Neural Connectivity by Crefossus
POST JAM UPDATE. Check link below! Way better movement.
The real game takes place on screen, but only the technician can hook you up.
You CAN win. Check the spoiler if you get stuck and want to make sure you saw everything :)
Movement
WASD
Changelog/Bugfix for compo:
I fixed a hole and some collisions.
The real game takes place on screen, but only the technician can hook you up.
You CAN win. Check the spoiler if you get stuck and want to make sure you saw everything :)
Movement
WASD
Changelog/Bugfix for compo:
I fixed a hole and some collisions.
| Post Jam Web (GameJolt) | http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/neural-connectivity/41136/ |
| Add me on Twitter (@Crefossus) | https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=Crefossus |
| Spoiler/Guide | https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86120857/NeuralConnectivitySpoiler.txt |
| Post Jam Direct | http://apps.playcanvas.com/crefossus/psi/PostJam-000 |
| Source | https://playcanvas.com/crefossus/psi |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=23130 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 60% | 3 |
| Overall | 2.25 | 1184 |
| Audio | 1.91 | 882 |
| Fun | 2.11 | 1152 |
| Graphics | 2.56 | 905 |
| Humor | 2.69 | 425 |
| Innovation | 2.43 | 994 |
| Mood | 2.55 | 882 |
| Theme | 2.12 | 1194 |
I like the visual style of hte beams going up into the sky.
I like the visual style of the beams going up into the sky.
I think if you would have had more time, you could actually make a real game from this, because the 'quest' idea could be fun. :)
Thing to consider:
The proximity to the radio to be able to interact with it was rather short, I was about to give up before I walked right up next to it. Volume could be cranked up quite a bit.
Upon completion it would have been nice with something clearly happing on the screen. Maybe actually a game like pong appearing.
More random stuff throughout the world that didn't aim towards completing the game. Like ears that wouldn't listen, some rude bears and so on. Some of them with options in the interactions, like the radio. The option don't need to mean anything. Just more stuff to explore and experience to distract away from the quite linear and straight story.
The main problem is that this game is an adventure game that A) doesn't make any sense; and B) does not give the player any reason to care about solving the puzzles. In a good adventure game, you don't just want to 'get to the next task', you want to help the protagonist escape from his situation, or discover what's beyond that one mysterious door, or something similar.
Here, you're just dropped into a nonsensical world and there's no reason to want to solve puzzles. You could at least give the player a bare minimum of interest in solving puzzles by, for example, leaving a part of the world locked away, so the player will want to solve puzzles to see what else there is to see in this world. Or you could add some kind of story; why is the player in the world, and why does he want to see the screen? Maybe the protagonist suddenly woke up in this strange world, and the whatever-it-is tells him the screen will reveal the reason he's in this world; it would make the reader slightly curious as to what's on the screen and give him a reason to go through all the steps to see it.
The nonsensicality of the puzzles is what kills whatever fun may be left in a puzzle game without any reason to solve the puzzles. In a typical adventure game, you find an item that you can pick up, say for example a screwdriver. If the puzzles are logical, this makes the player assume 'hey, there must be something for me to do with the screwdriver', and he'll start looking for things that might contain screws. If he then attempts to use the item on something that looks screwdriverable and something happens, this gives the player a sense of accomplishment; he figured out that the screwdriver works on the other item and the game rewards him for being smart enough to figure that out.
This game completely lacks such logic, however. If you find the teddy bear first, there's no reason whatsoever to assume the tall man needs it. If you find the tall man first, he immediately gives away the answer to the puzzle ('he needs a teddy bear'), leaving only the tedious part (finding the item, and it's not hidden in a way that makes the player feel smart for finding it). Had instead the tall man been a lonely-looking fellow that just said "I'm so lonely...", remedying his loneliness by giving him the teddy bear would greatly increase the player's satisfaction upon completing the puzzle, especially if he had to manually give the teddy bear rather than automatically clearing the puzzle when approaching the lonely fellow.
In addition to not having any puzzles solvable by logic, there are also useless elements further denying players any challenge of figuring things out. What are the houses for? What's with the giant teddy bear? What do I do with the potion of strength? The complete lack of answers to these questions leaves the player further discouraged from attempting to solve anything. Furthermore, in this specific game it works against the experience further by causing disappointment; I had to double-check with you on IRC whether the game really was over because I'd expected to do something with the potion of strength and all the other unnecessary elements in the game. You know how sometimes a story ends and leaves major plot points unanswered? It's exactly like that, except almost EVERYTHING remains unanswered in this story.
All that leaves is a game in which you can walk around the world and look at stuff. The complete lack of music (aside from the radio) and sound really hurts the atmosphere which usually makes exploration interesting. As others have pointed out, the movement sucks and camera has issues (as well as the terrain hiding things in such a way you think it's not there; I didn't notice the radio until after I finished and replayed the game for the sidequest), rendering exploration not only not fun, but actively unpleasant. When exploring in this tiring way, the only things to see are a couple random objects that seem to be rather roughly modeled, mostly untextured and lacking in any consistent style. The text is the only somewhat interesting thing to see.
Two minor further remarks: The radio puzzle requiring music is inconsistent with the rest of the game having no audio. Hearing no audio after playing the game for a minute makes players conclude there's no audio at all, and they may turn off their sound altogether or turn on music of their own, leaving them unable to hear the music when it does arrive. The other remark is also about that same sidequest; as with the main game, there is no reward (emotional or otherwise) or any specific reason for the player to do it. It is literally a waste of time. You should've implemented it in the main quest so it could piggyback on the emotional payoff of solving the main quest (had there been any) or given some kind of reward to the player for solving it.
There wasn't really anything to keep my interest.
I thought the physics were decent and the controls were fine, so I don't really know what people were complaining about there.