Zmaaone by Furano
Welcome to your new internship in Zmaaone:tm:, The world leader in parcel delivery !

Since you're starting at the very bottom of the corporate ladder, with nothing, your job will be to sort packages in our brand new "Awesome Delivery System center:tm:" !
By linking our various package sortingator with our experimental Rezstone Generator, you'll be able to achieve wonder of engineering (unpaid, off course) !
But be careful, you'll need good timings and imaginative contraptions to be able to kickstart your corporate career successfully.

Good luck, a wonderful underpaid future is awaiting you in Zmaaone:tm: !

Credits :
•:art: Art, Music, Effect, level Design and a little bit of programming by Aune
•:computer: Programming by Furano
*This is our first Ludum Dare participation. Thanks for playing the game ! :smiley: *
| Youtube | https://furaune.itch.io/zmaaone---internship-simulator |
| Youtube | https://github.com/furan0/Zmaaone |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/zmaaone |
Ratings
| Overall | 395th | 3.6⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 688th | 3.117⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 436th | 3.362⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1019th | 2.552⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 427th | 3.733⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 391th | 3.31⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 200th | 3.518⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 431th | 3.481⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
We'll add a windows version and source code soon
I might be daft, but failed to figure the second level.
Would've been nice if the diodes could be angled to allow tighter wiring.
But I may miss the point and possibly simple solutions. ><
Great idea!
Hmm yes maybe for the diode but right now space management is also part of the puzzle (at least for now) ^^
Thank y'all for playing and for your feedbacks btw!
En vrai, j'aurais pu commenter en français mais au moins les non francophones comprendront ;)
Félicitations et bonne chance pour la suite :v:
I got to the 5th stage though sadly at that point the simulation kept dying on me(pistons not pushing packages, sparks randomly vanishing, game stopping to work with overlapping sounds). Though I enjoyed the first few levels, even though I practically did not use the diodes.
We choose not to improve the game post jam, therefore there are still some game breaking bugs sadly....
I'm glad you were still able to enjoy part of it!
So do you think the difficulty is well calibrated or can something be improved in this regards?
Throughout the livestream of us playing below, and admittedly as a non-electrical engineer, I never quite felt like I "solved" a puzzle so much as stumble into a solution, and not knowing why it was the right solution. While I recognize the genre of these games require some level of trial-and-error to understand, quite a large number of elements were either unexplained, or poorly explained to feel satisfying. I really think for game like this, a tutorial would have been nice to help overcome the keyboard-shortcut-heavy controls. In fact, I'd argue most of these keyboard shortcuts should probably have a toggle radio button equivalent on-screen. Another poorly-explained mechanic is when the electricity generator emits electricity: neither the timing of when the first burst comes out, nor the regular intervals bursts will be emitted were explained, and thus, made the solutions to the puzzles difficult to compose. The purpose of the diodes were very confusing based on the tutorial alone, since wires aren't described to automatically generate a grid-like layout. More importantly, the purpose of the collisions weren't explained, which understanding that would have made the final level much more easier to solve.
Overall, while the game design is mostly fine, the mechanics in the game are poorly explained, making it difficult for me to design solutions to each one. Solving a level, as a consequence, simply felt like luck rather than the usual "aha!" satisfaction. With a more gradual explanation of how each element worked, I think this game would have been more fun to solve.
https://youtu.be/qq_qRoOOl-s
@omiya-games thank you very much for the honest and useful feedback and also for play testing our game ! We'll definitely try to add most of what you said in our next jam : every feedback on how to make the game less obscure is more than welcome :)
Zmaaone is clearly a Zack-like in the tradition of TIS-100, Shenzhen IO, Opus Magnum. It's name is definitely not a an anagram of a certain famous company that has been in the news lately.
I was sent something for a loop by the fact that the signal generators seem to generate signal every 4 ticks, and not on tick 0. In addition, the use of the Diode was very unclear for most of the game until I re-read the instructions and then experiented with it.
The visual design of the diode is especially egregious because it looks like a NOT GATE in a classic circuitry diagram, but in fact, it just prevents neighboring wire from transfering signal.
Also, every level seems to crash after a certain period of time, even when you restart it.
I had a lot of frustrated fun with this game. I do wish it was better visually communicated.