First of all: Nice job! The game played quite well.
Key Data:
Version: 2.0
Playtime: 20 min
Input: Mouse and Keyboard
Default Settings
The experience of the game was nice overall. Nothing that pulled me in completely, but a few nice Aha-Moments and nothing overly frustrating.
I experienced no bugs during my playtime.
The rise in and level of difficulty was appropriate my personal taste and the game being in a demo state.
I was able to intuit my way through the earlier levels and had to plan a little in the later levels without getting stuck.
The hub reminded me of the old Lego star wars games, but was quite barren. Throwing the magnet into a tube to open a gate felt unintuitive and al little bit tedious.
It would be nice to have some elements from the levels in the hub to be able to play around and familiarize yourself with the Gameplay elements.
The thin platforms that let the magnet, but not the player pass through looked quite a lot like platforms in other jump and run games, that allow the player to pass through if they press the down key.
This felt a tad unintuitive.
In the earlier levels it seemed always possible to get back to the status quo after messing up. It felt a little bit jarring to use the reset button for the first time in level 5.
The revolving door in level 6 was positioned in a way, that I had a hard time to tell if it would block the magnet-block from passing when rotated. This could be seen either as a good or bad thing.
It was one of the first things that I tested after playing around (just by chance) and getting it to activate remote was still a nice challenge, but I could see it being frustrating to not be able to solve a puzzle because you misinterpreted the parameters.
A particularly nice experience was when I thought I got stuck in level 4 and then figured out a way to get unstuck without resetting. The solution was quite close to the levels solution and solving two puzzles at once felt rewarding.
In my opinion the game is lacking most in classical "game features". With one objective and only one degree of success per level and no structure in the hub it felt a little bit like ticking boxes on a list with no room for overachieving or exploring.
One weird thing: The "Thanks for playing" level moved in a weird way. I was unsure if something else was supposed to happen or if the movement itself was a bug.
Overall: Solid basis and while this demo didn't make me exited to play the final game, it still was a lot of fun with only minor annoyances and I'm exited to see the next YouTube update.
Took 5 minutes to complete, found it very easy to grasp the concept. I play a lot of puzzle games though, so not too surprising I blitzed through these beginner levels. Did them left to right in the hub and that was satisfying enough for me, but being reset to the left every time I exited a level was irksome.
Found that booting up the game on my second monitor resulted in it launching at a tiny resolution, and only fixed it thanks to knowing that I could press alt+enter to make it fullscreen on my main monitor and then rebooting it to fix the issue.
Found that quickly reversing directions into the rotating doorways would result in them not moving back the other way which felt a bit clunky. Would be nice if they were immediately responsive so I could have fun quickly flicking left and right in them.
Very easy to get softlocked in a puzzle and then require a reset, as all it takes is leaving the magnet behind somewhere only accessible with said magnet. I don't think the puzzle design would allow for a "summon magnet" button without massive overhauls, but maybe a rewind function would be a possible alternative. Otherwise, puzzles will have to stay rather short and simple to avoid frustration when restarting the level if you make a single slip up.
I had fun though and would like to see more levels, ideally ramping up significantly in difficulty by the end to really get you thinking with magnets. A second magnet, perhaps, would add a lot more puzzle potential in later levels?
EDIT: Forgot to include this, but I found it weird whenever I couldn't press down or down+jump to drop through the thinner platforms that are often used as steps. Guess that part of game design language is ingrained into me.
- There's no UI button to get out of the options, you have to press ESC which wasn't the first thing I thought of
- I like to use Backspace for jump a lot of the time (I have a weird keyboard), but there wasn't an icon for backspace in the control popup in the level
- "Carry / Enter Aim Mode" and "Magnet Action" aren't names that I immediately know which key I'd normally bind it to
- I thought I encountered a bug where the magnet would only be thrown in one direction, but after a while I realized that you have to use the mouse to aim. I had been thinking you could aim by pressing and holding throw
- I tried to reset the level to troubleshoot the previous issue with the in-game reset, but it looks like it only resets the state of objects it thinks are changed. It'd be nice if there were a hard reset
- If you quit out in the hub before playing a level, you'll be reset to the tutorial (you can still "Return to Hub" though)
- You can have multiple actions bound to the same key
- It'd be nice if you could fullscreen by dragging the window to the top of the screen in Windows
- Down + Jump should let you go down through semisolid platforms
- In the hub, the magnet shows behind the Key Signs and the doors
- The movement feels like it's optimized for a different game. Like the coyote time is nice, but I'm not really trying to correctly time jumps. As it is, I kept bonking into 2-high walls because I jumped too early, which is cool in a platformer, but kinda lame in a puzzle game
- Is the intended solution to the last puzzle to slide the magnet under the negative block which its up and have it land next to the button? If it is, that felt awkward.
- Having to pick up the magnet at the start of every level felt tedious
- I feel like the puzzles could be cooler if you had to get both the player and the magnet into a spot. That said, I enjoyed #5 a good deal.
As others have mentioned switching polarity for keyboard is akward. I tend to move my finger from my D (Right Key) to the F (Polarity Key) making it difficult to move right and change polarity in the last level. like some others have said having this option on the mouse whould make a lot of sence as the mouse controls the magnet, But that might make it hard for laptop users. I think a nice middle ground would be to have the default key binding be the LEFT SHIFT key as the pinky does not have a critical role in moving.
Summary: Changing polarity with mouse or shift key are easier to control as the default settings.
Great demo! The improvements in the way the character feels are great. Only thing that might be nice is if you could move slowly while aiming instead of having to cancel the throw and move if your just a little off. I also would like to be able to rebind the mouse buttons as personally I'd rather have right click be polarization.
I enjoyed all the puzzles and felt like the difficulty was good. The magnet feels very central to these levels so I think that has improved massively. Like other reviewers, I didn't immediately get the pipe and tried to jump in it, though i do really like it as a mechanic. Maybe some something to differentiate it from green mario pipes would stop players from trying to jump in it.
Only annoyance as far as mechanics is that with the rotating walls that the player can push, turning around too quickly to walk back through it can cause it to not open. This is only mildly annoying, but it does feel clunky if you realize you need to turn around. video here
it would be nice if when you finish a level and return to the hub, you spawn in front of the door for the level you were just in, so you don't have to walk all the way back over from the left each time.
it's possible to make the level unbeatable, e.g. as soon as you get the magnet by throwing it to the left through the door. Maybe have a prompt pup up on the screen telling you to restart when the game detects a situation in which the level has become unsolvable.
it seems like the +/- symbols on the beams are always on regardless of the setting for them. the magnet's symbol turns on and off fine.
I love the feel of controlling the character, and was surprised by the difficulty & satisfaction of solving the puzzles; very clever stuff! love the graphics too and can't wait til it has sound effects :D
Many old flash games had a level where it was incredibly easy to get "softlocked" with the caption of "you can always try again" or "press R to retry" to teach that mechanic.
this isn't a full review. I agree with most comments submitted here. one note: I suggest replacing the pipes from the hub into actual buttons with attraction magnets. It utilizes concepts from the game while improving consistency. as far as the key system goes, exiting through a door makes more sense (also allows for replayability of levels which is lacking) and the keys can be acquired upon level completion, in the hub.
Massive improvement! I still find the controls with mouse + keyboard a little finicky—especially changing the polarity. I often found myself getting lost between clicking and E, and also found it very annoying that I couldn't change polarity with the mouse. Maybe a middle click? Or scroll? That way with two scroll "notches" it would go from red to blue to red.
I also wasn't sure if the lag between switching polarity was intentional. I couldn't figure out the last puzzle though in my brain part of it was polarity switching. Something to tweak maybe.
Hello Mark great content, and from one game dev to another solid concept for this game.
I've found a few bugs, firstly I should mention that, I exclusively run Manjaro KDE linux these days, so the fact that it runs out of the box with wine, it's very neat. As for the bugs I'm speaking of the windows binary of the game on linux though wine.
Bugs:
The menus buttons don't have text, and the key count isn't displayed either; font is blank or non-existent this is likely a linux issue not having the font so it doesn't render
When changing the magnet polarity whilest holding it it's sprite does NOT update to reflect being held
If the game ever loses focus, it needs to be restarted
Progress isn't saved, this may be simply because it's a demo, and can lose focus on other platforms, interestingly full screen vs windowed saves, but the menu doesn't update to reflect the current status it simply displays the default
Incorrect controller prompts displayed
My solutions:
Nothing really you haven't supported the game on linux, although unity does allow for building a linux binary, I'm guessing that there was a different issue with building it, like not having a linux testing environment
Ok bear in mind it's been quite a while since I've worked with Unity, when you change polarity/being held/not being held, invoke an event, and in the handler for said event, use either bit masking into lookup table or finite state machine to select the correct sprite, or if the state that controls what sprite should be shown is simple enough, an if else block/chain can work just fine
I'm guessing this is due to running the game though wine on linux
Implement serialization/loading even for demo releases, load the menu text based on the state of the window, instead of only displaying the default
Create a setting switches between what controller prompt is displayed when a controller prompt is being displayed
Less technical feedback, the last level is quite antithetical to good puzzle game design, by the end of the level, I wasn't left feeling smart, something applauded by GTMK's own Mark Brown in the video he made "What Makes a Good Puzzle", in the same video, he also goes on to talk about a puzzle in the Talos principle quote: "The puzzle is incredibly simple once you know the - answer and it's effortless to execute the solution, which is always a plus in my book." Yes I am quoting you to you. In direct contrast to effortless execution the act of standing in one very particular spot, ensuring that the magnet has the correct polarity, aiming said magnet then tossing it in to a magnetic field with an exponential attraction affect, and changing the polarity at the exact moment to get it to land onto a toggle switch, then dashing in the complete opposite direction jumping over a gap, attempting to not get squished, to finally get to the collectable halfway across the room. Took me more time to execute than completing every other puzzle in the demo combined, and this is after I figured out the solution, mind you I originally discounted the idea that such a difficult process would be the answer, as I'm well aware on your stance on difficult execution of puzzles, in fact the process reminded me more of Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's explanation of why keyboard and mouse, is better for Doom 2016; quote: "Relatedly this is definitely a game that benefits from having the mouse and keyboard rather than the controller, because the controller's best suited to wheeling yourself around an arena like a runaway dessert trolley on a chest high wall safari, not so much for simultaneously jumping one way, looking in another, grabbing a ledge, shooting a dude and tying up your shoelaces." For reference I was using a PS4 controller <small-rant-on-controllers> (not that I have a PS4(or any other console), I got the controller separately because I knew it would work on PC) at the time, I thought PC(master race) + mouse & keyboard + controller, this line of reasoning has held up well in my experience. <small-rant-on-controllers/> Now while using the rather unorthodox setup of running "Untitled Magnet Game" on Manjaro linux using wine, with a PS4 controller works well, the button prompts however displayed the xbox button icons, even though in the GTMK video asking me, and you the reader of this post, to try out this game has the PS prompts displayed in it, and the xbox prompts do properly render even with this rather odd setup. The solution I would use would be take the same route that Shadow of War took, sadly not also Shadow of Mordor, and put in the settings which prompts the user would like to be shown, this is also nice because someone might have a different controller than their preferred prompts, I did look in the settings, and try out a couple of things, but you can only get so far with blank white rectangles. For clarity this is more a what could be improved post I do like the concept, and 5/6 of the puzzles, although I found it sad to be apart from the magnet at the end of some of the puzzles, especially in one where I could get back to the magnet, but am unable to because of the scene change. To this end I have an idea allow the robot to recall the magnet, but only about as frequently as the teleport crystals work in SAO abridged, obviously there would need to be an indicator as to when the magnet could be recalled this could either work through teleportation, or perhaps the robot could magnetically pull the magnet to itself, and the limit on the recall ability's use could be location based, charge based, toggle switch based like how in quantum conundrum, you must first slot IDS batteries into their slots in order to be able to toggle betwixt that and other dimensions, or it could function as a combination of multiple of these elements.
I wasn't expecting to write an essay today, hopefully it reads ok, I didn't give it the same treatment as a school paper essay, 2 weeks draft reviews, and prof reading, and all that.
Summary good job Mark, keep up the good work!
For anyone interested my website, it's long overdue for a big update ik.
I think the solution you found to the final level is not in fact the intended solution, or if it is, I found a much easier one. Before flipping the button on the top right, throw the magnet down into the pit so it slides down the slope, then switch the polarity so it rotates the door and prevents the block from being able to rise up and squish you. Then, push the button and jump over. No timing or super precise aiming required. I think perhaps the door needs to extend further into that gap so as to clearly convey that it will block the box when rotated to the left. Hopefully that makes sense, I might not be the best at writing guides haha
took notes as i played. posted them on youtube too
- Misunderstood the option "Toggle aim mode on/off"
I thought this would change the aim mode from holding e to enter aim, to tapping e to enter aiming mode and tapping e to exit
maybe something like "Disable aiming mode" might be more accurate?
- found initial ascending part of the jump a little slow/less potent than what feels right to me. idk might just be me
-found it a bit annoying that i cant move while aiming the magnet. feels like you should be able to move while aiming. might also be a chance to add momentum transfer between the player and the magnet
-picking up the magnet and instantly clicking LMB causes the magnet to be thrown at less then full power
- what are the green pipes and gates at the start of each level for? that a level exit that hasnt been implemented yet?
-after you complete the level once, theres no way to actually complete the level again since theres no key. maybe replacing the key with a greyed outline upon completion would help? colliding into it would end the level
-pressing F to change magnet polarity works after the player is dead
-the key icons above each level enterance feel like they should be underneth the magnet and not cover it up when the magnet is thrown over it
-plenty of soft locks with some of the puzzles. not a problem when they're short but will probably be a frustrating thing if the puzzles get really long. maybe a checkpoint or time reversal system might be a fun way to fix that? probably hell to implement though
-when using the magnet to stick to the ceiling, only pressing e will let the player ungrab the magnet. My first instinct was to press RMB or Q. not e
For one, I am pretty sure that I was able to solve some of the puzzles in a non-intended way or it may be that those solutions were just not satisfying enough that they felt like correct solutions.
Second, there is no way of completing levels once you've solved them already (since you've already gotten the key), I suggest putting a replacement for the key for those who do want to replay the levels so you don't need to give them a key for completion.
Lastly, the movement still feels a little stiff. Sometimes the only way to jump to higher platforms is to run and jump. It was sort of annoying to not make a tiny jump because I didn't run up to it. Also, while moving in levels is fine, I found that the player's speed was super slow in the hub. You also should be able to move and throw at the same time, slower if necessary.
The puzzles were nice and achievable, though definitely hard at points. I did all of them. Determining when to put myself in a "do or die"-type position was probably the hardest hurdle to get over, because for many puzzles, if you did not do it right, you would have to reset because the path backwards was closed. Making checkpoints (or letting the user make checkpoints) might help with that.
The keyboard setup was... alright. I don't normally play on keyboard, so I don't really have any room to complain there. I learned how to pair my Switch Pro controller with my computer and played everything past the tutorial that way.
The options menu could do with having a keybind on controller that lets you out. I ended up pressing the Esc key on my keyboard to leave it whenever I wanted to change something. Plus (+) let me in, but it did not let me leave.
The "Enter Aim Mode" keybind could use an explanation; after a few tries at figuring out the function, I gave up and put it on a button I wasn't likely to press. I found that the method that made the most sense to me was to put picking up and throwing the magnet on the left trigger, and changing polarity on the right trigger. Still, for that configuration, it might have been nice to use the right analogue stick to aim the throw, rather than having to hold down the left trigger the whole time and use the left analogue stick to aim. Essentially, I tried to aim the same way you do in CrossCode.
I've been following the progress on your YT channel, and I think this is shaping up to be pretty great. The controls feel (mostly) great. More on that below. The mechanics are fantastic and even with zero instructions it's really intuitive to figure out exactly how each object works and the little tricks that are possible in order to solve the levels. At least, so far.
The downsides are few, but I think important. First, the jumping is a bit... odd at times. It seems your jump height is determined by your forward velocity. This is common in this kind of game, but there's a few places where if you aren't going at max speed and jump at just the right point, you're going to miss the jump and in these levels at least, the two or three spots where this was an issue, I fell down to a point where I had to restart the level (through the retry system or just having to go through all the obstacles again, it's the same result.) I'm sure you've heard of the game design philosophy of Coyote Time? I wonder if you might implement something in the reverse? If your forward momentum is high enough, missing a ledge by a few pixels will place you on the ledge anyway. It would make up to higher ledges where there's a pit if you miss feel a whole lot better.
Finally I wonder if it's possible to have you exit from the pipe above the level you have just completed rather than all the way back to the start of the hub? I know it's a small thing, but over the time spent in one hub this can add up, especially if hubs ever get bigger than this one. Just something else to keep the flow of the game going without any more downtime than necessary.
Hey Mark! Hope you find some of this feedback helpful.
- While keys can be rebound, I recommend having right-click be set for Magnet Action. If you decide that the m+K gameplay is specifically left/right mouse to pickup/toss/swap polarization I think it will allow for quicker and easier play for folks. Having to stop movement in order to click a button to swap polarization isn't so fun.
- Movement to/from places that require the magnet is fun. Do more of that.
- For the hub world it might be fun to have each level door (or eventual subset of levels) be opened utilizing the key method that will be explored. Hub 1 can be throwing the magnet, but then eventually you need to step on a switch, get across a gap, etc etc.
- Up and Over: This is a good intro level that establishes what magnets can get through which you can't, how these switch doors work, and throwing/switching to accomplish goals. You might be able to make it less subtle that the particular asset can't be moved through in that particular direction by placing one that players need to jump over first.
- Not a Drill: This also establishes some good basics with switching the magnet to have it do multiple things away from you. I have an issue with the drill covering the shelf that the magnet can ultimately fall through. It's kind of a weird surprise vs being an established item that the magnet can go through these assets (despite what the last level accomplishes). Is there a way to create an asset that is clearly a platform/wall but has an element that indicates it's not a surface the magnet will settle on?
- Up and Away: This level might be able to help drive the above point home if the player were forced to throw the magnet from the top of the section, have it slide down and drop through the platforms and then get pulled into the switch door. It helps further emphasis that the magnet completely ignores these assets.
- Lift Up: No notes, this is a solid level for establishing the cancelling gateways.
- Weight and Pull-Me: Maybe a little too easy, but I like that it shows that there are switch gates that don't require magnets, which my brain defaulted to thinking I needed for a moment. Also it's really fun to have puzzles that require simply placing the magnet somewhere and then swapping polarization repeatedly to cause things to react as you navigate. Do more of that.
- Blocked by Block: Despite there being a quick level restart, might be nice to throw a small block in the pit next to the switch so players can jump out without needing to reset.
- Left Shift = sprint/movement boost? Yes please!
- When a Switch Pro Controller is plugged in the character jumps repeatedly and moves left. I found no way to stop this and had to just unplug and use m+k.
Really enjoyed the demo! The first few levels do a great job of teaching without words, and the last level in particular had me stumped for a good while. Great puzzle design and level design all around.
Some things I noticed with regards to gameplay:
There's no real way to replay levels. If you enter a level you've already beaten, there's no way to complete it because the key is gone. This isn't a huge issue because there's no real reason to replay levels, I just wanted to replay one of them to make sure I'd properly understood the mechanic it was teaching me.
Throwing the magnet into a pipe to open a door isn't terribly intuitive. At first I thought I had to jump into the attraction beam while carrying the magnet to go through the pipe myself. Took me a hot second to realize the pipe functioned more like a button for the door than a Mario-style pipe.
Some things I noticed with regards to visuals:
It wasn't immediately obvious to me that the magnet can pass through the thin platforms. The first time I finished level 2, I thought I had maybe encoutered a bug. It wasn't until I tried to replay level 2 that I realized that was probably an intended mechanic.
In the hub, the background doesn't scroll at the same speed as the signs / doors, creating an unintended paralax effect.
In the hub, the doors and signs are on a higher layer than the magnet and the trajectory.
Last level is too difficult. I think I cheesed it by throwing my magnet under the block so when it fell back down it blocked the button. I would like to move around while aiming to be more accurate and to speed up the gameplay.
I would like some visual feedback for how long I need to hold to reset the level.
Even though I have 7 keys, the hub says I have 6.
I loved the way the puzzles work, sometimes the gates felt useless. learning curve is good although last level is bit too much. The Hub feels alright, but something feels missing / wrong, but I can't put my finger on it.
Yes I also found that level incredibly hard. I personally cheesed it by throwing the magnet onto the button in the back of the room and then running to the other side before the big block went up.
I also want to add that there are multiple dumb ways to be softlocked in this room like falling under the blue attractor when you don't have the magnet with you.
UI: In the main menu, one button is always highlighted even if I don't hover anything. This felt a little weird.
Controls (mouse/keyboard): The character movement was really nice. I definitely noticed the Coyote Time. To throw the magnet, my first instinct was to hold E and then click, which did nothing. Of course I figured it out quickly, but this might be something to consider. The behavior when simply pressing E/clicking is interesting. I don't know if dropping the magnet might be more useful than a short throw.
Hub World: I don't know how to feel about the pipes. I appreciate the "use the magnet for everything" mentality, but maybe a simple button to enter a level would suffice. It's also kind of annoying that you always spawn at the start of the hub world and need to walk all the way to the next level.
Levels: Level 1 actually took me a minute to figure out. I just stumbled onto the fact that the magnet could slide by accident. Maybe the sliding mechanic could be introduced in a simpler scenario. Level 2 was nice and simple. An good introduction for the "transport magnet by switching by switching polarity" concept. I discovered level 3's solution by accident when trying to jump across the gap while the magnet was in the perfect position. Level 4 was not too difficult because there was pretty much a single path you could take without getting stuck. I probably liked level 5 the most. It had a cool concept and finally figuring out that you needed to press the buttons in the opposite order felt really satisfying. During the final level, it took quite some time before I noticed that part of the door could stop the blue box from moving up. Maybe the door could be moved a bit to the left to make that more obvious. One more thing: I had to retry some levels several times. A few more ways to get yourself unstuck after making a mistake, which aren't simply restarting the level would me nice.
Bugs: The largest bug I noticed is the fact that holding Ctrl for a few seconds during the "Thanks for playing" section causes some, let's say, interesting behavior. The magnet physics under low ceilings can be a bit wonky and I got stuck briefly at one point. Letting go off the magnet when it was stuck to the ceiling didn't always work reliably. I'm also pretty sure that hitting a button once caused it to toggle twice one time.
Conclusion: I really liked it and I definitely see the potential of the game concept. The graphics are functional but still nice to look at. The levels generally have a good size and difficulty. In case some platforming under time pressure is still an option: An Ori-style escape sequence could be really cool.
I actually recorded my first-time experience (including commentary). I don't know if that might be something of interest.
Yes, I like watching people play demos and small games for the first time. I don't know what it is, but I just like to see how they look at the puzzle or task at hand.
i'm not sure if it's possible to contact you anywhere directly, so i'll just leave this here and hopefully it doesn't break any rules of commenting. played through the demo and found it very sad there was no sound or music so i made a quick sketch for what i think the soundtrack could sound like :)
I did not have the time to get the last level, i think the concept don't hype me enough to get the "Haha moment". But i am not a player of this type of game, i only played baba is you ( but i do said "haha !" in Baba is you. )
I do feel it's because i always don't know if i have to speed it up, or just think a lot. And so i am mostly trying to do the same thing but more quickly.
So to me, the mix is weird.
The lack of sound was a bit weird, but overall i am very impressed, i had great feeling playing it, maybie sometimes characters feel slow a bit, especially in the lobby
I hope i am not too harsh, this is good please keep doing this :) Have a great day !
Okay some people do have sounds, weird but ok i might be dumb
I play a lot of puzzle games, and the last level was the only one to really hit the "Aha moment" for me. The rest felt like tutorials, which I think is fine once more levels get added, but they do feel a little weird in the demo.
But yeah I agree the overall experience was impressive and I think it will be even better once sound gets added. The animations felt spot-on to me.
It's shaping up well Mark! I didn't played the previous demo, just fyi.
I don't know if it's intentional but the throw mechanic feels smooth with analog stick but suddenly starts to snap and that feels really bad. If this isn't intentional I'd suggest you to design everything around D-Pad maybe? If it is intentional and you want to enforce certain angles at high throw force I'd suggest you to interpolate the line instead of it just instantly snapping to the desired state.
The movement feels good but maybe it can be improved a bit by speeding it up a bit while retaining the jump arc as is. The high jump feels a bit too floaty in comparison to the tap jump.
The only other things I've noticed is the magnet going through platforms but the character not being able to jump down through and the character starting without the magnet on the hub, it's better if he's already holding it for ease of use. It happened to me a bunch of times that I moved without grabbing it and had to walk back to get it, hah.
I think the aim/fire mechanic would be way more fluid if you separated aiming and firing (as in, RMB aims, and releasing it cancels the shot, and LMB fires). It would be a lot more intuitive to me because a lot of games work that way. Maybe changing polarity could be done with the mouse wheel or MMB?
Also, I thought needing to throw the magnet upwards to enter a level was clunky and cumbersome. I would much rather it just be a simple door.
I liked that there was a grace period for jumping after leaving a platform, but I feel like there should be one for jumping onto platforms as well.
You should definitely be able to aim while moving. I know it'd break some puzzles, but I think it would add a lot of depth.
The levels aren't really re-playable, which might help with retention. For example, games like Angry Birds, Cut The Rope and others were sticky because they had more than just the linear path from start to finish; you could improve your score by trying levels repeatedly until you attained a 'perfect' score.
My new game (Paladin's Passage) had the same problem initially: once you completed a level, the only reason to go back would be to get a better time, which wasn't really incentivized. I completely revamped the level progression, eliminated the idea of lives, letting players replay levels as often as they wanted, and put non-linear goals (partially-hidden collectible 'secrets') in each level to incentivize replay to try to get a perfect score.
I agree with some of the other comments as well; the controls are still a bit janky. It is tough to get 'flow' going. Also definitely needs some sounds: music, environmental, etc.! Even a placeholder of something royalty-free would be an improvement.
As a fellow video and tactile game designer I didn’t find any major problems, it was a solid puzzle experience. If there are any notes, it’s on things you’re probably already working on fixing.
Hub is boring, but I’m sure you’re working on what it will eventually look like
Fonts are inconsistent, but those are placeholders
The black-swipe screen transition into a level works, but it doesn’t do one on level reset which is kinda jarring
The Puzzles were good, not too hard. I finished the game in 6 minutes, the 6th one took a disproportionate amount of time (the one where you have to stop the rising box with the door), but once I figured it out I went “ohhhhhhhh” out loud, which is a good sound.
I liked how all of the solutions were obvious once they were solved. Like, once you figured out what you needed to do, it wasn’t like “alright, now let me try this 6 times to see if it works” it was more “does this work… Yes! Awesome, next puzzle”
I thought the player moved and jumped pretty satisfyingly, it needs to move a little slow to keep the slow, methodical puzzle-solving theme going.
I'm not a puzzle player but I thought the levels were generally very good, nice difficulty curve. However, the last level I solved by doing random things until it worked. Felt slightly different to the other levels, I didn't feel lead to the answer.
The movement and mechanics seem very well designed, I like all the unique items and the magnet felt very emphasised. However, the jump felt kinda floaty? The peak of the jump he feels weightless, although this may be an animation thing not the actual mechanic.
You should definitely be able to aim while moving, its jarring to be locked while aiming, as you cant make minor adjustments and I often ended up having to be forced to restart even though I knew it wouldn't work. I also think you should be able to cancel the throw. Not sure if this is a function already but super frustrating to not be able to cancel a throw I know isn't going to work.
Everything looks amazing and very clean. Possibly the hub world should be changed? It feels a lil clunky to get into worlds by throwing magnet, maybe just auto open doors or require no aiming for level selection.
Overall, felt very fun to play and the concept is super interesting, could definitely go places with more timing related puzzles. Keep up the good work :D
I really liked this demo. Overall it feels very good and is very fun playing. Although it weren't implemented I was able to feel the heavy "thumb" sound of the magnets falling to the ground. Very good job with this especially considdering this game does not even have sound yet. Regarding the difficulty : for me at least most levels were quite easy. I were able to solve them after a few trials. Only the last level was very difficult. It took me some time until I finally figured it out.
Now to what I noticed while playing it:
SUGGESTIONS:
- Why do I have to press a button to pick up the magnet, but auto-pickup the key?
- Why do I let go of the magnet upon entering a magnetized revolving door, but I keep the hold on the magnet whilst getting pulled towards another large magnet.
- Maybe start AND end aiming with right mouse button and throw with the left mouse button. This is more intuitiv since that's what is being used in most games: RMB: zoom/aim LMB: shoot/trigger (Also while the game tells you that you can throw with E, but it doesn't tell you that you can shoot with the mouse. I only found out through the options menu)
- Maybe add the possibility to go downwards through semi-solid objects usind the "down" key. Similar to how Super Mario can jump up through floors and falls back down by ducking.
For example the ladder in Lvl 3. One can climb it by jumping upwards but one can not go down by pressing "down". By this you don't need to leave space to get down.
- Keyboard options: When using a non-english keyboard the depicted button might differ from the actual button pressed: I have a QWERTZ keyboard so compared to the standard english keyboard "Y" and "Z" are swapped. So if I want to rebind an action e.g. "Jump" to my Z key it shows that I have bound the action to my Y key. The problem is worse for more different keyboards like a cyrillic or greek Keyboard.
- It is not possible to spam the "magnet action" key. One can only use the key again until after the animation has played. Because of this one can not use the blue magnetic beams to quickly turn the magnet red and back to blue mid air so that it gets some additional height.
- On keyboard controll it feels a bit weird having the left hand pointer finger do the job for three actions: Move right, swap polarization and throw magnet. Furthermore one can not simultaneously move right whilst pressing "swap polarization" or "throw magnet".
(Also like others have already said, it would be nice to be able to move while aiming, maybe it would be nice to move only slowly while aming such that minor corrections are easily possible.)
MINOR DETAILS:
level design:
- The ladder in Lvl 3 could use an additional stair, so that it is shut with the floor to the sides of it. As it currently is one needs to do an awkward jump.
- The chain in Lvl feels a bit janky. Whilst the magnet and the box go up and down, the length of the chain varies. Thus it feels more like a rubber band than a solid iron chain.
MINOR BUGS:
- (Windows) Holding down LMB to aim. Alt-Tab out of the game and back into it. The robot thorws the magnet and you can drive around. But you cannot pick the magnet up (using "E"). You have to click into the game window to be able to pick it up again.
- Credit Level: when driving to the far right side the level shifts up and down a few pixel.
The path shown is not neccesarily the path the magnet takes:
Here (Lvl 7) it looks as if one could throw the magnet through the hole between the block and the ground. But the magnet gets blocked by the big block:
For some reason, resetting the tutorial level took 3-5 seconds, but was almost instant on every other level
On the hinge wall in the tutorial, I noticed that if I try to go back the other way too quickly, it sometimes doesn't activate until I move away from the wall and try again
The aiming trail doesn't always line up with my mouse (usually it's below where my mouse is) - not a huge issue but kinda annoying at times
On my second playthrough I noticed a pretty big bug in that I could no longer throw the magnet (this happened on the "lift up" level - my arms would fall parallel to the ground and I wouldn't be able to do anything, even after dropping and re-grabbing the magnet)
JokerDBlue posted this below (or above, wherever this shows up), but on the hub world and thank you level, holding the ctrl button causes the reset icon to grow infinitely in size
If you hold F, the magnet will switch polarity twice: on the initial press and whenever you lift the key
Some nitpicks:
It took me a hot minute to figure out that I was supposed to hold ctrl to reset the level instead of just tapping it, and part of that was that tapping it still caused the animation to start (I actually thought it was being buggy until I figured it out). I think it might be better to either make the animation more varied (so like a little meter that fills the arrow the longer you hold) or just hold off on the animation until the button's been held for a little bit to make it less confusing
I like the art style of the game a lot, but I feel like there's some weird disconnect between the cartoony feel of the world and the crispness of the ui (the reset and polarity buttons and the text) - I think it'd look better if you just made the ui feel less polished (that's not the exact word I'm looking for but hopefully you understand what I mean)
I feel like the current levels are too short, as in they each only have one gimmick. They work perfectly as introductory levels since they're not too difficult and give a good view as to what to expect from later levels, but later on I'd like to see either some larger levels (spacially) or some more complex levels (as in they have more steps crammed into a smaller area - Baba Is You did this a lot and I absolutely loved it)
I completely missed the level names on my first playthrough, so I think it'd be nice if they either appeared above the door in the hub world or showed up for a few seconds upon starting a level
Praise:
The art style is amazing - everything looks very cute and cartoonish but at the same time is extremely well-polished
The existing levels are difficult without being infuriating - I love the outside-the-box solutions on some of them, and the sixth level was my favorite just because it took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do and even then it still felt like I was cheesing the system
I really like the inclusion of the hub area - it makes it feel more casual and gives it a more of a "these puzzles are sort of on par with each other difficulty-wise" vibe, whereas with linear progression I would have expected each new level to be strictly more difficult than the previous one
Movement feels really good - it's nice and snappy while still keeping its fluidity
I generally really enjoyed it, for an early demo its overall pretty good. I liked the idea with the hub, however i felt that i had no incentive to skip a level, and there it felt a bit (tiny bit) tideous to run through the hub level every time.
I played on my macbook, and the window was really big, when in windowed mode (i suspect that you have the standard resolution set to something that fits on your monitor), so big that i couldn't see the fullscreen button that you had implemented in the main menu. I did get it to fit my screen, but a resizeable window would be very nice.
But overall great job with this demo, i also really liked the graphics and the feel of the character.
Just watched your video and decided to try the game as soon as possible. Overall, great work, game feels very good and even juicy in some parts (love the impact of rotating doors, heavy metallic hit sound will acompany it perfectly, when you'd get to sounds). Got myself a few Aha moments, which were quite satisfying. Really loking forward to future game progress and videos on it.
Now for what I felt need some tweaking:
Character feels a bit lacking in speed, was finding myself pressing harder on A/D buttons while moving. Or maybe it's just me;
Character stopping while aiming might be a bit inconvinient, when you need to adjust position a little. May be you can make it just slow down, and not full stop;
6th level was quite a spike in difficulty, had me scratching my head for a good 5 minutes, before I figured what was I meant to do. Having to get cube stopped by a door wasn't really intuitive;
Platforming has still crawled in your levels - this part in 6th level when you need to quicly jump over the pit and go under the press. Took me at least 10 tries to do I thought that was the solution. Look at previous point then;
Starting at the begining of the hub each time gets kinda boring. Maybe you can make character start at the level player just have finished and use starting point only on first enter and game load;
Openning levels' doors with throwing magnet at the pipe feels new, but gets a bit annoying after some time;
That's said, I can close my eyes on all of this, just for how juicy magnet interactions feel. Really love it! <3 <3
P.S. love hand drawn settings icons, really felt your love for the game :)
After dropping the cube from the door, you need to jump over the hole you drop the cube in and then go under descending press to get to the key before press lowers to the platform. Maybe it’s just me (I’m not good in platforming), but this bit was the second most challenging for me
I thought the same about your first two points. Maybe one could raise the driving speed in the hub level since it is far more spacious. For me it was neither too fast nor too slow while inside the levels.
The background parallax looks strange, especially when there are doors. The doors also cover up the smoke effects and aiming lines, which feels and looks a bit weird.
The fact the hub is non-linear is cool, but it's hindered a bit by the fact that you basically pick levels at random, and you have no incentive to play all of them once you have enough keys to progress.
You also have no insight on what is within the level before you select it, so you're essentially picking stages at random until you get enough keys. This works in other games where the hub is presented as a map with branching paths, because it somehow makes deciding which path you pick feel more meaningful, and some levels are locked behind others. Maybe some levels could give out multiple keys? Or maybe the hub itself could be more interesting or complex to navigate, to make picking and choosing levels more interesting? Maybe certain levels could unlock keys to other areas of the hub? Dunno, just throwing out some ideas off the top of my head.
The tutorial introduced a pipe as the solution to the level, and I made a mental note that this would be the objective of the game throughout, but it turned out not to be true, even though pipes appeared later on in stages.
I think the movement feels good, jumping feels nice. But there is a weird gap between pressing the throw button and the player character actually beginning their wind up. This makes initiating a throw feel really awkward.
I think it actually plays quite nicely on mouse and keyboard, but the default controls need a little work - the less I have to move my hand all over the keyboard, the better.
The visuals are nice. I like the facial expression on the character when you aim, If you wanted to expand on that, the magnet's expression could change while it is in mid-air (it might already, but it's kind of hard to tell?), and also immediately after a collision. Maybe on the anticipation before the throw as well. The colour palette is good.
This is a bit of a weird one - technically returning to the hub being in the main menu makes sense, but for some reason it felt kinda weird.
Great job! love the video series. I hope my feedback is useful!
Hi Mark first things first: You did a really good job and this demo is really great so far.
I made note of some good things and some things that either weren´t that good or just of some little issues.
1. To start with the good things first:
There were no things I found that were that broken or really bugy
The control of the character feels really smooth and you really feel like you are in control of that robot
You introduced every main mechanic great by making the playerexperience that and introducing more advanced mechanics
You have many versital level concepts and you make the player think of an individual solution for each one (not by presentating an obvious solution but by making the player testing everything out and as I said thinking)
You introduced interesting objects that interact differently with the player and the magnet
Two other things that were positiv is that you can´t change the magnet to +/- before it is completely attracted by an active source nearby
and that the player gets attracted by a "magnetic push gate" if he´s holding the magnet
2. The things that weren´t that great:
After holding E for throwing and then entering and closing the menu you insta throw the magnet (would be better if it completely cancels the throw or just doesn´t throw it and you have to aim as before)
If you pass a "push gate" and then instantly turn to the side you came from the gate doesn´t let you through until you moved a bit (just a tiny issue)
The throw dot line of the magnet goes through the edge of the pipe however it is solid
After selecting fullscreen closing and opening the game it is still in fullscreen but on the button is the wrong selection. The button would normaly say windowed if everythig was correct but it says fullscreen however you already are in fullscreen
Before the loading screen is completely gone you can move (I think it would be more enjoyable if you can´t start before the loading screen is gone)
Sometimes it would be way better if the player could drop the magnet instead of having to throw it so it doesn´t bounces away from the players target
I only found out on accident that you can actually cancel a throw. So if there is a way to tell the player that mechanic I would love to see it in a future game or demo or wathever.
3. To come to a conclusion:
Even if the length of the good and bad sections are more or less even I would say that the sections with the good points absolutely outweights the negative points with no doubt. It already feels like a demo with a finished game waiting to be released. Everything looks and feels great. You really are in control of everything. You have really good puzzles and great objects you can use in those puzzles. To be in control of which level you play is also great for example if you are completely stuck somewhere and don´t know what to do you can just come back at another time.
I hope I could make you feel proud of yourself for what you accomplished and feel great because YOU really deserved that.
Feels quite good! Controls are intuitive, though I did map my magnet so I could use it with just the mouse. I would love to see some longer puzzles in future versions, but otherwise I think this is very inventive! I really liked the solution to level 7, but it is a bit finicky to get right without getting the magnet stuck out of reach.
The character feel is much improved which was nice, however I feel like it could use a bit more "snappiness". Maybe move just a bit faster, change directions a bit quicker, etc. That being said, I believe sound will greatly improve this or possibly completely solve it altogether.
The puzzle design was good and I felt a few "aha" moments, but overall the puzzles just feel good, not great.
To be fair, I just played through Baba Is You so maybe take this with a grain of salt, but after completing this demo nothing really felt memorable to me. To compound this problem most of the levels felt very samey.
In my opinion, this game totally has the foundation it needs to be something special, but I can't shake the feeling that something is missing that would take it to the next level. Unfortunately, I have no idea what that is.
The controls feel good. I like that the player stops and then the animation has a follow though. To me this makes it feel realistic without having the control feel sloppy. You also had a good balance between puzzle and platform. Me and my chat think you could use another run at level four, as it was a little too confusing. Other than that some audio would also really make this thing shine. Either way, very solid MVP 2. Cheers!
I really liked the demo. The puzzles were difficult enough to maintain me entertained, but not too much to be frustrating.
The game next demo definitely needs some sound effects, specially for secondary feedback of things happening in the level, like magnet changing polarity, or platforms moving.
In the hub, it feels weird how the background moves a different speed than the gates (that one would think that are in the same depth as the background)
Also, I would change the way the trow button works. Because for a short demo it's no such big deal, but for a full release game, it would be annoying how you have to maintain pressed the trow button to see the path of the magnet.
The other thing I don't like, is how the "double state buttons" (or levers) works. It doesn't always change to the side I like, or it is difficult to trow the magnet specifically to one half of the button.
What I really liked is the feel of the magnet. It feels heavy, but with powerful attraction at the same time. Also, the movement feels great, i had to habituate to the "long" delay making the biggest jumps, but once learned, i really liked it.
Very nice puzzle game. It plays good and the levels are clever.
I had few issues. The ramps are confusing. You can just drive up any incline in the game, but to me the ramps blend in with the background. I was jumping them up like they were stairs, always took me a moment to realize I don't have to do that.
The tutorial was little confusing at the end. You have to throw the magnet up the green pipe to finish it, which made me think you need to do this at the end of every level. I was fixating on that quite a lot and was sometimes even planning the solution based on the fact that I need to get my magnet back after I get the key to finish the level. Which obviously you don't need to do, so the levels are often impossible to solve with both key and magnet in your possession.
While we are on that topic, selecting levels by aiming and throwing the magnet is too much of a hassle IMO. I wish it was simpler, just pressing a button on a prompt would be nice.
And last, unless you are planning to give R and W some separate function, please make R the default reset key (why is it CTRL ?) and bind jumping to both SPACE and W. Thanks.
Not bad, noticed that if you throw yourself at a ledge while holding a magnet you can get caught slightly, as the character and the magnet have collision but the tether between them doesn't. Might be a space for a new mechanic, a thin floor piece (zip-line) that has to be traversed with a magnet. Maybe having to alternate polarity to progress down the line. Another issue, when holding down for aimed throw, you come to a stop; i.e. no aimed throws on the move. Not sure if it is intentional design, but It might be limiting on design space for puzzles. also, If you go to replay a level, there is no key or placeholder. Only way to leave a level you are replaying is to esc. and return to hub. That maybe fine, but it needs at least a phantom key in the replayed level to show what the objective of the level was, otherwise its a question without an answer. The reset level button might need a better indicator, currently there is a slight delay when pressing control before it engages. There isn't much feedback on if it is registering your button press, it took several seconds to realize that it was a press and hold prompt rather than a simple push. Might need to adjust the level hub or increase the characters move speed. 6 levels was about 1 level too many to walk past to get to the next level. Maybe spawn in the middle with 3 pipes to each side, and next batch of levels is a pipe overhead? Sorry for the wall of text. good luck with the game!
Feedback: The character feels really nice to play and move around with, there's nothing that feels janky or annoying about him at all.
However, I will say the screen resolution is a tab bit annoying; I think the game should open in full screen and have an option to make it a resizable window.
I'm also really grateful for remappable controls because while the game does feel good to play using a controller (thanks to the bumper and trigger buttons) playing on the keyboard wasn't all that fun in the beginning. I wasn't a fan of all the different controls I had to master and keep track of, it all seemed overwhelming whether it was between jumping or switch polarities. It wasn't until thankfully there were remapping controls that I was able to get into it.
Being able to change the magnetic switch to the RMB and jump the MMB helped a lot with keeping everything simple.
Aim and throw with the LMB, jump with MMB, and changed polarities with the RMB.
The first shifty thing you walk into to shift doesn't shift if you are already walking into it when it finishes its animation. Idk how to explain what i mean by shifty thing but it's literally the first game object after the game teaches you what button it is to jump.
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
First of all: Nice job! The game played quite well.
Key Data:
Version: 2.0
Playtime: 20 min
Input: Mouse and Keyboard
Default Settings
The experience of the game was nice overall. Nothing that pulled me in completely, but a few nice Aha-Moments and nothing overly frustrating.
I experienced no bugs during my playtime.
The rise in and level of difficulty was appropriate my personal taste and the game being in a demo state.
I was able to intuit my way through the earlier levels and had to plan a little in the later levels without getting stuck.
The hub reminded me of the old Lego star wars games, but was quite barren. Throwing the magnet into a tube to open a gate felt unintuitive and al little bit tedious.
It would be nice to have some elements from the levels in the hub to be able to play around and familiarize yourself with the Gameplay elements.
The thin platforms that let the magnet, but not the player pass through looked quite a lot like platforms in other jump and run games, that allow the player to pass through if they press the down key.
This felt a tad unintuitive.
In the earlier levels it seemed always possible to get back to the status quo after messing up. It felt a little bit jarring to use the reset button for the first time in level 5.
The revolving door in level 6 was positioned in a way, that I had a hard time to tell if it would block the magnet-block from passing when rotated. This could be seen either as a good or bad thing.
It was one of the first things that I tested after playing around (just by chance) and getting it to activate remote was still a nice challenge, but I could see it being frustrating to not be able to solve a puzzle because you misinterpreted the parameters.
A particularly nice experience was when I thought I got stuck in level 4 and then figured out a way to get unstuck without resetting. The solution was quite close to the levels solution and solving two puzzles at once felt rewarding.
In my opinion the game is lacking most in classical "game features". With one objective and only one degree of success per level and no structure in the hub it felt a little bit like ticking boxes on a list with no room for overachieving or exploring.
One weird thing: The "Thanks for playing" level moved in a weird way. I was unsure if something else was supposed to happen or if the movement itself was a bug.
Overall: Solid basis and while this demo didn't make me exited to play the final game, it still was a lot of fun with only minor annoyances and I'm exited to see the next YouTube update.
Great second demo! Some minor bugs I found:
* If you pause the game and then press A/space to select Resume Game, Restart Level, or Return to Hub, the robot will do a little hop.
* You can skip the tutorial entirely by pausing the game and selecting Return to Hub.
Took 5 minutes to complete, found it very easy to grasp the concept. I play a lot of puzzle games though, so not too surprising I blitzed through these beginner levels. Did them left to right in the hub and that was satisfying enough for me, but being reset to the left every time I exited a level was irksome.
Found that booting up the game on my second monitor resulted in it launching at a tiny resolution, and only fixed it thanks to knowing that I could press alt+enter to make it fullscreen on my main monitor and then rebooting it to fix the issue.
Found that quickly reversing directions into the rotating doorways would result in them not moving back the other way which felt a bit clunky. Would be nice if they were immediately responsive so I could have fun quickly flicking left and right in them.
Very easy to get softlocked in a puzzle and then require a reset, as all it takes is leaving the magnet behind somewhere only accessible with said magnet. I don't think the puzzle design would allow for a "summon magnet" button without massive overhauls, but maybe a rewind function would be a possible alternative. Otherwise, puzzles will have to stay rather short and simple to avoid frustration when restarting the level if you make a single slip up.
I had fun though and would like to see more levels, ideally ramping up significantly in difficulty by the end to really get you thinking with magnets. A second magnet, perhaps, would add a lot more puzzle potential in later levels?
EDIT: Forgot to include this, but I found it weird whenever I couldn't press down or down+jump to drop through the thinner platforms that are often used as steps. Guess that part of game design language is ingrained into me.
The game was pretty fun. I offer my thoughts
- There's no UI button to get out of the options, you have to press ESC which wasn't the first thing I thought of
- I like to use Backspace for jump a lot of the time (I have a weird keyboard), but there wasn't an icon for backspace in the control popup in the level
- "Carry / Enter Aim Mode" and "Magnet Action" aren't names that I immediately know which key I'd normally bind it to
- I thought I encountered a bug where the magnet would only be thrown in one direction, but after a while I realized that you have to use the mouse to aim. I had been thinking you could aim by pressing and holding throw
- I tried to reset the level to troubleshoot the previous issue with the in-game reset, but it looks like it only resets the state of objects it thinks are changed. It'd be nice if there were a hard reset
- If you quit out in the hub before playing a level, you'll be reset to the tutorial (you can still "Return to Hub" though)
- You can have multiple actions bound to the same key
- It'd be nice if you could fullscreen by dragging the window to the top of the screen in Windows
- Down + Jump should let you go down through semisolid platforms
- In the hub, the magnet shows behind the Key Signs and the doors
- The movement feels like it's optimized for a different game. Like the coyote time is nice, but I'm not really trying to correctly time jumps. As it is, I kept bonking into 2-high walls because I jumped too early, which is cool in a platformer, but kinda lame in a puzzle game
- Is the intended solution to the last puzzle to slide the magnet under the negative block which its up and have it land next to the button? If it is, that felt awkward.
- Having to pick up the magnet at the start of every level felt tedious
- I feel like the puzzles could be cooler if you had to get both the player and the magnet into a spot. That said, I enjoyed #5 a good deal.
As others have mentioned switching polarity for keyboard is akward. I tend to move my finger from my D (Right Key) to the F (Polarity Key) making it difficult to move right and change polarity in the last level. like some others have said having this option on the mouse whould make a lot of sence as the mouse controls the magnet, But that might make it hard for laptop users. I think a nice middle ground would be to have the default key binding be the LEFT SHIFT key as the pinky does not have a critical role in moving.
Summary: Changing polarity with mouse or shift key are easier to control as the default settings.
Agreed!
Great demo! The improvements in the way the character feels are great. Only thing that might be nice is if you could move slowly while aiming instead of having to cancel the throw and move if your just a little off. I also would like to be able to rebind the mouse buttons as personally I'd rather have right click be polarization.
I enjoyed all the puzzles and felt like the difficulty was good. The magnet feels very central to these levels so I think that has improved massively. Like other reviewers, I didn't immediately get the pipe and tried to jump in it, though i do really like it as a mechanic. Maybe some something to differentiate it from green mario pipes would stop players from trying to jump in it.
Only annoyance as far as mechanics is that with the rotating walls that the player can push, turning around too quickly to walk back through it can cause it to not open. This is only mildly annoying, but it does feel clunky if you realize you need to turn around. video here
Here's my feedback:
Many old flash games had a level where it was incredibly easy to get "softlocked" with the caption of "you can always try again" or "press R to retry" to teach that mechanic.
this isn't a full review. I agree with most comments submitted here. one note: I suggest replacing the pipes from the hub into actual buttons with attraction magnets. It utilizes concepts from the game while improving consistency. as far as the key system goes, exiting through a door makes more sense (also allows for replayability of levels which is lacking) and the keys can be acquired upon level completion, in the hub.
Massive improvement! I still find the controls with mouse + keyboard a little finicky—especially changing the polarity. I often found myself getting lost between clicking and E, and also found it very annoying that I couldn't change polarity with the mouse. Maybe a middle click? Or scroll? That way with two scroll "notches" it would go from red to blue to red.
I also wasn't sure if the lag between switching polarity was intentional. I couldn't figure out the last puzzle though in my brain part of it was polarity switching. Something to tweak maybe.
Hello Mark great content, and from one game dev to another solid concept for this game.
I've found a few bugs, firstly I should mention that, I exclusively run Manjaro KDE linux these days, so the fact that it runs out of the box with wine, it's very neat. As for the bugs I'm speaking of the windows binary of the game on linux though wine.
Bugs:
My solutions:
Less technical feedback, the last level is quite antithetical to good puzzle game design, by the end of the level, I wasn't left feeling smart, something applauded by GTMK's own Mark Brown in the video he made "What Makes a Good Puzzle", in the same video, he also goes on to talk about a puzzle in the Talos principle quote: "The puzzle is incredibly simple once you know the - answer and it's effortless to execute the solution, which is always a plus in my book." Yes I am quoting you to you. In direct contrast to effortless execution the act of standing in one very particular spot, ensuring that the magnet has the correct polarity, aiming said magnet then tossing it in to a magnetic field with an exponential attraction affect, and changing the polarity at the exact moment to get it to land onto a toggle switch, then dashing in the complete opposite direction jumping over a gap, attempting to not get squished, to finally get to the collectable halfway across the room. Took me more time to execute than completing every other puzzle in the demo combined, and this is after I figured out the solution, mind you I originally discounted the idea that such a difficult process would be the answer, as I'm well aware on your stance on difficult execution of puzzles, in fact the process reminded me more of Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's explanation of why keyboard and mouse, is better for Doom 2016; quote: "Relatedly this is definitely a game that benefits from having the mouse and keyboard rather than the controller, because the controller's best suited to wheeling yourself around an arena like a runaway dessert trolley on a chest high wall safari, not so much for simultaneously jumping one way, looking in another, grabbing a ledge, shooting a dude and tying up your shoelaces." For reference I was using a PS4 controller <small-rant-on-controllers> (not that I have a PS4(or any other console), I got the controller separately because I knew it would work on PC) at the time, I thought PC(master race) + mouse & keyboard + controller, this line of reasoning has held up well in my experience. <small-rant-on-controllers/> Now while using the rather unorthodox setup of running "Untitled Magnet Game" on Manjaro linux using wine, with a PS4 controller works well, the button prompts however displayed the xbox button icons, even though in the GTMK video asking me, and you the reader of this post, to try out this game has the PS prompts displayed in it, and the xbox prompts do properly render even with this rather odd setup. The solution I would use would be take the same route that Shadow of War took, sadly not also Shadow of Mordor, and put in the settings which prompts the user would like to be shown, this is also nice because someone might have a different controller than their preferred prompts, I did look in the settings, and try out a couple of things, but you can only get so far with blank white rectangles. For clarity this is more a what could be improved post I do like the concept, and 5/6 of the puzzles, although I found it sad to be apart from the magnet at the end of some of the puzzles, especially in one where I could get back to the magnet, but am unable to because of the scene change. To this end I have an idea allow the robot to recall the magnet, but only about as frequently as the teleport crystals work in SAO abridged, obviously there would need to be an indicator as to when the magnet could be recalled this could either work through teleportation, or perhaps the robot could magnetically pull the magnet to itself, and the limit on the recall ability's use could be location based, charge based, toggle switch based like how in quantum conundrum, you must first slot IDS batteries into their slots in order to be able to toggle betwixt that and other dimensions, or it could function as a combination of multiple of these elements.
I wasn't expecting to write an essay today, hopefully it reads ok, I didn't give it the same treatment as a school paper essay, 2 weeks draft reviews, and prof reading, and all that.
Summary good job Mark, keep up the good work!
For anyone interested my website, it's long overdue for a big update ik.
I think the solution you found to the final level is not in fact the intended solution, or if it is, I found a much easier one. Before flipping the button on the top right, throw the magnet down into the pit so it slides down the slope, then switch the polarity so it rotates the door and prevents the block from being able to rise up and squish you. Then, push the button and jump over. No timing or super precise aiming required. I think perhaps the door needs to extend further into that gap so as to clearly convey that it will block the box when rotated to the left. Hopefully that makes sense, I might not be the best at writing guides haha
Like this
took notes as i played. posted them on youtube too
- Misunderstood the option "Toggle aim mode on/off"
I thought this would change the aim mode from holding e to enter aim, to tapping e to enter aiming mode and tapping e to exit
maybe something like "Disable aiming mode" might be more accurate?
- found initial ascending part of the jump a little slow/less potent than what feels right to me. idk might just be me
-found it a bit annoying that i cant move while aiming the magnet. feels like you should be able to move while aiming. might also be a chance to add momentum transfer between the player and the magnet
-picking up the magnet and instantly clicking LMB causes the magnet to be thrown at less then full power
- what are the green pipes and gates at the start of each level for? that a level exit that hasnt been implemented yet?
-after you complete the level once, theres no way to actually complete the level again since theres no key. maybe replacing the key with a greyed outline upon completion would help? colliding into it would end the level
-pressing F to change magnet polarity works after the player is dead
-the key icons above each level enterance feel like they should be underneth the magnet and not cover it up when the magnet is thrown over it
-plenty of soft locks with some of the puzzles. not a problem when they're short but will probably be a frustrating thing if the puzzles get really long. maybe a checkpoint or time reversal system might be a fun way to fix that? probably hell to implement though
-when using the magnet to stick to the ceiling, only pressing e will let the player ungrab the magnet. My first instinct was to press RMB or Q. not e
I applaud a fellow note taker, and these are pretty good
You are doing a great job so far!
I think a few things could use some improvement
For one, I am pretty sure that I was able to solve some of the puzzles in a non-intended way or it may be that those solutions were just not satisfying enough that they felt like correct solutions.
Second, there is no way of completing levels once you've solved them already (since you've already gotten the key), I suggest putting a replacement for the key for those who do want to replay the levels so you don't need to give them a key for completion.
Lastly, the movement still feels a little stiff. Sometimes the only way to jump to higher platforms is to run and jump. It was sort of annoying to not make a tiny jump because I didn't run up to it. Also, while moving in levels is fine, I found that the player's speed was super slow in the hub. You also should be able to move and throw at the same time, slower if necessary.
Thanks so much for the game!
The puzzles were nice and achievable, though definitely hard at points. I did all of them. Determining when to put myself in a "do or die"-type position was probably the hardest hurdle to get over, because for many puzzles, if you did not do it right, you would have to reset because the path backwards was closed. Making checkpoints (or letting the user make checkpoints) might help with that.
The keyboard setup was... alright. I don't normally play on keyboard, so I don't really have any room to complain there. I learned how to pair my Switch Pro controller with my computer and played everything past the tutorial that way.
The options menu could do with having a keybind on controller that lets you out. I ended up pressing the Esc key on my keyboard to leave it whenever I wanted to change something. Plus (+) let me in, but it did not let me leave.
The "Enter Aim Mode" keybind could use an explanation; after a few tries at figuring out the function, I gave up and put it on a button I wasn't likely to press. I found that the method that made the most sense to me was to put picking up and throwing the magnet on the left trigger, and changing polarity on the right trigger. Still, for that configuration, it might have been nice to use the right analogue stick to aim the throw, rather than having to hold down the left trigger the whole time and use the left analogue stick to aim. Essentially, I tried to aim the same way you do in CrossCode.
I've been following the progress on your YT channel, and I think this is shaping up to be pretty great. The controls feel (mostly) great. More on that below. The mechanics are fantastic and even with zero instructions it's really intuitive to figure out exactly how each object works and the little tricks that are possible in order to solve the levels. At least, so far.
The downsides are few, but I think important. First, the jumping is a bit... odd at times. It seems your jump height is determined by your forward velocity. This is common in this kind of game, but there's a few places where if you aren't going at max speed and jump at just the right point, you're going to miss the jump and in these levels at least, the two or three spots where this was an issue, I fell down to a point where I had to restart the level (through the retry system or just having to go through all the obstacles again, it's the same result.) I'm sure you've heard of the game design philosophy of Coyote Time? I wonder if you might implement something in the reverse? If your forward momentum is high enough, missing a ledge by a few pixels will place you on the ledge anyway. It would make up to higher ledges where there's a pit if you miss feel a whole lot better.
Finally I wonder if it's possible to have you exit from the pipe above the level you have just completed rather than all the way back to the start of the hub? I know it's a small thing, but over the time spent in one hub this can add up, especially if hubs ever get bigger than this one. Just something else to keep the flow of the game going without any more downtime than necessary.
Looking forward to what's to come.
Hey Mark! Hope you find some of this feedback helpful.
- While keys can be rebound, I recommend having right-click be set for Magnet Action. If you decide that the m+K gameplay is specifically left/right mouse to pickup/toss/swap polarization I think it will allow for quicker and easier play for folks. Having to stop movement in order to click a button to swap polarization isn't so fun.
- Movement to/from places that require the magnet is fun. Do more of that.
- For the hub world it might be fun to have each level door (or eventual subset of levels) be opened utilizing the key method that will be explored. Hub 1 can be throwing the magnet, but then eventually you need to step on a switch, get across a gap, etc etc.
- Up and Over: This is a good intro level that establishes what magnets can get through which you can't, how these switch doors work, and throwing/switching to accomplish goals. You might be able to make it less subtle that the particular asset can't be moved through in that particular direction by placing one that players need to jump over first.
- Not a Drill: This also establishes some good basics with switching the magnet to have it do multiple things away from you. I have an issue with the drill covering the shelf that the magnet can ultimately fall through. It's kind of a weird surprise vs being an established item that the magnet can go through these assets (despite what the last level accomplishes). Is there a way to create an asset that is clearly a platform/wall but has an element that indicates it's not a surface the magnet will settle on?
- Up and Away: This level might be able to help drive the above point home if the player were forced to throw the magnet from the top of the section, have it slide down and drop through the platforms and then get pulled into the switch door. It helps further emphasis that the magnet completely ignores these assets.
- Lift Up: No notes, this is a solid level for establishing the cancelling gateways.
- Weight and Pull-Me: Maybe a little too easy, but I like that it shows that there are switch gates that don't require magnets, which my brain defaulted to thinking I needed for a moment. Also it's really fun to have puzzles that require simply placing the magnet somewhere and then swapping polarization repeatedly to cause things to react as you navigate. Do more of that.
- Blocked by Block: Despite there being a quick level restart, might be nice to throw a small block in the pit next to the switch so players can jump out without needing to reset.
- Left Shift = sprint/movement boost? Yes please!
- When a Switch Pro Controller is plugged in the character jumps repeatedly and moves left. I found no way to stop this and had to just unplug and use m+k.
Really enjoyed the demo! The first few levels do a great job of teaching without words, and the last level in particular had me stumped for a good while. Great puzzle design and level design all around.
Some things I noticed with regards to gameplay:
Some things I noticed with regards to visuals:
Heyo!
I want to keep it short to spare you some time:
Last level is too difficult. I think I cheesed it by throwing my magnet under the block so when it fell back down it blocked the button. I would like to move around while aiming to be more accurate and to speed up the gameplay.
I would like some visual feedback for how long I need to hold to reset the level.
Even though I have 7 keys, the hub says I have 6.
I loved the way the puzzles work, sometimes the gates felt useless. learning curve is good although last level is bit too much. The Hub feels alright, but something feels missing / wrong, but I can't put my finger on it.
Keep up the good work!
Yes I also found that level incredibly hard. I personally cheesed it by throwing the magnet onto the button in the back of the room and then running to the other side before the big block went up.
I also want to add that there are multiple dumb ways to be softlocked in this room like falling under the blue attractor when you don't have the magnet with you.
I believe this is the proper way:
Note: I have not played version 1.
UI:
In the main menu, one button is always highlighted even if I don't hover anything. This felt a little weird.
Controls (mouse/keyboard):
The character movement was really nice. I definitely noticed the Coyote Time. To throw the magnet, my first instinct was to hold E and then click, which did nothing. Of course I figured it out quickly, but this might be something to consider. The behavior when simply pressing E/clicking is interesting. I don't know if dropping the magnet might be more useful than a short throw.
Hub World:
I don't know how to feel about the pipes. I appreciate the "use the magnet for everything" mentality, but maybe a simple button to enter a level would suffice. It's also kind of annoying that you always spawn at the start of the hub world and need to walk all the way to the next level.
Levels:
Level 1 actually took me a minute to figure out. I just stumbled onto the fact that the magnet could slide by accident. Maybe the sliding mechanic could be introduced in a simpler scenario.
Level 2 was nice and simple. An good introduction for the "transport magnet by switching by switching polarity" concept.
I discovered level 3's solution by accident when trying to jump across the gap while the magnet was in the perfect position. Level 4 was not too difficult because there was pretty much a single path you could take without getting stuck.
I probably liked level 5 the most. It had a cool concept and finally figuring out that you needed to press the buttons in the opposite order felt really satisfying.
During the final level, it took quite some time before I noticed that part of the door could stop the blue box from moving up. Maybe the door could be moved a bit to the left to make that more obvious.
One more thing: I had to retry some levels several times. A few more ways to get yourself unstuck after making a mistake, which aren't simply restarting the level would me nice.
Bugs:
The largest bug I noticed is the fact that holding Ctrl for a few seconds during the "Thanks for playing" section causes some, let's say, interesting behavior. The magnet physics under low ceilings can be a bit wonky and I got stuck briefly at one point. Letting go off the magnet when it was stuck to the ceiling didn't always work reliably. I'm also pretty sure that hitting a button once caused it to toggle twice one time.
Conclusion:
I really liked it and I definitely see the potential of the game concept. The graphics are functional but still nice to look at. The levels generally have a good size and difficulty.
In case some platforming under time pressure is still an option: An Ori-style escape sequence could be really cool.
I actually recorded my first-time experience (including commentary). I don't know if that might be something of interest.
Yes, I like watching people play demos and small games for the first time. I don't know what it is, but I just like to see how they look at the puzzle or task at hand.
i'm not sure if it's possible to contact you anywhere directly, so i'll just leave this here and hopefully it doesn't break any rules of commenting. played through the demo and found it very sad there was no sound or music so i made a quick sketch for what i think the soundtrack could sound like :)
That sounds really good. The ukulele took me by surprise.
I did not have the time to get the last level, i think the concept don't hype me enough to get the "Haha moment". But i am not a player of this type of game, i only played baba is you ( but i do said "haha !" in Baba is you. )
I do feel it's because i always don't know if i have to speed it up, or just think a lot. And so i am mostly trying to do the same thing but more quickly.
So to me, the mix is weird.
The lack of sound was a bit weird, but overall i am very impressed, i had great feeling playing it, maybie sometimes characters feel slow a bit, especially in the lobby
I hope i am not too harsh, this is good please keep doing this :) Have a great day !
Okay some people do have sounds, weird but ok i might be dumb
I play a lot of puzzle games, and the last level was the only one to really hit the "Aha moment" for me. The rest felt like tutorials, which I think is fine once more levels get added, but they do feel a little weird in the demo.
But yeah I agree the overall experience was impressive and I think it will be even better once sound gets added. The animations felt spot-on to me.
It's shaping up well Mark! I didn't played the previous demo, just fyi.
I don't know if it's intentional but the throw mechanic feels smooth with analog stick but suddenly starts to snap and that feels really bad. If this isn't intentional I'd suggest you to design everything around D-Pad maybe?
If it is intentional and you want to enforce certain angles at high throw force I'd suggest you to interpolate the line instead of it just instantly snapping to the desired state.
The movement feels good but maybe it can be improved a bit by speeding it up a bit while retaining the jump arc as is.
The high jump feels a bit too floaty in comparison to the tap jump.
The only other things I've noticed is the magnet going through platforms but the character not being able to jump down through and the character starting without the magnet on the hub, it's better if he's already holding it for ease of use.
It happened to me a bunch of times that I moved without grabbing it and had to walk back to get it, hah.
I think the aim/fire mechanic would be way more fluid if you separated aiming and firing (as in, RMB aims, and releasing it cancels the shot, and LMB fires). It would be a lot more intuitive to me because a lot of games work that way. Maybe changing polarity could be done with the mouse wheel or MMB?
Also, I thought needing to throw the magnet upwards to enter a level was clunky and cumbersome. I would much rather it just be a simple door.
I liked that there was a grace period for jumping after leaving a platform, but I feel like there should be one for jumping onto platforms as well.
You should definitely be able to aim while moving. I know it'd break some puzzles, but I think it would add a lot of depth.
PS: That was cheeky at the "bonus" level.
The levels aren't really re-playable, which might help with retention. For example, games like Angry Birds, Cut The Rope and others were sticky because they had more than just the linear path from start to finish; you could improve your score by trying levels repeatedly until you attained a 'perfect' score.
My new game (Paladin's Passage) had the same problem initially: once you completed a level, the only reason to go back would be to get a better time, which wasn't really incentivized. I completely revamped the level progression, eliminated the idea of lives, letting players replay levels as often as they wanted, and put non-linear goals (partially-hidden collectible 'secrets') in each level to incentivize replay to try to get a perfect score.
I agree with some of the other comments as well; the controls are still a bit janky. It is tough to get 'flow' going. Also definitely needs some sounds: music, environmental, etc.! Even a placeholder of something royalty-free would be an improvement.
As a fellow video and tactile game designer I didn’t find any major problems, it was a solid puzzle experience. If there are any notes, it’s on things you’re probably already working on fixing.
The Puzzles were good, not too hard. I finished the game in 6 minutes, the 6th one took a disproportionate amount of time (the one where you have to stop the rising box with the door), but once I figured it out I went “ohhhhhhhh” out loud, which is a good sound.
I liked how all of the solutions were obvious once they were solved. Like, once you figured out what you needed to do, it wasn’t like “alright, now let me try this 6 times to see if it works” it was more “does this work… Yes! Awesome, next puzzle”
I thought the player moved and jumped pretty satisfyingly, it needs to move a little slow to keep the slow, methodical puzzle-solving theme going.
I'm not a puzzle player but I thought the levels were generally very good, nice difficulty curve. However, the last level I solved by doing random things until it worked. Felt slightly different to the other levels, I didn't feel lead to the answer.
The movement and mechanics seem very well designed, I like all the unique items and the magnet felt very emphasised. However, the jump felt kinda floaty? The peak of the jump he feels weightless, although this may be an animation thing not the actual mechanic.
You should definitely be able to aim while moving, its jarring to be locked while aiming, as you cant make minor adjustments and I often ended up having to be forced to restart even though I knew it wouldn't work. I also think you should be able to cancel the throw. Not sure if this is a function already but super frustrating to not be able to cancel a throw I know isn't going to work.
Everything looks amazing and very clean. Possibly the hub world should be changed? It feels a lil clunky to get into worlds by throwing magnet, maybe just auto open doors or require no aiming for level selection.
Overall, felt very fun to play and the concept is super interesting, could definitely go places with more timing related puzzles. Keep up the good work :D
I really liked this demo. Overall it feels very good and is very fun playing. Although it weren't implemented I was able to feel the heavy "thumb" sound of the magnets falling to the ground. Very good job with this especially considdering this game does not even have sound yet. Regarding the difficulty : for me at least most levels were quite easy. I were able to solve them after a few trials. Only the last level was very difficult. It took me some time until I finally figured it out.
Now to what I noticed while playing it:
SUGGESTIONS:
- Why do I have to press a button to pick up the magnet, but auto-pickup the key?
- Why do I let go of the magnet upon entering a magnetized revolving door, but I keep the hold on the magnet whilst getting pulled towards another large magnet.
- Maybe start AND end aiming with right mouse button and throw with the left mouse button. This is more intuitiv since that's what is being used in most games: RMB: zoom/aim LMB: shoot/trigger (Also while the game tells you that you can throw with E, but it doesn't tell you that you can shoot with the mouse. I only found out through the options menu)
- Maybe add the possibility to go downwards through semi-solid objects usind the "down" key. Similar to how Super Mario can jump up through floors and falls back down by ducking.
For example the ladder in Lvl 3. One can climb it by jumping upwards but one can not go down by pressing "down". By this you don't need to leave space to get down.
- Keyboard options: When using a non-english keyboard the depicted button might differ from the actual button pressed: I have a QWERTZ keyboard so compared to the standard english keyboard "Y" and "Z" are swapped. So if I want to rebind an action e.g. "Jump" to my Z key it shows that I have bound the action to my Y key. The problem is worse for more different keyboards like a cyrillic or greek Keyboard.
- It is not possible to spam the "magnet action" key. One can only use the key again until after the animation has played. Because of this one can not use the blue magnetic beams to quickly turn the magnet red and back to blue mid air so that it gets some additional height.
- On keyboard controll it feels a bit weird having the left hand pointer finger do the job for three actions: Move right, swap polarization and throw magnet. Furthermore one can not simultaneously move right whilst pressing "swap polarization" or "throw magnet".
(Also like others have already said, it would be nice to be able to move while aiming, maybe it would be nice to move only slowly while aming such that minor corrections are easily possible.)
MINOR DETAILS:
level design:
- The ladder in Lvl 3 could use an additional stair, so that it is shut with the floor to the sides of it. As it currently is one needs to do an awkward jump.
- The chain in Lvl feels a bit janky. Whilst the magnet and the box go up and down, the length of the chain varies. Thus it feels more like a rubber band than a solid iron chain.
MINOR BUGS:
- (Windows) Holding down LMB to aim. Alt-Tab out of the game and back into it. The robot thorws the magnet and you can drive around. But you cannot pick the magnet up (using "E"). You have to click into the game window to be able to pick it up again.
- Credit Level: when driving to the far right side the level shifts up and down a few pixel.
Edit:
The path shown is not neccesarily the path the magnet takes:
Here (Lvl 7) it looks as if one could throw the magnet through the hole between the block and the ground. But the magnet gets blocked by the big block:
Just as a note, the last level is actually solvable by throwing the magnet through the box, that's actually how I solved it during my playthrough lol
This way is a lot easier:
A few things I noticed:
Some nitpicks:
Praise:
I generally really enjoyed it, for an early demo its overall pretty good. I liked the idea with the hub, however i felt that i had no incentive to skip a level, and there it felt a bit (tiny bit) tideous to run through the hub level every time.
I played on my macbook, and the window was really big, when in windowed mode (i suspect that you have the standard resolution set to something that fits on your monitor), so big that i couldn't see the fullscreen button that you had implemented in the main menu. I did get it to fit my screen, but a resizeable window would be very nice.
But overall great job with this demo, i also really liked the graphics and the feel of the character.
Hello, Mark!
Just watched your video and decided to try the game as soon as possible. Overall, great work, game feels very good and even juicy in some parts (love the impact of rotating doors, heavy metallic hit sound will acompany it perfectly, when you'd get to sounds). Got myself a few Aha moments, which were quite satisfying. Really loking forward to future game progress and videos on it.
Now for what I felt need some tweaking:
Platforming has still crawled in your levels - this part in 6th level when you need to quicly jump over the pit and go under the press. Took me at least 10 tries to doI thought that was the solution. Look at previous point then;That's said, I can close my eyes on all of this, just for how juicy magnet interactions feel. Really love it! <3 <3
P.S. love hand drawn settings icons, really felt your love for the game :)
Idk which timed jump you’re talking about in the 6th level. This is the same level where the metal box is stopped by the door, right?
Even if it isn’t, I didn’t find any solutions that relied on speed and/or timing.
After dropping the cube from the door, you need to jump over the hole you drop the cube in and then go under descending press to get to the key before press lowers to the platform. Maybe it’s just me (I’m not good in platforming), but this bit was the second most challenging for me
Oh man, that wasn’t the solution to the puzzle.
And then you can take all the time in the world to get the key
Oh, it seems I did it wrong way around :) Oops
I thought the same about your first two points. Maybe one could raise the driving speed in the hub level since it is far more spacious. For me it was neither too fast nor too slow while inside the levels.
The background parallax looks strange, especially when there are doors. The doors also cover up the smoke effects and aiming lines, which feels and looks a bit weird.
The fact the hub is non-linear is cool, but it's hindered a bit by the fact that you basically pick levels at random, and you have no incentive to play all of them once you have enough keys to progress.
You also have no insight on what is within the level before you select it, so you're essentially picking stages at random until you get enough keys. This works in other games where the hub is presented as a map with branching paths, because it somehow makes deciding which path you pick feel more meaningful, and some levels are locked behind others. Maybe some levels could give out multiple keys? Or maybe the hub itself could be more interesting or complex to navigate, to make picking and choosing levels more interesting? Maybe certain levels could unlock keys to other areas of the hub? Dunno, just throwing out some ideas off the top of my head.
The tutorial introduced a pipe as the solution to the level, and I made a mental note that this would be the objective of the game throughout, but it turned out not to be true, even though pipes appeared later on in stages.
I think the movement feels good, jumping feels nice. But there is a weird gap between pressing the throw button and the player character actually beginning their wind up. This makes initiating a throw feel really awkward.
I think it actually plays quite nicely on mouse and keyboard, but the default controls need a little work - the less I have to move my hand all over the keyboard, the better.
The visuals are nice. I like the facial expression on the character when you aim, If you wanted to expand on that, the magnet's expression could change while it is in mid-air (it might already, but it's kind of hard to tell?), and also immediately after a collision. Maybe on the anticipation before the throw as well. The colour palette is good.
This is a bit of a weird one - technically returning to the hub being in the main menu makes sense, but for some reason it felt kinda weird.
Great job! love the video series. I hope my feedback is useful!
Hi Mark first things first: You did a really good job and this demo is really great so far.
I made note of some good things and some things that either weren´t that good or just of some little issues.
1. To start with the good things first:
Two other things that were positiv is that you can´t change the magnet to +/- before it is completely attracted by an active source nearby
and that the player gets attracted by a "magnetic push gate" if he´s holding the magnet
2. The things that weren´t that great:
3. To come to a conclusion:
Even if the length of the good and bad sections are more or less even I would say that the sections with the good points absolutely outweights the negative points with no doubt. It already feels like a demo with a finished game waiting to be released. Everything looks and feels great. You really are in control of everything. You have really good puzzles and great objects you can use in those puzzles. To be in control of which level you play is also great for example if you are completely stuck somewhere and don´t know what to do you can just come back at another time.
I hope I could make you feel proud of yourself for what you accomplished and feel great because YOU really deserved that.
Greetings Daniel
Feels quite good! Controls are intuitive, though I did map my magnet so I could use it with just the mouse. I would love to see some longer puzzles in future versions, but otherwise I think this is very inventive! I really liked the solution to level 7, but it is a bit finicky to get right without getting the magnet stuck out of reach.
The character feel is much improved which was nice, however I feel like it could use a bit more "snappiness". Maybe move just a bit faster, change directions a bit quicker, etc. That being said, I believe sound will greatly improve this or possibly completely solve it altogether.
The puzzle design was good and I felt a few "aha" moments, but overall the puzzles just feel good, not great.
To be fair, I just played through Baba Is You so maybe take this with a grain of salt, but after completing this demo nothing really felt memorable to me. To compound this problem most of the levels felt very samey.
In my opinion, this game totally has the foundation it needs to be something special, but I can't shake the feeling that something is missing that would take it to the next level. Unfortunately, I have no idea what that is.
Good work and best of luck!
The controls feel good. I like that the player stops and then the animation has a follow though. To me this makes it feel realistic without having the control feel sloppy. You also had a good balance between puzzle and platform. Me and my chat think you could use another run at level four, as it was a little too confusing. Other than that some audio would also really make this thing shine. Either way, very solid MVP 2. Cheers!
I really liked the demo. The puzzles were difficult enough to maintain me entertained, but not too much to be frustrating.
The game next demo definitely needs some sound effects, specially for secondary feedback of things happening in the level, like magnet changing polarity, or platforms moving.
In the hub, it feels weird how the background moves a different speed than the gates (that one would think that are in the same depth as the background)
Also, I would change the way the trow button works. Because for a short demo it's no such big deal, but for a full release game, it would be annoying how you have to maintain pressed the trow button to see the path of the magnet.
The other thing I don't like, is how the "double state buttons" (or levers) works. It doesn't always change to the side I like, or it is difficult to trow the magnet specifically to one half of the button.
What I really liked is the feel of the magnet. It feels heavy, but with powerful attraction at the same time. Also, the movement feels great, i had to habituate to the "long" delay making the biggest jumps, but once learned, i really liked it.
I hope this feedback helps you in some way.
Very nice puzzle game. It plays good and the levels are clever.
I had few issues. The ramps are confusing. You can just drive up any incline in the game, but to me the ramps blend in with the background. I was jumping them up like they were stairs, always took me a moment to realize I don't have to do that.
The tutorial was little confusing at the end. You have to throw the magnet up the green pipe to finish it, which made me think you need to do this at the end of every level. I was fixating on that quite a lot and was sometimes even planning the solution based on the fact that I need to get my magnet back after I get the key to finish the level. Which obviously you don't need to do, so the levels are often impossible to solve with both key and magnet in your possession.
While we are on that topic, selecting levels by aiming and throwing the magnet is too much of a hassle IMO. I wish it was simpler, just pressing a button on a prompt would be nice.
And last, unless you are planning to give R and W some separate function, please make R the default reset key (why is it CTRL ?) and bind jumping to both SPACE and W. Thanks.
Not bad, noticed that if you throw yourself at a ledge while holding a magnet you can get caught slightly, as the character and the magnet have collision but the tether between them doesn't. Might be a space for a new mechanic, a thin floor piece (zip-line) that has to be traversed with a magnet. Maybe having to alternate polarity to progress down the line. Another issue, when holding down for aimed throw, you come to a stop; i.e. no aimed throws on the move. Not sure if it is intentional design, but It might be limiting on design space for puzzles. also, If you go to replay a level, there is no key or placeholder. Only way to leave a level you are replaying is to esc. and return to hub. That maybe fine, but it needs at least a phantom key in the replayed level to show what the objective of the level was, otherwise its a question without an answer. The reset level button might need a better indicator, currently there is a slight delay when pressing control before it engages. There isn't much feedback on if it is registering your button press, it took several seconds to realize that it was a press and hold prompt rather than a simple push. Might need to adjust the level hub or increase the characters move speed. 6 levels was about 1 level too many to walk past to get to the next level. Maybe spawn in the middle with 3 pipes to each side, and next batch of levels is a pipe overhead? Sorry for the wall of text. good luck with the game!
Feedback: The character feels really nice to play and move around with, there's nothing that feels janky or annoying about him at all.
However, I will say the screen resolution is a tab bit annoying; I think the game should open in full screen and have an option to make it a resizable window.
I'm also really grateful for remappable controls because while the game does feel good to play using a controller (thanks to the bumper and trigger buttons) playing on the keyboard wasn't all that fun in the beginning. I wasn't a fan of all the different controls I had to master and keep track of, it all seemed overwhelming whether it was between jumping or switch polarities. It wasn't until thankfully there were remapping controls that I was able to get into it.
Being able to change the magnetic switch to the RMB and jump the MMB helped a lot with keeping everything simple.
Aim and throw with the LMB, jump with MMB, and changed polarities with the RMB.
The first shifty thing you walk into to shift doesn't shift if you are already walking into it when it finishes its animation. Idk how to explain what i mean by shifty thing but it's literally the first game object after the game teaches you what button it is to jump.
I soft lock myself in the tutorial by throwing the magnet to the door at the left LOL
in general the puzzles were nice