Untitled Magnet Game

very minor thing, but I noticed that in the thank you for playing room, the pipe there, if you switch the magnet to - the - shows above the pipe but the magnet is below it. I dont know weather this happens in other rooms, I just noticed it first there

edit: it happens with every pipe

Also, I loved the last level. I literally said "Aha!" out loud

As a KBM player on PC,
- No obvious back button in settings (had to press ESC)
[Refresh]CTRL is the first thing I saw in-game, and made me press it, not useful

- the F button prompt/instruction should be more obvious as a toggle

- "E - Carry Magnet" instruction should change to "E - Throw Magnet" after picking up the Magnet

- Using KBM, Mouse is much more intuitive to control the magnet, but the instructions only describe Keyboard (also, "F" should be right-click)

I'm writing this comment gradually as I play.  Great MVP!  I am playing with keyboard and mouse, so some of what I say will probably only apply to that.

I did notice on the very first time I was dropped into the game that the jump felt a little off to me (maybe to slow or to low, not as snappy as expected, but I haven't gotten used to it so that might be it).  

I also noticed immediately that the push door things let you through when you run into them, but if you immediately turn around and don't leave the vicinity of the door and try to go back, it won't budge, even when you stop and start going in the opposite direction again.  You have to move away from the door a bit and then back through.  

I don't know if it was intentional, but the fact that you can't move around while aiming with the mouse feels needlessly limiting to me... maybe you can slow down but not fully stop the player when aiming? 

Also, my opinion is that the magnet throwing, for keyboard and mouse, when the mouse is positioned at a place the magnet can actually go, the trajectory should line up with the mouse position, not just having the initial throw direction vector towards it, as that often ends up with undershooting.  Idk, it's a matter of preference, I think.  Could it be a setting?

My instinct as soon as I was holding onto a magnet that was stuck to the ceiling, other than changing the polarity, was that if I held a direction and jumped I would jump out of the hold and get a bit more distance, but it was just letting go followed by directional falling... adding the jumping off feature might break some of the puzzles or platforming (idk I haven't gotten to them yet) but I just want to give you everything I think of that might help.

Putting that platform that the magnet can pass but the player can't is a good instance of unspoken teaching.  My instinct was to hold down and jump to pass through it like other platformers, but when I couldn't, I understood what it was for.

I noticed a lot of coyote time.  Good feature to implement!  I liked how much time it was, but it also was more than enough to be noticeable.

The hub has nice parallax, but since there are doors there, is it appropriate? maybe add a section of wall behind the doors themselves to make it less jarring?

good RMB aim cancel feature.

I noticed that if I jump against a floating bit of floor and then slide down it, the magnet's collision to bump it back for its visual effect also kind of slows down the player character's descent... It hasn't given me an issue yet but it's a possibility.  It might need further testing, and maybe if possible let collision affect its position but don't let it get caught easily by pulling the player back? unless that is a way to prevent you from progressing until you do something later on, though I'd imagine the inverse of the magnet-passing-only platform would work better.

The magnet and all its particles are on a layer below the key sign above each door in the hub

Also, maybe for hub doors instead of automatically entering you could have an up direction prompt?  like W or up on the joystick?  It could prevent frustration if you ever incorporate doors in your levels or have multiple open doors at once.

Is the inability to rapidly swap polarities intentional?  You can't swap back until the animation finishes, so mistakes or trying to get something to turn off only for a moment before the magnet falls doesn't work

Loved how at lvl 5 it's starting to pick up the difficulty; it actually made me think outside of the box a little

trying to throw when on a narrow ledge next to a wall or even just next to a wall will push the player because of the magnet's collision

I had trouble with lvl 6 before I realized what to do, as (spoiler alert) I was thinking along the route of throwing the magnet onto the button and legging it while the box was going up.  I didn't realize that the lip of the magnet door would block the magnet box... before that I was trying to use it as a place to stand on and jump from, thinking that might help lol.  Good puzzle.

(btw I'm not counting the tutorial as a lvl here when saying the lvl names; 5 and 6 are the last 2 when I say that)

Again, great MVP!  I look forward to more of your devlogs (and the product, ofc)!

Played this on Steam's Proton, it worked flawlessly. It's a very fun prototype and the last level really surprised me. I found the hub's parallax strange, probably because of the doors. In struggled a little with the aim, more often than not I released the aim before button, making it fail, I think a short timer would solve this.

Before I start on my feedback, let me just give a bit of context, I played the game on my Windows laptop, although this is not how I usually play platformer games. V2.0 is the first version I have played so I also can't comment on the changes from the pervious version. 

When the game first started their was no prompt on how to move, my first guess was to use the arrow keys, with worked. But as I was playing it soon became apparent that it wasn't the intended method of plays as I would have needed three hands to move with the arrow keys, aim with the mouse and use e/f/Space for the magnet's controls and jumping. You may want to tell players to use wasd for movement in the beginning. I only realized wasd was already bound when I went to go try to rebind the controls.

As far as the key system in the game, I was not the biggest fan. In the tutorial level you picked up a key and then used it to unlock the exit to the hub world. As such my initial interpretation was that after grabbing keys I would need to find an exit and/or return to start. Instead the main levels just abruptly end by collecting the key. May I suggest that after grabbing the key in the tutorial level, you are booted to a world 0 level select were you then demonstrate how to exchange keys to move on to world 1. It would be a better way of teaching that the levels end by collecting the key and you need keys to move on to the next world. Perhaps you could even start the tutorial levels with graffiti on the wall depicting a key and an arrow pointing down the level.

I might also recommend placing numbers such as 1-1 above the level doors, it would make it easier for people to give feedback on the individual levels. It's not a problem yet as their are so few levels but it is something to keep in mind going forward.

I will also say that as far as I can tell in this game, magnets of the same polarity don't repel each other like they do in real life. It's probably a bit late in game development to change the core mechanic of how the magnetism works but it was something I noticed.

Obviously the lack of sound and the crewed buttons in the options menu are just placeholders/temporary. I will say the crewed nature of the option buttons made it difficult to tell what they were depicting, specifically the buttons for controller support and keyboard support looked identical on a first glance. It also felt to be a bit weird to be playing a game that looked this good but to be completely silent as I played.

One final note, I would recommend placing a button in the options menu to exit said menu. It is a great game so far, keep up the good work.

Interesting mechanics and nice controls. I think the particle effects add a lot to the game aesthetic and overall it looks quite nice. I definitely think that adding some SFX, even basic ones, will add a lot to the game. I thought the progression curve was solid. The second to last puzzle was the trickiest I think, and getting to that trickier puzzle at that time / pace felt quite natural. Expanding the lobby / main area might be something you could capitalize on... I could see how more variance / detail could expand your game world / add some intrigue to the world. 

nice game. Could say a lot of positive stuff but i’m just gonna point out here what i didn’t like (so you can improve on it :))

• arrow of magnet throwing direction is behind game elements sometimes
• cant throw a magnet (or switch polarity) directly after switching polarity (instant polarity switch would be nicer)
• sometimes the magnet throw doesn’t get registered mid-air, it also feels like it has more delay mid-air

This one feels much nicer to play!

A few thoughts!

You cant skip loading into a level if you accidentally open it in the hub maybe instead of pipes that the magnet goes into it could be an magnet block that your magnet sticks to, then you could change polarity to close the level entry again.

 You can't finish a finished level again (at least for the first level)(Maybe it could be ghost keys like mario ghost stars so you can at least replay the level?)

I'd love to be able to call the magnet home a bit. Maybe that would just be a wider area that you can call the magnet from?

Would prefer to be able to move and throw the magnet at the same time for a higher skill ceiling. Although, I know that'd come with more platform-y gameplay.

On the hub world, in order to get to the next level quickly i'd naturally hold right immediately, which would result in me having to backtrack to pick up the magnet. Perhaps it should spawn further in front, or you could just stop the player moving before the whole hub world is visible

Lastly, a question, is there a reason you can't change the magnet's polarity until you pick it up for the first time?

Thanks Mark!

Nice one! This demo of Untitled Magnet Game is a well designed puzzler with "Aha!"'s and other great phenomona. The difficulty curve was set at just the right level to give people time to learn the controls, the interactions they can create and the different situations that can lead to interesting and seemingly contradictory catches.

There is one thing I would suggest, which is changing what happens when you re-enter a level.  Classic puzzlers usually have little differences when you replay a level, with the only new goal being optimisation. A cool idea to implement would be that you are transported to the beginning of the stage, only, the pipe spits out 2 magnets, 1 north, 1 south and both unswitchable, and the level becomes one of resource management.

This idea does come with a few drawbacks though, with it removing one of the core mechanics that are used throughout the game, which would be the equivalent of Celeste's B-sides removing the dash and adding infinite stamina: the game removes the core mechanic.

This game, no matter what direction it takes, seems to be a fun, intuitive and engaging puzzler with very promising groundwork already laid. Good job!

Good work! The movement feels very smooth as far as I'm concerned. Coyote time, jump buffering and all that good (must have) platformer stuff.

I don't have much experience in terms of puzzle design, but one thing regarding platforming I'd like to point out, is that if you jump via a jump buffer (i.e. press jump before technically having landed yet), it gives you a lower max jump height compared to what it is normally (not sure if the base jump height is affected by this, or just the max jump height).

This is not a big deal, but a few of my jumps were unfortunately thrown off by this very thing, because I tend to chain jumps whenever I can in platformers. It made the jumping feel kinda inconsistent.

Also after finishing a level, I personally think I would prefer being spawned right outside the level I just finished, instead of at the entrance of the hub. It was a bit tedious (I'm being nitpicky, I know :P) to walk past all the finished levels to reach the next.

All in all, very nice demo, I look forward to seeing more :)

I think the only one i stuck longer than expected was stage 5, which i think is because L Door without magnet lock  was introduced once in tutorial but not in stage 1 ~ 4, so I totally forgot about it XD.

Mostly fun. Neat aesthetic, responsive control, and indicators are clear enough for most part. And I never knew there's back to hub button after I accidentally click Escape.

I liked playing the demo. I like how the solutions to the puzzles are logical but not always obvious. 

Maybe it's me, but I couldn't change the throwing arch, however I wanted to. Would this break the puzzles? Visually, the dots and arrow arch gave me the feeling I should be able to. 

But besides that, I had fun playing the game, the overal atmoshpere is quite cute and the magnet mechanic is amazing and lends itself for a lot of cool puzzles. 

Good luck on the rest of development!

I guess it beats past the levels after 3, I new you would make levels past L3 only possible by giga chads.

Overall, pretty good. Last level hurt my brain

After playing through all the levels, I've got to say the game feels polished and is really fun to play. The fact that you can switch the magnet polarity while not holding it gives so many level possibilities.

I like the revelation that the swing doorway & the magnet operates whether the robot is holding the magnet or not.

On mechanic:

Is it just me or I feel that the robot run a little too slow (or maybe the map is too big)...

I often (intentionally) lost my magnet on the unreachable side of the stage (for the sake of figuring how the puzzle will play out). Like, deliberately throwing the magnet across the chasm onto a button, so I can see the actual effect when the button get pressed (and testing my accuracy if I can throw the magnet onto it or not). But now I can't get the magnet back and need to reset the whole stage. It is not a bad idea at all to force players to reset the stage. But maybe I think it would be better if I can also remotely destroy and respawn the magnet. Maybe it is done via walking over a button and the magnet spawn on the front of the stage. This way it feel more immersive: made mistakes, try amending first, if it not work, then reset.

On controlling:

I'm using XBOX controller and not testing on keyboard & mouse.

I think hold-X button to aim and throw magnet could be improved. Normally in games that use aim-then-fire mechanic (e.g. Zelda BOTW), they utilizing RT instead. This provide a lot more advantages:

1. Cancel with B is a lot easier -- index at RT and thumb at B using two separate fingers, so it is easy to press two buttons. Compare to using only one thumb at X and, while holding it, also need to reach B. That's somewhat a finger gymnastic in action!

2. Using index for RT makes the thumb free. So later on, for experienced player who want to do some crazy moves, they can also use the free thumb for A to jump during aiming.

3. We may ditch the stationary aiming (thus, faster platforming). By using R to aim instead of L. Imagine that while we are running (with left thumb on L), we can also aiming (with right index on RT and right thumb on R) without the need to stay still. How cool is that?

On visual:

It is quite unclear that the thin platform allows magnet to go through, but not the character.

On level:

Level 3, Up and Away. There are too many one way platforms that the robot need to repeatedly jump on to reach the top block. Maybe design this part with a ladder instead???

Level 6, Blocked by Block. I think I'm in a love-hate relationship with this level. Unable to solve it for like 10min, I think it's impossible (I came to the conclusion that precise platforming is required here). But once I saw the critical puzzle piece, I gain an a-ha moment. However, I still wonder why I don't see it in the first place. Turns out that when I look closely at the stage, the exceed amount of the swing door was so short that I don't aware it can help solving the puzzle at all. So I felt a little bit cheated. But then I can't think of better alternative designs for it... Maybe good job at designing this as a hard level. Fun or not is another story...

For those who want to play the game on Linux, the only thing missing from a default Wine installation is `corefonts`.

It can be easily installed with winetricks.

Also, it's recommended to use Wine Staging 7.8 or later, since it includes a patch for Unity games (without it, if the game loses focus it can't be regained again).

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.