Project Leonardo by micheleV

[raw]
made by micheleV for LD36 (COMPO)
This is a command line like browser game. It contains quotes from movies and sci-fi novels, it's something between text adventure and a puzzle, I guess.
It is very short (~5 minutes of gameplay) and unfortunately it is not mobile compatible.

I made it in around 10 hours, I had no time to prepare in advance and I had to cut lot of corners (the code is not modular at all and the whole code is one big fat file).
It's made with javascript, nothing special. I always wanted to join the Ludum Dare so the goal of this time was to deliver a game in time without loosing time looking up tools or resources.

I was planning to make the hint command work with a thesaurus online, add more technologies, make it multilingual, implement save and load but the time was very limited.

The source code is available at: https://github.com/MicheleV/Leonardo
The game can be played at: https://michelev.github.io/Leonardo

I hope you like it. Any feedback is welcome, thank you for you time!

Feedback

jakatpemadi
29. Aug 2016 路 10:43 UTC
I am not sure that the gameplay is only 5 minutes. I am stuck at thinking about "paper" instead of "writing". Finished it in almost 1 hour.

Good game, I like the Portal game references there. Maybe you can add background music and some sound effect there. thanks.
馃帳 micheleV
29. Aug 2016 路 11:24 UTC
Thank you very much for playing it and for the feedback. I think you are correct, the fact that even 'numbers' won't do for 'number' must have been very frustrating. Next time I'll try to plan in advance my weekend in order to have more time!
onyon
29. Aug 2016 路 12:17 UTC
Cool text-based game. Thumbs up!
RockhopperGames
29. Aug 2016 路 15:35 UTC
It's a shame you didn't get more time to widen the tech paths or terms that you could refer to them with. Things started well with "wheel," but I must admit that I was a little disappointed when "pulley" and "fulcrum" didn't bring any results...

For ten hours though, I think you made a good showing. Games like these always struggle with language, so no way should I expect you to solve that in such a short time period! I hope you enjoyed Ludum Dare!
DragonZBW (SparkLight Games)
30. Aug 2016 路 00:09 UTC
I am extremely confused. It feels like there's something here that I'm supposed to know that I don't. Everything i said was responded to with some non-contextual phrase like "So I'll just call you..." and then "He had to save her."
oskardevelopment
30. Aug 2016 路 16:40 UTC
Cool game! When I reached a certain point it was hard to guess and the hints didn't help anymore, mostly hinting about number 42 (fun idea)! :)
馃帳 micheleV
02. Sep 2016 路 08:20 UTC
@RockhopperGames

You are definitely right. I had a long list of items that I was going to implement but the engine took a bit longer than I expected. Thank you very much for your feedback!

@DragonZBW (SparkLight Games)

I'm sorry that you got confused. I'm sure that not being able to interact during the tutorial tipped off most people. Next time I'll put more effort in trying to figure out if the games makes sense from outside. Thank you very much for your feedback, it was really helpful!

@oskardevelopment
Yeah, writing and fuel must have been really hard to guess. In the end I just used the wikipedia definitions of those words. It lead to overcomplicated hints and obscure sentences, I guess.
JonathanG
03. Sep 2016 路 10:04 UTC
Interesting puzzle game. Would have loved to have a bit more story after discovering each tech maybe... That's the best part about text-based games: you can add as much to the story as you want without needing to create more assets. Liked the idea though. :)