I’ve only got a few more endings to write, but I’ve finished a first pass on all the framing elements, incidental commentary, and metagame text, so I expect that I should have a playable version of the game tonight. Things that will not be completed in this prerelease version:
I guess I should ask: would you all be comfortable playing the game file on an IF interpreter, or would you prefer that I bundle this into an HTML file to be played in the browser?
great, looking forward to it!
either way is fine, as long as you can tell me where to get an IF interpreter. i think playable in the browser will make it easier for people to try but it depends how much effort you need to put in to make that work.
Not sure why I thought I had that few endings left to write, but since I’m already posting an unfinished game, I’ll just add those unfinished endings to the list.
I’ve put a Windows ZIP containing the game on my Google Drive. PM me for the link.
EDIT: There’s something really sobering about looking at your writing on an interpreter. I’ve already caught three typos I’d missed, two unfinished endings, and a powerful urge to clamp down on adjectives.
i enjoyed playing this … i got the THE ERA OF THE DISTANT STARS ending, then i did everything the opposite way and got THE AGE OF THE BROKEN CHARIOTS
the dilemmas were good, altho i actually kind of hate that type of thing when i play RPGs… i like the fantasy of being able to solve problems without there being a downside
Valuable feedback; thank you! Actually, the first ending you got is my favorite, even though I haven’t finished writing it yet…
oops!
Porting all my code to Kawa, which is a real headache. But the allure of mature 3d game engines I can actually program in Scheme is too great.
It’s a new month, so I decided I had waited long enough to remix another Caves of ZZT board:
you could contribute a board too if you wanted
I’ve been adding a new wave to Nymphoides and i’m starting to reach the PICO-8 token limit. I’m feeling somewhat conflicted about PICO-8.
In my game i’ve split each wave into its own source file, and there’s a lot of code thats similar so i could probably save a lot of tokens. But doing that will probably make the code quite a bit less readable, and more difficult to change. I’m really sour about how much CPU time i was able to save by not calling a function. That just seemed really artificial and punitive.
I’ve enjoyed programming on it, and the export functions are really nice, it was very easy to make web and binary versions. I understand why the token and CPU limits exist but they mean i can never start anything but the simplest of games on it. I think optimization is fun but it’s not something i want to do at the same time as trying out different ideas.
Maybe try another of the fantasy consoles, one with few limitations? Have you tried TIC-80? One nice thing about TIC-80 is that Fennel is built in.
Alright, have a new demo for my game:
https://gate.itch.io/ghost
pass: thinky_ghost
Largely looking for feedback on level quality and difficulty curve! I suspect it gets pretty dicey in the middle so if you let me know where you got stuck and how frustrated you are/were I can start to get a sense of what I need to flesh out. Will take feedback on any aspect that sticks out to you, though!
EDIT: Almost every level has been tweaked from the original demo and level order has been drastically tweaked.
Based on early feedback level 4 and level 10 are probably too hard. I’m going to need to make this game less linear at some point to make it obvious which levels are ok to skip. For the record, 4 is pretty skippable, 10 is somewhat skippable (as long as you play around in it a bit to get an idea about what’s going on).
I think an even smoother curve (plus hard optional puzzles) would work for more groups of people.
I don’t play a lot of puzzle games, and i’ve only played up to level 8 so far, but i found level 4 to be on the same level of difficulty as level 3 - I couldn’t see how to do it for a while and after 5 minutes or so i worked it out.
I am very impressed with the difficulty of the puzzles so far. With most of them I couldn’t see how to solve them straight away.
Nice – glad they’re approachable and satisfying for you!
So much of puzzle design is trying to get into the mind of the player. There are a lot of techniques I use to do this, but most of the good results come from a bunch of techniques I apply together iteratively. Sometimes in a dev session all I accomplish is making a sketch of a puzzle, but then I come back later to refine it, and then I come back to refine the refinement, etc.
Puzzles sort of prey on players’ intuition – I have to correctly guess what the player will find “intuitive” and then subvert that somehow. Sometimes I find these subversions naturally as I’m testing my own levels, and then rework the level to force or feature that subversion. Sometimes while implementing mechanics I find a corner case that feels like a good subversion so I’ll put that in my notes as a potential puzzle idea.
I’m sort of running out of “core” puzzle ideas though the further I go, so there’s a lot more experimentation now than there was at the start. I’m finding it’s a lot better to just try things out rather than just sit and ponder and try to work it out in my head. Like, the most important thing when you’re writing a first draft is to get as many ideas as you can down on the paper. It doesn’t matter if they don’t quite work yet, you can come back and edit and refine later.
Minor update: you can now undo (up to the last 3) level resets. You’re welcome @username!
I saw this but haven’t had the chance to get around to giving it a shot, hopefully in the next few days.
Yeah no worries! I already have a lot of feedback through a couple other communities so please don’t feel obligated. It’ll stick around on itch in that form for a while so you can play at your leisure. Already have a lot of feedback and a few of my own ideas that will keep me busy.
Don’t think it’s perfect yet but I am pretty proud of a decent number of levels. Definitely still uneven and in progress.
enjoying this! each new mechanic is putting some interesting spin on how i gotta think about the maps and it keeps things interesting
i think i’ve spent several hours in total over the past few days trying to solve level 10. i also move on and solve levels beyond that but i can’t give up on it, even tho i just don’t seem to get it.
yeah, i didn’t expect 10 to be such a bruiser but i have gotten that feedback A LOT
it’s probably the level that requires the most pure block manipulation while my other levels sort of de-emphasize the sokoban aspect of the game so that might be some of it. i think it’s also pretty linchpin-y and inherently hard to visualize.
