pdotjpg

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Posts posted by pdotjpg

  2. Posted

    Thanks for playing and giving feedback, everyone!

     

    Didn't think the depth of field would be such a widespread complaint - really valuable to know! There's a temptation to go overboard with the post-processing effects. I think what happened here was that I lacked confidence in the look of the game and overcompensated with the DoF to make the graphics "fancier".

     

    I'm glad people dig the ending - the narrative stuff was added to the game in literally the last couple of hours of development. Had no idea what to do on that front and I'm glad that my goofy solution seems to have worked. It's also encouraging that people are able to get to the ending. I was worried the game might be too difficult/boring/annoying.

     

    @FartSatchel: Good point about the downhill movement goofiness. My character controller is really basic, it's a shame I wasn't able to polish that a bit more. With my limited coding skills, any incrimental improvements there would have taken an exponentially longer amount of time, I imagine. Glad you dig the layout! And thanks for the Wind Waker and Life is Strange comparisons - I'll take them!

     

    @fabian: Thanks for pointing out the dual monitor issue! I don't have that sort of setup myself and hadn't considered that. Will definitely keep it in mind from now on. Glad you were able to play it with a controller.

     

    @SharedControl: The people who have reached out to me about getting stuck have all done so on 5/10. In fact, I was worried about that one during development already. So you're probably not super dumb and I've just made that one a bit too obscure, or haven't introduced the line of reasoning used in that one well enough.

     

    @RubixsQube: Thanks for the video, so useful to see someone play the game and voice their thoughts. No worries about the silly mood or the singing - catchy tunes! I echo your frustration about 7/10. I didn't realize what a misstep that was. Your response to the ending put a smile on my face :)

     

    @atte: Your suggestion about the traversal options now makes me want to go all-out Breath of the Wild. I'm glad that you also dug the island layout. This idea of two abstractions colliding is really interesting! I hadn't thought of it that way, but I'll be mulling over that idea quite a bit now, I think. Thanks for that!

     

    A big thank you to those I haven't responded to directly as well! I don't have much of a response to your comments, but I really appreciate them.

  4. Posted

    The amount of polish you put into your Wizard Jam games does not cease to amaze me. As others said, this feels like a finished product. The visuals are gorgeous, and the mileage you get out of your mechanics is much more considered than in the average puzzle game prototype. Did you make the music yourself as well? I love the little horn flourishes.

     

    I do have gripes with the gameplay, though. I agree that the game is a bit click-intensive - not helped by the fact that some levels have a hidden exit which can only be found by blindly clicking away. I'm also not entirely sure that the isometric perspective is the right fit for these gameplay mechanics. It's a bit visually confusing. The lack of perspective and the flat, smooth lighting puts my brain into Monument Valley / Fez mode. I had to remind myself that this isn't one of those games and that the path which looks complete from this certain angle actually does not connect in 3D space. It's maybe an unfair criticism, but I dunno, I feel like that's the risk you run by choosing this visual approach.

     

    The perspective also means that you can get into the frustrating situation where you know there's a platform in a specific spot, but you have no line of sight from any of the cardinal directions. Perhaps you intended this as part of the puzzle, but to me it felt finnicky. It also meant that it was possible to get the levels into a state where it seemed easier just to restart, because some platform seemed permanently inaccessible, or it would be too much of a hassle to find a way to access them. This is amplified by the fact that some levels seemed a bit cluttered.

     

    One thing about the gameplay I want to give kudos to specifically is the mechanic of shifting a whole row horizontally - it's a simple addition which opens up the possibility space and complexity considerably. I liked those levels a lot. Though perhaps the controls should have been in the UI, rather than world space - they were made a bit cumbersome by having to switch angles because level geometry would block line of sight on them.

     

    I hope this doesn't come across as too critical. As I said, I think it's really incredible work for 2 or 3 weeks.

  6. Posted

    Haven't seen an episode of Frasier, but I really, really loved this.

     

    Spoiler

    I'll echo others in saying that the slow transition into authored content was an excellent idea and really well executed - me not knowing some of the references made it very inconspicuous at first. Really surprising, worked excellently. I was laughing out loud as I was playing, and loved that you took it to such a weird place. Have you played David Lynch Teaches Typing? Came to mind as I was playing through this.

     

  7. Posted

    This was really surprising. Such a lovely atmosphere! It has the feel of a children's story or something - wholesome, slightly melancholy, very sweet.

     

    There were some frustrations gameplay-wise, though. I somehow missed the fact that you had to right-click on ships because the text of the repair ship implied that it joined me automatically (and though it was slower than me, it seemed to catch up with me every once in a while, so I didn't realize it hadn't). Text prompts for space stations also seemed to disappear and selling minerals was also finnicky (it seems I have to click one specific, nondescript part of the station). Some text prompts would also overlay over each other, preventing me from enjoying some of the nice writing. And finally, I wish the main view were a bit more zoomed out - it's very claustrophobic. Once I got the map, I played the game almost exclusively in that view.

     

    But again, the atmosphere and story here are really lovely, and carry the game despite those minor frustrations. Good job!

  10. Posted

    I'll echo others in saying that tool selection is needlessly finnicky. Other than that, great work! Very impressive for 2 weeks. I really appreciate the little bits of personality you've snuck in here already despite graybox/protoype visuals - the funny writing and audio cues, the ending. Solid set of base mechanics for a Portal style puzzler. Really looking forward to seeing what you do with this.

  11. Posted

    I love the prop work here - reminds me of Blendo games. The visual fidelity is really well-considered and the shapes, colours and texturing of the 3D models is beautiful! The name of the game and the prop work already creates this tantalizing feeling of a bigger world and story. The Unity terrain looks janky as ever and the fog is a bit too overbearing for my liking, but I'd really like to spend more time in this environment when/if it's more fleshed out.

  13. Posted

    I also struggled with the mechanics at first, but did manage to beat one of the levels after a few tries. I agree with @SharedControl that once you get it, there's quite a lot of room for interesting strategy. So while the mechanics are a bit obscure at first, and I agree with others that controls on keyboard could be better, the core gameplay is actually really solid! These are accessibility problems that could be easily fixed.

     

    Visuals and audio are excellent! They create a really tense and creepy atmosphere. I particularly love the realy solid click sound when you hit one of the switches - so satisfying!

  14. Posted

    Yep, technical problems for me too unfortunately. Added an event with the date 12/12/2018 and when I submitted the time - "5 pm" - it froze.

     

    But it's a cool little thing! I like the writing, and there's something really refreshing and clean about one of these calendar/motivation tools being just a console program.

  17. Posted

    I agree with others, this is really good. I like the presentation a lot - the rhythmic nature of the game combined with those sound effects create a cool, sparse vibe.

     

    Gameplay is fun too. The fact that some objects can't be scaled and rotated to match the target position exactly does aggravate a bit, though. And I'm conflicted as to whether I want a visible grid or not. On the one hand, it feels finnicky without it. On the other hand, having it might be missing the point. I feel like at times the move command was a bit inconsistent, as if it was being affected by an object's rotation and scale - a grid would help with that.

     

    Quibbles aside, this is very fun and I'd gladly play more of it.

  18. Posted

    This is an excellent prototype! I love the mechanics and feel like this has potential to be a really good mobile game. Two gripes of mine would be that the pace is a bit too quick right now and that the distribution of letters needs to be considered (too few vowels, too many same letters next to each other). The second problem in particular is probably difficult to solve, but both of these contribute to rarely being able to string together 4+ letter words, which isn't very satisfying. Or I'm just bad at the game.

     

    Then again, the frantic pace and difficulty leads to my rounds being around 2:30 long, an excellent length for this sort of game.

     

    Presentation is already quite good as well, though I agree with Brendon that there's room for even more 'juice'.

     

    Overall, great job! I might put this on my phone and take it with me.

  19. Posted

    On 6/23/2018 at 1:00 AM, brendonsmall said:

    Nicely done. It was a really pleasant wandering game :)

     

    Thanks! I get what you mean about the 'pixel-hunting' aspect. It's difficult to gauge how easy it'll be to find the exact spots when you're making them - I might have fallen a bit on the difficult and obscure side and could have used some sort of hinting system.

     

    Nonetheless, I'm glad that you liked it and got to the end!

     

    On 6/24/2018 at 4:16 AM, eRonin said:

    I played a little of this game, but the extreme depth of field effect blurring the environment made it difficult for me because I started to get eye-strain anytime I wasn't just looking straight at the player character. Looking at the player character all the time isn't great since I need to be looking out at the environment for the clues in the map. I reflexively try to focus my eyes to try to reduce the blur but obviously that doesn't work, so I strained my eyes after a few minutes. 

     

    Oh, sorry to hear! I uploaded a version where you can disable the DoF effect.

  25. Posted

    Had some real life distractions the last few days, but I've repainted the skybox, implemented a treasure digging animation, modelled all the props and finished populating the environment with them.

     

    And I finished off today by working on music. I don't really know how to write music, and I'm super strapped on time, so I just noodled on my guitar for a bit and made some little loops that'll kick in at some points in the game. Here's a taste.

     

    Sunday is the summer solstice celebration - a holiday on par with Christmas here in Latvia -, which means that I'm not sure if I'll have time to work on this beyond, like, Friday afternoon. With that in mind, I'm hoping to have this totally playable by tomorrow night. That means putting in all the treasure items, adding invisible walls to the environment, a menu/title screen, sfx and music, aaand figuring out the ending (don't have enough time to implement my initial idea for this). Tomorrow's gonna be a busy day.

     

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