Untitled Magnet Game

Minor premise

I haven’t played v1.2.

I haven't read the other comments to not be biased.

What I like

• The movement is super smooth and responsive.
• The graphic is pretty.
• Even if it is an early build, the curve of difficulty is well-adjusted. The first levels are perfect to learn the mechanics, whereas the final two are pleasantly challenging.

What I does not

• Probably it’s because I’m stupid, but, at first, I didn’t get that there are some buttons that you need to hold and some switches that you can just click. I’d suggest modifying the switch sprite, maybe you could use a lever.
• I know the soundtrack is not the main feature in a game, but it is really strange to play in complete silence.
• Why is the “Windowed/Full screen” button in the main menu? At first I went straight to options and I was a bit disappointed because I didn’t find it. If you want to have it in the menu, you should differentiate it from the other buttons because it has a different function (it doesn’t move you to a different screen/menu).
• When you press space to jump, but you’re attracted by a magnet field, you drop the magnet. Probably it is a mechanic for future use, but at the moment I find it a bit annoying.

Recap

Well done. I really like the game. Carry on because I looking forward to see the final product.

level 5 was hard

First off, the game feel is great. I found myself hopping in the hubworld instead of just walking because it felt nice, and I Iove the way you can drag yourself up an edge with your wheel to just barely make it. Tossing the magnet with quick toss is satisfying, and aiming is too when precision is required though the aim dots seemed to move a little choppily if I moved my stick quickly (which may be a me thing as I use an external program to turn switch pro input into xinput, since I played with an official Nintendo Switch Pro Controller). Changing the magnets polarity also felt great; manipulating it from a distance to manipulate the level is neat, and using it to pull yourself is a cool and fun mechanic due to how smooth the pull acceleration is combined with the rumble of snapping onto a polar wall or ceiling.

However, one thing that doesn't come up often, but does hinder game feel when it does is that picking up the magnet while jumping cuts your jump arc short, causing you to start falling immediately, removing some smoothness to the movement capabilities. Also, when in that situation, since I'm already holding jump, I tend to hold the throw button after picking up the magnet as well, causing me to unintentionally go into aim mode. Using aim mode toggle fixes this, and I'm thankful it's an option.

One interesting thing about the controls that came up is that if you are stuck to a ceiling while holding the magnet you can use jump to let go, rather than the throw button, however when not stuck to a ceiling, you can not use jump instead. it makes sense to not have a midair jump input always let go of the magnet, but allowing it to do so when hanging made me correlate the jump button with "let go while being pulled" and i found myself multiple times trying to use jump, rather than throw, to let go while being pulled up to where I needed to go.. In this case the character doesn't let go, and the first time this happened I had a moment where I tested the controls and found this all out.

Furthermore, when hanging from the ceiling, using throw to let go only works if the button is tapped, if the button is held, the magnet is not released upon releasing the button, which I dont think makes sense for gameplay purposes. I assume this is due to holding causing you to enter aim mode, rather than quick throwing, since when aim mode toggle was on this did not happen, and releasing the button let go of the magnet no matter how long it was held.

Using the throw button also feels a bit less snappy due to the throw happening on the release of the button rather than press, and I understand why this is, as usually the game needs to wait to detect if the player intends to hold in order to enter aim mode, but it does create a minorly less responsive feel. Even with enter aim mode toggle activated, tapping throw still throws on button release rather than button press, and I think it would be nice if it happened on press when the toggle is being used since the hold is no longer needed. It's not a big deal for a game like this, especially since the difference is minor, just a personal pet peeve of mine.

Also, while I get why it's there, as to avoid confusion with skill based vs puzzle based play, I wish the delay on how frequently you can switch polarity was just a little shorter, as to make quickly using polarity to get up to a ledge more smooth. A good example is in the second to last level, where, on the right side of the screen, if you start by standing on the ledge under the polarity beam with a blue magnet, you can't shift the magnet to red then back to blue fast enough to get up the ledge without slamming into the ceiling, and while slamming into the polarity ceilings and walls feels good when you intend to, it's more fun for me to time a shift well in order to use that upward momentum to have a smooth parabola of motion up on to a ledge. It also would be nice if, at least as a toggleable option, there was a visual indicator for the polarity shift cooldown.

Another random thing about the controls: If I mashed my dpad around while spamming jump I could sometimes get it to where holding up or down + a horizontal would contiuously move me in the direction opposite to the horizontal I was holding. When I let go of up or down, though still while holding the horizontal, the character would begin moving in the correct horizontal. I'll link a video of it happening at the bottom of my comment, including me fumbling around mashing jump and my dpad trying to get it to happen. The part where I start moving contiously left, I'm actually holding down right. I tap jump while still holding down right, and when my character starts moving right again thats the moment that I let go of down.

[After typing the above paragraph and making the video, I discoverd I can also make it happen just by extremely quickly, like as fast as I can, moving my dpad input from right > down > left, and in this case while holding left the character moves right. Doing it this way I do not jump at all, so maybe that has nothing to do with it.]

Another controls oddity. I was able to get a jump buffered from midair to be much smaller than I could make a normal jump even when pressing the button as fast as I possibly could. I'd assume this is because it only counts button held time starting from when I hit the ground even though my input happened midair.

Final things about controls. In the options menu, I didn't inherently get that LT and RT were used to change menu, I just assumed I had to use keyboard and mouse for that until I had finished the game and investigated deeper. I also had some confusion getting the enter aim mode toggle option to work. When toggled off (which is the default) the controller menu lists a bind for "enter aim mode" which doesn't do that because aim mode toggle is off, but because it said that's what it should do I just assumed it was broken. Conversely, when aim mode toggle is on, the controller menu lists this bind as "cancel aim mode". It seems these labels got reversed. It would also be nice if the mouse wasn't visible when using controller input.

In terms of the puzzles I think they were pretty well designed. I had a few aha moments for sure, with level 3 being a simple one when I realized I could use the polarity block as an elevator, but there were a few more throughout the demo. Running through the logic of the puzzles step by step was also enjoyable. Sometimes I do puzzles by a cycle of trial and error, then thinking, going in without much preplanning, just testing the waters to see what works and what doesn't, then, after finding a problem, and doing some thinking, I go in with that new information on my next attempt (or just continue, if a restart isn't required). In doing this I could feel the steps of the puzzle unfolding which was great. I remember having one of those "that's how they get you" moments where I thought i had completed the puzzle, then started to head back towards the key, and realized it was inaccessible, which is a good thing, as I'm being forced to think.

Two things worth mentioning though, is that in the second to last level i found the solution completely accidentally, not in the "I did trial and error, found an issue, and was forced to think" kind of way but more in the "thoughtlessly stumbled upon it" kind of way. I never realized that the lip of the L switch gate would reach over a little bit into the polarity block's path until it happened by accident. I also first found a seemingly unintended partially skill based (rather than puzzle based) solution before the intended one, which I'll link a video to at the bottom.

Finally, the only visual problem I encountered was the floor and ceiling flashing weirdly from darer to lighter gray in the right side of the "thanks for playing" area when walking around it. I was playing in full screen when it happened, on windows.

Overall though, the game was a good time. I can see this coming out to be a pretty cool game with interesting and enjoyable puzzle mechanics wrapped up in a great movement engine.

Videos: https://imgur.com/a/3pfd2pQ

Edit: I've seen some sentiment that the whole "try, find an issue, think it through" playstyle I mentioned is not a good thing, but I don't think I agree. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for a puzzle game's levels to, instead of being a roadblock followed by one all important insight, be solved in a more step by step way, with critical thinking required at each step, so long as said thinking isn't super easy, and while I wouldn't say this demo was hard, I never found it to be boring. 

Edit 2: Forgot to mention: It's probably not worth putting in, but allowing the right stick to be used for a directional quick throw might be cool. Also, I agree that throwing up the magnet to get into levels was kind of off putting, partially because throwing the magnet up didn't feel as smooth as side to side.

got sub 2.30

so after playing the game for a while I have a bit more feedback to give 

there are a few bugs in the game but they arent game breaking and fun those I found are that you can jump way higher than intended by throwing the magnet and jumping at the same time,you cant jump on the screws that act as doors, you can jump on sideways barriers (the thing that lets you in from one side) also you get slightly pushed forward when picking up the magnet if it is at the right place  and lastly you can skip the tutorial by clicking return to hub in the menu and finally you start to aim if you change polarity by using the rmb

for the actual intended things the throwing using the aiming radical isnt needed at all when you can throw it by pressing the carry button again(it travels less distance but it is enough to solve every puzzle) so I would just remove the aiming radical (aside from when you enable it from the settings) and extend the alternative throwing distance

it is really easy to softlock as the reset button is almost required to beat the game

tought controls arent the best for the game mouse works way better for controlling the magnet so one hand has to handle the character and other handles the magnet while default controls make it so the left hand does everything exept for aiming which right hand does 

kind of a nitpick but I think the thing that destroys the magnet could be explored more in the next demo it seperates you from what is your most important way to interact with the assets and limiting the ability of the player to interact with the world may make for great puzzles 

an idea I had was there could be an asset that you can push(maybe a magnetic block or magnetic field)

and as other people said there is an uninted solution for that room that feels like the best option to most people

so all of this sounds negative but I really liked the game (I wouldnt start to speedrun it if I didnt like it) and I am looking forward to the next demo release 

also sorry for bad english

I really didn't think that the mix of puzzle/platforming will confuse me. But after I solved level by platforming I felt like I cheated the level, I felt like there was a "puzzle" solution but I didn't find it.

Otherwise the games seems pretty solid to me (much more than I expected for a demo). I had a little problem with the hub, I didn't get that I have to throw the magnet into the tube (nothing that simple tutorial wouldn't solve). Level 6 was significantly more difficult for me than the other ones. Level 6 was the only one that required thinking/solving, the other ones came pretty naturally without much thinking.

The jump height is sometimes just shy of the step I want to get onto. It's pretty annoying because I had go back, drive towards the step and then jump. This happened even with some steps that weren't part of the solution. Like I wanted only to get from A to B to solve the level. 

I really like the throwing with E, because the game is playable even with trackpad. I am way too lazy to get the mouse for simple games like this. 

I have only played this newest version. I thought that overall, it is a nifty little demo. I definitely look forward to seeing where this goes. 

I agree  with others that the soft locking felt a little awkward.  I think if you want puzzles that have a lot of soft locking then a rewind system similar to 'Baba is You' would work really nicely.  Thinking about something like 'The Talos Principle' I recall the soft locks tended to be really obvious like "oh no I blew up the wrong thing". I think with this demo the soft locks were just kind of like "oh, I guess I am soft locked now". 

Esthetically the two things that bothered me were the pipes and the switches. The throwing the magnet into the pipe to open the door mechanic felt very unintuitive. I was stuck for a little bit at the end of the first level. If this is a mechanic you want to keep it may help to have a prompt the first time. More minor thing but I feel like the switch could look more distinct from the button. I tend to think of toggle switches as more lever-y than button-y. That said I understood what to do and this might be more of a personal thing. 

For controls I used a keyboard and mouse. I didn't know that I could pick up the magnet by clicking on it because the tutorial said to use 'E'. I would have preferred to play like that had I known. Also I wouldn't mind toggling the magnet with a left click if possible.

For the actual puzzles they felt a lot like a non-lethal 'Limbo' to me. It felt like there was a mechanic and a puzzle together and I had to figure them both out together. I look forward to seeing each mechanics explored in more detail.

A minor bug I noticed was that on the thank you screen the background tiles seemed to be fighting over the layer order.

That was fun! I played it all the way through. Feedback:

I expected the smallest jump height to be taller and max run speed to maybe be a smidge faster

Start the level select already holding the magnet... I would race forward and then have to come back for it

lol the art in the options screen! So good.

Nice game! I am sure you saw the GDC video on Non-Linear Single-Player Levels. In that video they also mentioned that there should be environmental storytelling of sorts. In your case, what would be the purpose of the robot trying to do all these puzzle rooms? Maybe not this project, but future projects you could add a quick story behind the game!

I just found that if the magnet lands on a switch and stays on it, you can't flip the switch even if you jump on it. (My brother actually found it on Level 6, it was the easiest to test on.)

Very fun! My favorite part of the game is jumping through the tractor beams by turning the magnet on and off, if the magnet could switch polarity more frequently this could be smoother.

I'm digging it, and loving your videos.

Feel

The robot as some discernible latency when moving, a little hitch before jumping, starting movement or changing direction. In a game where you have to go back and forth a lot, an instant start to your movement would feel better to me than the build up. Don't get me wrong, it feels good, just the little hitch in the start.

It took a few playthroughs to fully grok how the throwing works. I didn't realize you could feather the power of the throw with you stick right away. I think the arc that appears when you first start a throw is a little deceptive, showing an arc, when tweaking that arc requires more movement then you might expect.

Controls

I would like more controller mapping options (I know it's not easy). In particular I'd like to be able to map pickup/drop to a button and throw to another button. For throwing, it feels better to hold a trigger (or paddle) than a button, but a button still feels right for picking something up. It would be also cool if the left stick was mapped to throwing, so just using the stick started a throw, or you could at least use it to aim the throw.

Disclaimer: I have a controller problem.

Softlocks

This a design choice, but I felt a bit vexed by the levels that were easy to softlock in. I am familiar with puzzle games that it is capable to softlock, but if feels uncomfortable in a puzzle platformer, where I felt there should be a way for me to get back. I realize that avoiding this would put a massive constraint on your puzzle design, so maybe making resetting snappier, or make easy softlocks into traps (i.e. if I'm gonna get soft-locked in this pit, put spikes in it.)

Glitch

I tried to break the physics and am really impressed at how the magnet, jumping and everything works without jank! There was a minor graphical glitch were the tiles in the background would flicker as I moved back and forth. You can see it in this video:

Throwing the magnet up to start a level felt a little off to me. I know that you want magnets to be core to the game, and this build's puzzles really did that. It felt like it was about using the magnet well. Throwing the magnet straight up isn't the most comfortable thing to do, and seems a little much to enter a level.

I could see the hub world being a lot more complex, with verticality, and maybe areas gated off by powered magnets, that you need to magnet-jump to get to the next set of levels. You could be collecting batteries to open up new paths.

Please change the look of the pipes. They scream MARIO to me which is discordant in a game that seems much more a puzzler than a platformer. I love the nod, they just stand out a lot, and don't seem to be a major system in the game. Turned-off electro-magnets are dark and blend into the background but the pipes call attention to themselves.

Here's a terrible idea! Have a more difficult to get bonus item in a level that encourages going back, like Celeste's strawberries. You could make these platform challenges, while to get the 'key' you need to puzzle.

I hope some of these are helpful. I'm very impressed with how polished this already feels. And I appreciate your documenting a beginner game developer. It makes me realize I could do something.

Really good, my only main complaint is to please make it so if you mess up a level, restarting isnt the only option! 

Hi! Love the channel, the game is very promising and feels like something I could lose a few hours in without realizing haha

I do have a couple ease-of-use things that I'm having trouble with:

- Having to press E to pick up the magnet manually. An option to automatically pick up the magnet when I'm over it would help a great deal

- Not being able to move while aiming. I feel like I could line up my shot just perfectly if only I could move (perhaps slower than normal) while in aim mode.

- Having to press a separate key to cancel aim mode. More often than not I end up throwing the magnet around and losing my aiming spots. This one might just need some more time spent on my end playing, but who knows

- Visual distinctiveness of the barriers that the magnet can pass through but not the player character. The first real puzzle room took me a few tries before I realized that it wasn't that my jump was too short (though, I did struggle with that in the tutorial when it took me a second to make it out of the first gap); it was a barrier next to the magnet that I couldn't pass.

Despite all that I'm having fun with the game! Keep working at it and hopefully it gets even better :)

you should try and make it so that when you complete a level you spawn back out side the level door instead of going all the way back to the beginning and having to walk all the way back to the next level  

I'm loving it so far! The movement feels great and I love the little animations for the PC. I even had a few of those "Ah-ha!" moments you've been talking about! Here's a few observations/recommendations:

- Toggling the polarity symbols in the accessibility menu only seems to apply to the magnet and not the fields, even when entering a new level.

- Another nitpick about the menu I have is that when checking boxes, the last one you click is highlighted in red. This made it slightly confusing when trying to see what options I had selected, though I realize that will probably change once you get to making the menus look pretty anyway.

- I found that the default button for picking up and throwing the magnet (E) felt a little clunky. I noticed in the options that the left and right mouse accomplish the same thing and felt much better, so I think that should be what the tutorial indicates or at least makes more clear.

- I think the tutorial level should be accessible after its completed, just in case players want to go back to see the tips again. 

- I noticed some dotted boxes with various symbols showing up in the background beyond the borders of the level. I'm not sure if these are meant to environmental details or are just visual bugs but if it's the former, I think they could probably be implemented better. As they are, they felt out of place and unintentional. 

- My only design gripe is about the key/door system. I don't really feel like it fits the theme of the game all that well.  It also seemed odd that I was throwing my magnet through a pipe to open a door rather than using the key I collected. I don't have any good alternatives to recommend but I think I saw another comment mention something to with batteries may be more fitting. 

- Finally, whether the keys stay or get replaced with something else, I think the item that is collected at the end of the level should still be there if you attempt the level again later. Otherwise it can be difficult to figure out what the objective of the level was originally. Maybe something similar to how Celeste shows strawberries you've already collected as grey?

Overall, this project is very promising and I'm VERY excited to see where it goes! :)

will we ever get a linux export?

This was a cool demo! Lots of potential. Here's some nitpicks.

-The aim line and smoke go behind certain elements like the doors or the Thanks For Playing but the magnet goes in front of them. Not sure if that's intentional. Certain parts of the hub the magnet also goes behind, like the green key squares.

-From the end screen there's no natural way out besides hitting escape. It's a demo so I'm not sure that matters.

-When I initially went into aim mode, I couldn't actually hit the switch because it wouldn't let me adjust the aim. I was using arrow keys and then pressing E, but the arrows didn't seem to be adjusting the aiming. I only realized you could when I switched to WASD + mouse, which I didn't get an indication was possible initially because there was nothing indicating directional keys.

-When you re-enter a level, the key is gone, so you can't always tell what the goal was unless you remember. And is there even a way to beat the level again?

-With WASD+mouse controls, the F button is the same finger as D, so it's a difficult finger-hopping move to try and get over to the right on the last level. F, move finger over to D, back to F super quickly, back to D super quickly. Maybe in that config right mouse would work better for polarity switch. Different hand.

-On the first level, when I was standing on top of the ramp on in the middle of the screen facing left toward the blue beam, when I pressed E to drop the magnet, not throw it, the magnet zipped back behind me to underneath the pipe. I thought it might have been "rolling" down the ramp really fast, but hovering above it, but I'm not sure what it was. When I loaded back into the level later it didn't happen again.

-If you go back and forth quickly in the flip doors that don't use the magnet, you can get in a position where you're pressing on the door, but you have to go backwards and forwards again to push it open. Not sure if that's meant to be a situation where you need momentum to open the door, but it feels a little off to get blocked like that.

-That flip door also moves slightly before you touch it in certain scenarios. It works just fine visually in most scenarios, but if you're moving back and forth it feels like there's a buffer of air between you and the door that you're pushing on.

-The tail while you're moving is really nice for game feel and conveying a sense of momentum, but it sticks out a little bit amongst all this metal and machinery. Maybe an exhaust cloud would diagetically convey the same thing? Or it would look like the robot is farting all the time.

-It's an interesting touch to make it so the wheel rolls you off corners. Very distinctive and cute. Maybe since you're not going in a hardcore platformer direction anymore it won't matter, but a potential downside under that scenario is I wonder if it's possible to just barely miss a jump and then roll off.

-Pressing left and right at the same time instantly makes you not move and lose all momentum. When hopping back and forth, frolicking almost, it can lead to this awkward grinding to a halt feeling if you happen to still have one direction pressed when you move to another, or queue up your next direction without letting go of the last. You either freeze or freeze in midair and drop straight down. The latter could be a strategy (albeit a physics-breaking one) for more intense platforming, a way to make a huge leap and then just immediately drop with no momentum, but I think it's too easy to accidentally do.

-When you go back to the hub world it would be nice if you came back in the same location that you left from. Outside of the door of the level you just left, for instance.

-I like the solution to level 1 a lot. It did take me a long time because I was familiarizing myself with the momentum of the magnet, figuring out that aforementioned glitch, and a little unclear on how the bar that blocked me worked. Because of the little ramp going left I initially thought I had to get the magnet to drop onto it so that it would roll left onto the other ramp and then roll right before I realized that I just throw it in when it's the other color. It's doable, but a bit of a hardcore first level because there are a lot of new elements to figure out.

-I like how the trick with Levels 2 and 3 really build on Level 1, about changing the polarity when you're far away

-It would be nice if each level had some unique identifier in the hub world. A name, a symbol, because it's hard to remember which is which if you're going back to them.

-The parallax is slick in the hub world, but I initially thought that the tiled background was where the garage doors were attached. So without them being attached to the background it feels like you and the doors to nowhere are floating on a plane half a mile away from the background.

-In level 4 I initally tried to use the magnet to pull the large moving piece to the right because it had a plus on it and it looked like it fit right in that alleyway. I would think that it's just because it's "too big" but the blue magnet doesn't even stick to it, so there's an inconsistency in how the magnet behaves with different magnetized elements.

-In level 4 (it seems) you can soft lock the level by destorying the magnet while the flip door on the right is set to blue, which is really easy to do. So the magnet respawns between the destruction field and the back of the door, which isn't magnetized, then there's no way to get the magnet to where the door can be opened agian. Soft locks I guess are what the reset button is for, but in more complex levels or play scenarios where you're exploring new mechanics and how they interact, it might be hard to know if you're *actually* soft locked or not and just run your head into a wall for a while until realizing that there's no other way. The other major soft lock in this level is if you throw the magnet onto the switch from the alley and then get blocked in. That one's more obvious, if frustrating.

-I like the solution to level 6. I will say when I entered the level I got overwhelmed at the number of mechanics in front of me and just started messing around, because it wasn't clear how they all interacted with each other. If I were playing a fuller game where I had more time with these mechanics I'm sure I would have been less overwhelmed. It introduces an interesting mechanic, blocking the motion of magnetized blocks, that I'm excited to see developed. 

I enjoyed this little demo. Thank you for this!

Here's couple things I found odd or something to improve.

• Odd placement of fullscreen button, I think this should be in the options menu. Now you can't change that setting without exiting game unless you know that alt+enter works.
• Options menu should have some indication how to exit it. I found out that ESC works but since some games doesn't save setting when exiting with ESC I had to go back to see if changes are actually saved.
• It wasn't obvious that you'll need to use mouse to aim. I tried to aim with keyboard w/s/a/d. Maybe you should add option to play with just the keyboard.
• This one is pretty niche problem but when playing with 32:9 aspect ratio, there are huge black borders. I think you should add support for other aspect ratios as well. In this game having wider aspect ratio wouldn't even give player any unfair advantage since there aren't any level designs that rely on hiding stuff by scrolling those out of the view.

First off, I want to say I really enjoyed this demo and love your videos. Feedback:

• The tutorial doesn't specify the mouse is used to aim, which left me really confused at first, and I don't think it should be needed. Since the character can't move while throwing the magnet anyway, I'd prefer to use the arrow keys to aim in order to not have to keep moving my hand away from the arrow keys to the mouse each time I wanted to throw the magnet. 
• The very first thing done with the button was kinda confusing since I had to jump to do it, but maybe it would have been easier knowing I could aim properly.
• The number of keys fades out slightly after the actual key itself, and for some reason that's been really bothering me the whole time.

Other than those small nitpicks, I'd say it's going great, and I can't wait to play the next version :)

Love your videos, super insightful, please keep bringing us along for your journey! I'm playing on laptop and don't play PC ever, so others that are more familiar with computer gaming    might not agree, but this was    my experience:

-I had expected Up to jump, and would've preferred it so I can keep one hand on the arrows and leave it like that.

-The first puzzle,  I did not figure out that you aim with mouse , it just said E to aim, so I hit E and tried to use my arrows to aim it, and was stuck for a couple of minutes before I realized the arrow aims it.

-Took me a minute to realize you can reverse the polarity while the magnet is not currently equipped, so I thought I was stuck at the end of the first level, when the magnet zoomed back to the gate thing and the gate closed behind it, leaving me without a magnet and seemingly no way to turn the gate.

-The 5th level (the 4th door) was really tedious to have to get back up by climbing the rows and then trying to time reversing the polarity and jumping at the same time

-don't love the design of the buttons on the ground, the diagonal design makes it so I have jump accurately every time to get it to switch. It has advantages, such as when coming from the correct side, but if you're on the side with the higher part of the button, you have to jump it.  

Overall though I still had fun,  no serious issues for me. Thanks!

Your developer series has reignited my interest in Unity, and the fact that you made this prototype is really inspiring. The prototype itself plays really nice. I played with mouse and keyboard and everything just felt so smooth and intuitive. What little tutorial you presented was all I needed to figure out the mechanics.

If I had one issue, it would be that I solved some (but not all) of the puzzles more by just trying a bunch of things until something worked than by getting the "Eureka" moment of seeing the big picture. But obviously that's a very high standard to meet and I think you've done a great job building this game so far!

Version 2.0 test review

+ Positives (Get it!)

• Great character movement and feel.
• Great mechanics with the magnet.
• Great and challenging levels already.
• Just plain fun!

- Minor Complaints/Bugs?

• I had my XBox360 controller plugged in and it recognized the buttons menu scheme but took a while before it recognized it in the game and let me use it.
• The default XBox controller scheme felt unnatural to me.  I know you'll have remapping and different schemes but I kept trying to use my triggers to throw the magnet.  Very minor.
• Throwing a magnet directly up feels uneven and not as natural as throwing it side to side. 
• Speaking of throwing a magnet up, using that to go to different levels feels like a placeholder or needs polish for changing levels.  It wasn't super intuitive. 

Overall, as I said above this game is just plain fun.

My only problem might be a little nitpicky, but I really hate having to restart the levels. I dislike falling into pits and not being able to get out. Every time I get physically stuck or lose the magnet, it breaks the enjoyment.

pretty nice, good work Matt, maybe one or two problems but none I'm smart enough to solve :)

In the last level, when you approach the wall at the end of the room, the camera tilts slightly.

Here comes a long list of feedback I thought of when playing the game (don't get me wrong though, I still enjoyed your game):

- It's not clear you can press ESC to go back from the Options screen

- A bit awkward using mouse and keyboard when the UI is designed for controllers as well (i.e. the red selected areas), you could probably improve the selection system for both input methods. Stephen's Sausage Roll solves this problem by not having you use the mouse at all, although I don't think that's a very viable option here since the gameplay requires the mouse.

- Use W for jump - I find Space to be very unintuitive (though I haven't played many platformers myself so for all I know Space is the default key) (also I know there is keyboard remapping but still, you might want to consider making W the default key instead)

- I am aware the game is still in development and thus audio can be added later, but still, adding in a few basic sound effects created using sfxr or your voice can make the game feel a lot more "alive". It might also not be such a bad thing to add some audio this early in the game's development, as you can also get some feedback on the audio. Off-topic, but during game jams, sometimes it can also be a good idea to create the audio early on, instead of leaving it till the end, almost as an afterthought (though I haven't followed that advice myself...so feel free to take it with a pinch of salt).

- In the tutorial, the Carry Magnet button shows up as a "question mark" button instead of LMB (maybe it's asking me to...Question Mark?)

- *I feel that the magnet throwing controls can be designed better, it wasn't apparent to me that I could press Q to disable aim mode (so I spent the whole game throwing the magnet around). For me, I might try something like LMB to both carry magnet and release it (press it once to carry it, press it again to release it), and RMB to toggle aim mode (so once you carry the magnet you can press RMB to turn off aim mode, or have aim mode off by default and press RMB to turn it on, though you will have to make it clear in the tutorial). Personally, I think it isn't a good idea to have the player hold the LMB for the whole duration that the player is holding the magnet, which is why I thought of the controls I just mentioned.

- Also, to add on to the previous point, I realised once you press Q or RMB to exit aim mode, you can't toggle it back on unless you release the magnet, as re-entering aim mode requires pressing the LMB, which requires you to release it first and hence drop the magnet.

- I found the magnetic beams a bit confusing at first regarding the charges, I wasn't sure the floating pluses indicate the magnet should be a plus to attract or that the "polarity" is a plus and my magnet thus needs to be a minus to attract - I think that is a consequence of the magnetic beam "source" having a different sign from the signs on the magnetic beam itself (if the source says minus but the beam is filled with pluses, must my magnet be a plus or minus?). Maybe you could show the trajectory in aim mode going towards the magnet beam "source" when it is the right polarity.

- To add on to the previous point, you could also consider switching out the '+' and '-' symbols for 'N' and 'S'. Then it becomes much more intuitive for us since we have all learned in school that unlike poles attract, like poles repel (hey, you could add that as a feature into the game too - if the magnet and something else are the same colour they repel each other). That unfortunately also means you likely have to remove the option that like charges attract, but if this allows players to pick up the concept much better I would say that is a win. (I guess the idea behind this is that if the game uses something they learned in school, then it reduces the information load while learning the game, thus making it easier to learn.) After all, you are making a game about magnets, why not use North and South Poles as well instead of charges?

- Left Ctrl doesn't restart the level for me... (On a side note I think it might be better to use R for restart.)

- The right-angle door mechanic feels very satisfying, and I can see the mechanic's immense potential given how it is used in some of the puzzles.

- The player movement generally felt quite nice, though I might have liked the player speed to be a little faster, but just a little (since this is a puzzle platformer, maybe you could add an option to adjust player speed?). I believe you could do a bit of fine-tuning to get it to Celeste-level smooth, but then again that's up to you.

- The puzzles generally seemed quite nice, I especially liked Levels 2, 5, and 6. Level 3 felt a bit easy to me so maybe you could switch it with Level 2...?

- I suggest you could add checkpoints or design levels with less dead ends, it's too annoying to keep having to restart when you reach a state with no possible moves i.e. the player and magnet both get stuck (this sometimes happens by accident e.g. falling off a platform). Or you could consider implementing an undo system, although that would understandably be very hard for a puzzle platformer.

- An idea I had is to design the whole game's UI around the magnet theme e.g. make the menu screen use a magnet to indicate the currently selected option (like the fork in Stephen's Sausage Roll's menu), have the level transitions involve magnets more so than just a symbol - one idea I have is the magnet character entering from the right, then pulling in a black screen from the left, then making it switch polarity, allowing the black screen to exit from the left revealing the new level (followed of course by the magnet's own departure from the screen).

- Have the magnet fall from the green pipe only when you get close to it, so you know it is there to deposit magnets. A BoxCollider2D with Is Trigger set to true should do the trick.

- I feel that the Level Hub design could be improved, it feels a bit extra to have to throw the magnet into the pipe and then stand next to the door to go into the level (why not just have one action to enter the level? Say, throwing the magnet or standing next to the door and pressing a key.)

These are the feedback I have. I know it's a long list, and most of it is negative, but I hope you can take it constructively, and would like to reiterate that I still enjoyed the game despite its flaws. You should be proud of having created this for your first ever game (you can check out my own games on my itch.io page, I genuinely think your game is better than some of mine.)

With that being said, I remember one of your videos covered something about how to listen to feedback, and it mentioned how players understand the problems but not necessarily the solutions (or something along those lines, I can't really remember). Maybe you could take that to heart, and while I proposed a lot of solutions here you don't have to implement them the way I said it. I hope you can continue to take this game further.

- Make the minus on the magnet a different color or position; it looks like it's an elongated or misaligned pole. Maybe keep it horizontal at all times, like a UI floater.

- Add level numbers. This make it easier to look for walkthroughs or talk about the puzzle online.

- The ...6th? level should have a hoover nozzle that sucks you (or the magnet) out of the pit and deposits you onto the main floor out of a vent. Either that or detect locked states and offer to restart. No, definitely the first thing.

- I'd like to see puzzles based on INDUCTION :-) throw the magnet though a coil. Add springs for continued motion. Add springs on conveyor belts to get them into the right configuration.

- Keyboard input: either make the character movable during aim (might break game mechanics) - or - make the arrow keys change the angle of the throw. No mouse required.

- Please make a key (or tell me how) to cancel a throw. Space or...

- Also the 6th level: when the switch is on, and you're in the corner, you can't drive up the switch. The other way around IS possible.

- Another idea: put the key in a cage that can be moved around somehow. Only at the "end" point can you access it.

- Or make the key red (magnetic) sometimes. Guide it using the magnets.

- Upon finally getting the solution of the 6th level, I find it really awesome! One improvement: move the platform to the left of the tractor beam 1 block to the left. That makes it clear you can't jump across from left to right.

Really liked it overall.  I liked the feel of the character and I found the double door really satisfying. Can't wait for the sound design! Just got a few little critiques: 

Restarting the level.
Wasn't sure if I had to press CTRL or hold it It became obvious eventually but maybe a lil animation that shows you must hold it down could be cool.

Aiming the Magnet.
While aiming the magnet and changing the polarity, the trajectory resets. Would be nice if the trajectory of the throw stays the same, while also being able to change between polarities. Also being able to move while aiming the magnet would be nice.

Bug
Found a bug, while you're in either the hub or the "Thanks for playing" level. If you hold down CTRL the restart symbol appears, top left, and just keeps growing until you let go of CTRL. Not really major but just letting you know. 

Hope this helps you in anyway! Really excited to see how your game develops. It's so cool to watch the development of it!

MAIN MENU:

• Please make ENTER a valid select option.
• Options menu has to be navigated with the mouse. Arrow keys do not work. Have to use LB/RB for controller (no indication).
• Controller Inputs are wrong. It says B = Aim and X = Cancel Aim, but it's the opposite.
• The REVERT buttons do not highlight in Keyboard settings.
• Cannot bind the E key for some reason.
• In the Pause Menu, you can still make the character face left/right and aim.
• Pressing ESC in the Options Menu should bring you back to the Pause Menu.
• The above works if you rebind a button, but then ESC no longer works to unpause - and clicking Resume will make the robot throw.
• Pressing space on the Resume option will make the robot jump.

DEFAULT KEYBOARD CONTROLS:

• I started using arrow keys for movement - because WASD didn't work for menus... This felt a bit strange when combined with E/F/Space, but not terrible.
• I got to "Hold E to aim, release to throw" when I realised this would not work at all. The game wanted me to use a mouse to aim (despite not saying it). 
• One hand on the arrow keys, one hand on E/F/Space, third hand on the mouse? No. Clearly the game wanted me to use WASD instead...
• So was WASD a better option? Well, yes and no. It was now awkward to change magnet polarity while moving. Also would be awkward to aim while moving... If not for the fact this has been made impossible.
• No aiming while moving. Are there some future puzzles already planned with this limitation in mind? It just doesn't feel good to have your character's motion interrupted. Especially because it takes a second before it even registers.

• I was very happy to discover that you can use a left mouse click to aim/throw instead of E. Next thought was it might be nice if the right mouse click changed magnet polarity.
• Sadly, Right-Click is permanently bound to Cancel Aim. There should be secondary bindings for each button to prevent these permanent bindings.
• Anyway, if both mouse buttons are already bound to aiming and cancelling, it might be worth trying out: Right-Click to aim, Left-Click to throw. This would allow you to cancel aiming just by letting go of RMB. It would also allow you to drop the magnet just by clicking LMB.
• As for shifting the magnet's polarity shift - How about SHIFT? Or S, W, CTRL...
• Might have to think of left-handed players as well. How are they going to jump? Up key?

• MAN, there are so many different options for aiming it's hard to even begin to decide what would be best. Perhaps the cursor could be hidden, and aiming would work like Angry Birds / Ori. Maybe time would slow down while aiming (Ori). Maybe only in mid-air like in BOTW... Too many to contemplate.

• Finally, it would be nice to have a "No Mouse" option. So you can play the game with WASD for movement and Arrow Keys for aiming. CTRL/SHIFT for Throw/Polarity. Whichever way around. Might have to test that each puzzle works for this mode. Should be noted that D-Pad aiming works right now.

DEFAULT CONTROLLER CONTROLS:

Fairly good.

If you decide to allow moving while aiming, it might be nice to have it set up this way:

• IF IN MOTION: Aiming also moves the robot.
• IF NOT IN MOTION: Aiming does not move the robot.

Alternatively, you could experiment with using the Right-Stick for aiming. But this might result in some strange jump bindings.

PUZZLE DESIGN

Quite nice. Some unintended alternate solutions.

This may come down to personal preference, but I tend to prefer puzzle games without unwinnable states.

That said, my favourite puzzle game (Baba Is You) has plenty of them. Of course, you can just rewind time in that game.

I just think there's something elegant about a puzzle that cannot be broken.

It's possible to soft-lock every level here - including the tutorial (2 soft-locks, and possible to die).

Not saying this is necessarily bad though. Every game is different after all. Maybe you want the player to really think about their actions before committing, rather than running around trying everything to brute-force the solution.

Good luck!

BUGS

• Cannot fully replay levels due to lack of key.
• If you hold down the "change polarity" button, it will change polarity again when the key is released.
• It's impossible to jump when perfectly on top of a screw (Level 2).
• A large magnet won't crush you if you're on the edge (Level 3/4).
• Hold down Ctrl in the hub and the reset icon grows in size.
• Skip the tutorial by pausing and selecting "Return to Hub".

For Visibility:

• Super Jump Bug: https://itch.io/post/5962907
• Extra Bugs: https://itch.io/post/5962342

ps

oh I did not have the right solution to level 6 (saw solution in comments). It's a much nicer level than I thought that requires no timing skills ;-( But I was so hooked up with Lefel 1 showing me the mechanic I needed I never thought too hard. Why have the delay in the dropping of both the blocks (between first and second to drop)  if you are not trying to tempt me to run the gap over one and under the other! At least let it be possible... or maybe its a troll for the hard-core.  

It's really neat! But here's a load of long paragraphs of things I found troublesome and sometimes suggestions on how to fix them.

The camera movement can be annoying, especially with larger levels. It keeps falling behind the player character, only showing where the player was, instead of staying centered or moving forward t
o show where the player will be, like in Super Mario Bros. That'd be nicer!

The game seems to intentionally disallow switching the magnet polarity too quickly. This can be very annoying if you just want to switch it to + and then back to -: if you do the second switch even just a frame too early, it just ignores the request completely.

Maybe buffering up to one switch would be a nicer strategy, if not removing the polarity switch delay? What about just making the magnet completely unmagnetized for half a second after a switch, ramping up to full power slowly, if you're afraid of players exploiting rapid switching?

I feel like it'd be nice if there was an option to aim far throws using WASD keys instead of (or in tandem with) the mouse when using KB/M, though that's probably personal preference.

I like how SuperFighters Deluxe handles its keyboard-only aiming: you either just shoot without aiming straight forward while walking around, or, when in the aiming mode, you use A/D to turn left/right, and W/S to change altitude.

You also have both aimless throwing and aimed throwing here aswell, so it might be worth using this kind of a system or offering it as an option.

Why such a long and drawn out loading screen with a wholesale prolonged fadeout/fadein animation? It's a very simple 2D game, and we aren't in the 1990s where that was necessary?

In the hub level, it gets progressively more annoying with each level to have to go all the way to the next level from the very start, because the next levels are farther and farther away from it.

Also after completing the levels, the screen above the appropriate garage door just goes blank. Maybe a checkbox is in place there? Or the level ID, like "H1L2" (Hub 1 Level 2)

In H1L6, it feels unfair that the hatch door's attractor does not attract the huge block, but the ceiling attractor does. Upon closer inspection I realize it's because the block is just a tiny tiny amount larger than the space in which it could be attracted in, but it still feels unfair. So far in the game, I hope I won't find that polarized blocks don't get attracted by hatches with attractors!

And in the same level, if you go up to the block while it's still on the ceiling, it also feels unfair that there's enough squeeze space just below the block that the drawn character can most definitely squeeze through, but it doesn't work. Now I just want a crouch function! :(

The last two are probably fixable by different level design that does not raise those questions in the first place lol

Also very slight visual complaint: the pixels of the game sprites (specifically the very edge of the walls) don't always align with the screen pixels, which can produce mismatched pixels. If you aren't going to have anti-aliasing enabled (which I think is better not used in this case), try using some math to keep the camera's position aligned such that for each screen pixel there's exactly one world pixel. Playing in 1920x1080 fullscreen.

Speaking of fullscreen, maybe this is a bug with WINE (I'm playing on Linux; export your game to it too please!), but the game seems to insist to be in 1920x1080 unresizable window when in windowed mode, and then force resizing the window to any sizes not in 16:9 aspect ratio breaks visuals pretty bad.

The game seems to be designed for 16:9 only, with the full UI (retry/switch polarity "buttons", the hint, and everything) being still rendered on the main menu and in the hub, just pushed offscreen.

The long-winded transitions reveal themselves to actually be long-winded and unnecessary (the game world is just sitting there ready while the thing does the whoosh) by not covering outside of the 16:9 region, the main menu's scrolling background magnets appear and disappear, and so on.

From this, a funny bug that affects even normal players: if, while in the hub, you hold R, the restart "button" starts scaling up while no actual restart is happening, so it just keeps creeping onto the screen, growing endlessly bigger in size until you release the key lol

If you accidentally try to start a level you already got all the keys in, I think you should warn the player or better yet have a "ghost" key to replay the level.  I initially tried to go back through the pipe at the start. I was stuck until I realized I could pause and exit the level from the menu.

I enjoy your videos on Nebula so I came to have a go.

Feedback (warning spoilers).

Controls:

Holding CTRL to get a level restart becomes intuitive, however a 'bar-filling' animation might help to show how long you have to hold it for (a press is not enough). Just like in Super Smash Bros

You could have two-stages for the hold effect with CTRL. Hold for 2 sec to restart level , hold for 5 sec to go back to Hub. I didn't like there wasn't an 'Exit' in the level screen to go back to the hub.

I never came across a situation where I didn't want the magnet to be picked-up. How about an auto pick-up when I roll-over it? If I don't want to pick it up I can jump over it... (this could be a mechanic aswell)

Level Order:

I tried the levels in Order 4,2,6,1,3,5. Only Level 6 was 'really' challenging. I would overall the difficulty is aimed at kids??

 After I failed to figure out level 6 (about 15 mins of trying) I became humble and went back to level 1, which was handy because level 1 gave me the idea to solve level 6.

Level 2 is very easy, an extension of the tutorial more or less.

Favourite level is level 5. Nice fake-out so answer is satisfying.

In level 6 why is the (annoying) switch not angled so that it is facing up close to the wall. If it was angled up at the wall, then a throw of mine would hit the far wall and the magnet would dead-drop onto it, making the throw a lot easier to get right. It's not like the dash not to get squished is easy to time, both together are hair pulling.

I never did level 6, however I think my solution would have worked if only I had perfect timing. It's nice that I didn't have to finish level 6 to get to the 'final' stage.

General Comments:

I like the puzzles are all on one screen. Somehow feels like the puzzle is not cheating by keeping some part of itself hidden (like a good murder mystery, all the clues are there...)

I like you can totally screw up the puzzle and you have to make your own decision to reset. The choice to reset was mine.

Rando ideas:

How about a super-heavy magnet that when you pick it up slows your characters movement and jump, has shorter throw range or can knock over obstacles when it is speedy from a mag field.

If the magnet hits your character on the head, then the character could enter a dazed animation that stops player input for a few seconds. It would be cute, fun to do, and could be a mechanic. Nothing like depolarising a magnet so it hits your bonce for a cheap laugh.

Um, technically a negative and a negative polarity on magnets are repulsive not neutral. Does this mean you want a third 'off' state for the magnet or two 'types' or magnet (positive and negative, and positive and neutral)? I liked how just two states kept the magnet simple though...

My kids play a lot of 'fire boy and water girl' and it feels like it should be similar. I will show my kids this game.

Thanks

There's a lot to love about this MVP.  I did not play the previous one, but it is really enjoyable to move the character around here. The animations complement the physics system to convey a clear sense of your/the magnet's momentum under different effects,  where your character can jump to, and so on. Jumping around in particular is a joy and I often found myself doing so as I considered possible solutions.

No puzzle stuck out as a poor inclusion. They definitely got more difficult as they went on, but never so much that I was stuck on a puzzle for longer than a couple of minutes. I felt a number of the click moments you have described as I would attempt a solution, found the limitations, and then laughed when I noticed where I went wrong.

For minor things I appreciated, I thought it was smart to have the switches be angled as they are so you can roll over them to activate them, often pointing me in the direction I wanted to go as I did. Also, I liked that I could cancel a throw after holding X if I didn't use the thumbstick to aim, rather than being locked into throwing the magnet on release. I wasn't sure if that was an intended feature, but it helped nonetheless.

For things I might hope to see in the future, I would love to see an exploration of how you can build momentum to reach places. I've said how I love the physicality of the character and I would like to see that aspect be tested. I got quite excited to think that the 7th level seemed to involve flinging myself/the magnet onto the switch using the field, and while you can fling yourself it was a shame this wasn't part of the solution.

It would be nice to have the key remain in the level after beating it so that the level can be replayed, possibly in a greyed out form so it players don't think they can collect it again. This would definitely help the testing phase at least, as I have to quit and restart the game to replay the levels.

Finally, my biggest complaint is that it is very easy to softlock yourself on many levels. Falling into pits (e.g. the one with the button in level 7), locking yourself on the wrong side of the pushable barriers (e.g. in level 6, passing the barrier, travelling over it and landing behind it) and the magnet landing in an unreachable place (e.g. the flat ground behind the barrier in level 1) were some of the issues I faced. While this wasn't awful as the levels are short and quick to restart without losing any progress, and I think it is an acceptable design decision to demand planning instead of figuring out the puzzle through experimentation, if/when you start adding levels that are longer or require more complex execution this would quickly become very frustrating if not avoided.

I can't believe this is the first game you have ever made from scratch. It motivates me to learn more myself. Amazing job!

One thing I've noticed is the aiming system. The movement is controlled by the arrow keys but the aiming is by the mouse. Each time I wanted to aim at something was a mini "forced-back-to-the-reality" moment since I have to remember to let go of my arrow keys to reach the mouse, then come back to the arrow keys once again after throwing the magnet. 

I thought that it'd be better if the movement is also controlled by the mouse since you are disabling the movement while aiming. Click and move toward style.

Overall, the puzzles were pretty satisfying to solve and I really liked the main character's movement. Basic controls like move and jump were pretty smooth as well (I remember you mentioned overhauling the player control system in one of the videos). I played with the Mac version but I didn't notice any bugs.

I always enjoy your video series and learn a lot from them. Keep up the great work you are doing! :D

The puzzles themselves were really satisfying. My main feedback would be that it takes a bit too long to restart the level, and the animation for collecting a key is boring.

Also concerning the keys, what if you made them somehow related to a magnet? Maybe fragments of a big magnet that you could use to reach the last level in the hub? I think it would be cool to lean into the magnet theme with the collectables as well.

The player character feels quite nice to control, and the magnet is very satisfying. Keep up the good work!