
• Levels can be imported from codes as before. Doing this will save a new level, unless you already have a level with the same name and content
• If you want to delete your levels, there is a red delete button in the Level Editor now. If you accidentally click this, there is a dialog to double-check that’s what you meant to do. I’m not evil (I think)

In the browser, levels are stored in Local Storage, which should be pretty reliable. That said, I do recommend you export your levels to text files from time to time and, even better, share them on Discord. ;)

In Version 45, you can now discover other players’ levels inside the game and share your own creations directly there too. Here’s how it works:

Playing community levels

Sharing your own levels to the community

More community features on their way (I’ve already started brainstorming here). As always, share your feedback for this feature with me on Discord. And more importantly, let’s share and discuss the level designs you come up with!

Update 46 brings a major new mechanic: lasers! In the current prototype, there are 4 tiles:

1 - Blue laser emitter: shoots harmless blue lasers that activate circuits when hitting receivers

2 - Blue laser receiver: activates a connected circuit when receiving a blue laser

3 - Red laser emitter: shoots deadly red lasers that destroy objects on contact. This includes the player and flying arrows

4 - Refractor boulder: can be used to bend lasers in a different direction

All these tiles are available in the Level Editor, so you can build and share your own laser levels!

To get quicker feedback on this new mechanic, I’ve added some example levels to Community Levels rather than the main game. There are currently 5 laser levels:

1. Lasers (easy): introduces blue lasers
2. Lasers II (easy): introduces red lasers
3. Boulders and Laser (medium): single room with a more complex blue laser logic puzzle
4. Parting the Red Sea (medium): single room with a deadly red laser challenge
5. The Miner (hard): guide a powerful mining machine to bore a tunnel to the exit

Feel free to use the “Edit a copy” feature in Community Levels to edit these example levels and make your own versions if you think they can be improved. I’m particularly looking for a level that combines both blue and red lasers in an interesting way.

Tell me what you think of the new mechanic, including the good and the bad. More laser mechanics on the way.

Feedwater 0.47 update

Update 47 introduces a new tile to expand the laser mechanic: mirrors. These are destructible tiles that reflect any lasers that hit them. This can result in some crazy bounces! You can play with mirrors in a new Community Level called… “Mirrors”.

Lasers can be a bit fiddly to adjust, so I’ve added a new control to the game for the first time. If you hold down Spacebar (or Left Trigger on gamepads) while moving, you enter “Precision Mode”, allowing you to adjust refractor boulders more easily to aim lasers where you want.

Refractor boulders now have glass animations and sound effects when destroyed, as do mirrors.

As always, feedback on the new mechanics are welcome. I’m also keen to see your own levels combining lasers and mirrors in interesting ways.

Yo this game looks real cool!

Feedwater 0.48 update

Update 48 brings a third laser type: green lasers. Any destructible object touched by these lasers will become invulnerable. The player themselves will also become invulnerable for 3 seconds and will be able to smash freely through circular saws and arrows. Speaking of which… arrows have a very different behaviour when affected by a green laser.

Green laser emitters are available in the Level Editor. You can play with green lasers in the community level Lasers III. Feedback welcome as always!

Feedwater 0.50 update

Update 50 removes radiation entirely from the main game. Why? Although it can be a fun mechanic, it doesn’t gel well with the other mechanics or the “Rube Goldberg chain reactions” theme. I only introduced it early on when I had my mind set on making Feedwater a horror game (no longer the case). There are much better puzzle mechanics in the game that I don’t want to block or dilute with the radiation mechanic. Not that it will never return - it will always be an option to add back in if I can find a good purpose for it.

This means some changes to the flow of levels:

• Guardian and Showers have been removed, though you can still play them in Community Levels
• Feedwater (the level), Escort Mission, and Disabled have had their radiation tiles removed
• The “radiation floor” (Floor -3) has been removed and Floors -4 and -5 shifted up one level to replace it. Floor -5 is now inaccessible (for now…)
• For players who are currently on Floor -3, your current spawn may be broken or levels that you need to progress may be inaccessible. If this is the case, DM me and I can unblock you

Don’t expect many significant changes to Feedwater for a while - I’m busy working on the game, but not on something that is ready to be shared for some time. Watch this space. ;)