Alice & The Infinite Mirror Paradox

Its a nice puzzle game. Reminds me of those move the box kinda puzzle games. Some of the puzzles could be made a bit harder overall.

Heya folks - regarding the level editor... If you do want to share levels you make I think that would be awesome. Just paste the contents of the exported file here in the comments and I'll be sure to check em out. Below is an example! To load the sample, copy / paste it under Alice_Data/CustomLevels/someName.txt and it will get loaded when you click "Custom Game" from the main menu. Or load it by name in the Level Editor.

-4.5%-4.5%0%0%$-3.5%-4.5%0%0%$-2.5%-4.5%0%0%$-1.5%-4.5%0%0%$-0.5%-4.5%0%0%$0.5%-4.5%0%0%$1.5%-4.5%0%0%$2.5%-4.5%0%0%$3.5%-4.5%0%0%$4.5%-4.5%0%0%$-4.5%-3.5%0%0%$-3.5%-3.5%0%0%$-2.5%-3.5%0%0%$-1.5%-3.5%1%0%$-0.5%-3.5%0%0%$0.5%-3.5%1%0%$1.5%-3.5%0%0%$2.5%-3.5%0%0%$3.5%-3.5%0%0%$4.5%-3.5%0%0%$-4.5%-2.5%0%0%$-3.5%-2.5%1%0%$-2.5%-2.5%1%0%$-1.5%-2.5%1%0%$-0.5%-2.5%0%0%$0.5%-2.5%0%0%$1.5%-2.5%1%0%$2.5%-2.5%0%0%$3.5%-2.5%0%0%$4.5%-2.5%0%0%$-4.5%-1.5%0%0%$-3.5%-1.5%1%0%$-2.5%-1.5%2%0%$-1.5%-1.5%1%0%$-0.5%-1.5%0%0%$0.5%-1.5%0%0%$1.5%-1.5%0%0%$2.5%-1.5%1%0%$3.5%-1.5%0%0%$4.5%-1.5%0%0%$-4.5%-0.5%0%0%$-3.5%-0.5%1%0%$-2.5%-0.5%0%0%$-1.5%-0.5%1%0%$-0.5%-0.5%0%0%$0.5%-0.5%1%0%$1.5%-0.5%1%0%$2.5%-0.5%1%0%$3.5%-0.5%0%0%$4.5%-0.5%0%0%$-4.5%0.5%0%0%$-3.5%0.5%0%0%$-2.5%0.5%0%0%$-1.5%0.5%0%0%$-0.5%0.5%0%0%$0.5%0.5%0%0%$1.5%0.5%0%0%$2.5%0.5%2%180%$3.5%0.5%0%0%$4.5%0.5%0%0%$-4.5%1.5%0%0%$-3.5%1.5%1%0%$-2.5%1.5%1%0%$-1.5%1.5%1%0%$-0.5%1.5%0%0%$0.5%1.5%1%0%$1.5%1.5%1%0%$2.5%1.5%0%0%$3.5%1.5%0%0%$4.5%1.5%0%0%$-4.5%2.5%0%0%$-3.5%2.5%1%0%$-2.5%2.5%0%0%$-1.5%2.5%0%0%$-0.5%2.5%0%0%$0.5%2.5%1%0%$1.5%2.5%3%90%$2.5%2.5%1%0%$3.5%2.5%0%0%$4.5%2.5%0%0%$-4.5%3.5%0%0%$-3.5%3.5%1%0%$-2.5%3.5%0%0%$-1.5%3.5%0%0%$-0.5%3.5%0%0%$0.5%3.5%1%0%$1.5%3.5%0%0%$2.5%3.5%1%0%$3.5%3.5%0%0%$4.5%3.5%0%0%$-4.5%4.5%0%0%$-3.5%4.5%1%0%$-2.5%4.5%0%0%$-1.5%4.5%0%0%$-0.5%4.5%0%0%$0.5%4.5%1%0%$1.5%4.5%1%0%$2.5%4.5%0%0%$3.5%4.5%0%0%$4.5%4.5%0%0%$

WOW! That is insanely impressive that you managed to squeeze in a level editor alongside a bunch of really well-designed levels in the base game. Music and graphics were great too. Excellent work!

Btw, it took a while to download the game for me even though it's only ~26mb, and I have gigabit internet. You might get more players if you host the game on a site like Gamejolt, Itch.io, or even just Github.

Wonderful entry. This game is focused and the core mechanic is polished and deeply explored. Really well done!

@ale Thanks for the feedback! The level editor was the first thing I made, and by far the most time consuming. Occasionally breaking the level design process to fix some issues with the editor. It facilitated the ability to make a bunch of levels. Making the editor saved time in the long run I believe. If you're more interested in the development process, check out the twitch link above!

@diego-escalante Diego thank you so much! I think you are being very kind, although I still believe there is some depth to be discovered even with the simple mechanics already in place.

**Attention Mac Users**
I understand the latest macOS systems make it really hard to install untrusted apps. If that is the case you may have better luck using the signed version packed into a .dmg here: https://michaelfeldman.info/Alice.dmg . Do note that this version was signed and packaged after the jam, but the game contents / source are still the same as the mac link above, just hopefully a little more accessible

Wow this is cool! There's even a level editor for a game made in 48 hours?! Amazing. There were so many levels I genuinely think it might be infinite. I got to a few puzzles with 4 mirrors, before I gave up. My biggest comment is the difficulty curve. Some puzzles took me multiple tries, while multiple ones following it were incredibly easy. It was jarring to have to think for a solid minute on a stage, and then breeze through the next five before having to stop and think again. All in all, this is a really cool puzzle game! Great work.

Thanks @blobo - the editor was the first thing I did and the tool I used to create the levels. Handing it off to the user was a no brainer.

The difficulty tuning was very tough due to the fact that I knew the answers to all the levels and I was the only one testing. It does help to know that it could be beneficial to re-order the puzzles in this initial set.

Looking forward to giving Ribbon a go!

Very neat little Sokoban-type game, with some devilishly difficult puzzles. I felt incredibly smart for about five minutes and then got immediately stuck once we got to side tables with books in.

Wow that is quite impressive, the level editor came out great too! You achieved so much in so little time!

It's great how you made a simple game and then added extra features to that such as a level editor. Great job.

@itskdog appreciate the feedback, but the level editor actually was developed first, and from that the game was born. I imagine it would be much harder to do it the other way around. And I recommend this workflow for those interested in creating level editors or the like.

Some really nice puzzle design you've got here. I also appreciate the game's atmosphere, and level editors are always very cool. Great job!

I'm not a fan of puzzle games, but this is good, nice job !

For some reason, when I start the game, I do not see any game objects.
Only music and floating clouds.

Really great game. Clever puzzle design, background music was pleasant to listen to while playing. You managed to have a very polished game in a short amount of time. Well done. Thanks for the game!

Nice game!

same as fumybulb: I start the game, music plays and the background cloud floats by, but nothing shows.

@fumybulb @endurion which operating system are you running on?

@michael-feldman, Windows 10

@fumybulb Can you look at your users/_fumybulb_/AppData/LocalLow/Michael Feldman/Alice/Player.txt - see if anything looks fishy?

Also ( @endurion this may apply to you too) depending on how you extracted the package, you may or may not have discluded empty directories. If there is not already a folder called _Alice_Data/StreamingAssets/CustomLevels/_, please add one, even if the folder is empty. I think that would cause a runtime exception that may or may not result in the game not loading properly.

Pretty interesting gameplay, I liked it!

Windows 10 version has no levels, just the level editor, which is cool

Got Windows 10, also, the empty folder is there, so there must be something else. I'd have suspected blanks in paths, but even when copying the game folder to a path without it won't show any stages.

Eventually I was able to play the game under Linux.

Nice puzzle!

The level with four mirrors is a mind blowing :dizzy_face:

But I will check `~/AppData/*/Alice` under Windows later.

My hypothesis:

Perhaps there are problems with different delimiters in paths under Windows?

This was fun. It's good all around.

Very good music. It sets a nice tone.

There are many levels, but I found that they were too easy. I wish the difficulty ramped up a bit more than it did by the end.

The level editor works well too. I had to try it:
```
-0.5%-4.5%0%0%$0.5%-4.5%0%0%$1.5%-4.5%0%0%$2.5%-4.5%0%0%$3.5%-4.5%2%315%$4.5%-4.5%0%0%$-3.5%-3.5%1%0%$-0.5%-3.5%0%0%$0.5%-3.5%0%0%$2.5%-3.5%1%0%$4.5%-3.5%0%0%$-0.5%-2.5%0%0%$1.5%-2.5%0%0%$2.5%-2.5%0%0%$3.5%-2.5%2%0%$4.5%-2.5%0%0%$-4.5%-1.5%1%0%$-0.5%-1.5%0%0%$0.5%-1.5%0%0%$1.5%-1.5%0%0%$2.5%-1.5%0%0%$3.5%-1.5%0%0%$4.5%-1.5%0%0%$-0.5%-0.5%0%0%$1.5%-0.5%0%0%$3.5%-0.5%2%270%$-3.5%0.5%2%90.00001%$-0.5%0.5%1%0%$0.5%0.5%0%0%$2.5%0.5%0%0%$4.5%0.5%0%0%$-0.5%1.5%0%0%$0.5%1.5%0%0%$1.5%1.5%0%0%$2.5%1.5%0%0%$3.5%1.5%0%0%$4.5%1.5%0%0%$-0.5%2.5%0%0%$4.5%2.5%3%0%$-4.5%3.5%2%135%$-0.5%3.5%2%180%$0.5%3.5%0%0%$1.5%3.5%0%0%$2.5%3.5%0%0%$3.5%3.5%0%0%$4.5%3.5%0%0%$
```

@michael-feldman, here are my logs from `LocalLow/Michael Feldman/Alice/Player.log`:

https://pastebin.com/i3tF46AX

And here is the game directory tree:

https://pastebin.com/JYzJe9Ny

It seems that everything is in place including empty `Alice_Data/StreamingAssets/CustomLevels` directory.

It looks like the game even finds level files.

After copying the contents of `MainLevels` to `CustomLevels`, the gray "Custom Game" button turned white.

But the levels keep not loading with the same symptoms.

What an amazing puzzle mechanic, and so many levels! This is my favorite game of LD47 so far. I disagree with the person above about the difficulty curve, I think it's actually good game design to have an easy level to breeze through after having to spend a lot of time on one level, whether that's intentional or not. :) While on the level with four mirrors I did some button mashing and discovered a bug: I could go out of bounds (on top of the air) and even rotate mirrors. Not sure how to reproduce it.

@sh80 Interesting ideas about having easier levels after harder ones. To be honest, I tried to organize the levels by theme first, and difficulty second. However I do tend to agree that the balance / progression could use a work.

I also agree with @pincushion and @dr-v that there could even be an overall increase in level difficulty

**huge shoutouts to @pincushion** Your level is so tough I literally thought it was impossible and was about to write you to make sure. I did finally see the solution, so rest assured I am somewhat competent at my own game. Anyway it was very cool and introduced a couple of ideas that I had not even thought of... Quite inspiring to say the least...

@fumybulb @wabble @endurion Is your Windows Language set to something other than English? If so, can you try setting it to English and see if that changes anything? As @fumybulb it may have to do with the file delimeters. The Unity client is expecting % and $, but I wonder if the ascii codes get converted in different languages or something... I guess this is what happens when you don't serialize to binary.

Changing to english doesn't change anything. With Process Monitor I see attempted access to some .resG or .res files that are not there. Could that be the issue?
(Alice_Data\sharedassets0.assets.resG, Alice_Data\sharedassets0.assets.res, Alice_Data\level1.resG, Alice_Data\level1.res, Alice_Data\level1.resS)

@endurion can you shoot me a discord message at Michael Feldman#6536 or an email at michael.feldman09@gmail.com? I'd really like to try and figure this out for you and other players, but I will need to try out some debug builds with additional logging. Thanks...

This game is like hella cool! i can't believe that this was made in like a few days! it's even got a level editor!
awesome!

Nice puzzle game. The mirrors-facing-each-other thing is new, and it really starts to get interesting with the bookcases and 3-mirror puzzles (and there might be more after that, I didn't quite get to the end). I think you could get away with removing several of the early levels, since some of them were kind of the same. A few of the levels were really good and had me really thinking hard. Great work overall!

Also major props for implementing a level editor.

Hey, Mac user here. The Mac build doesn't seem to run (corrupt?). I'm on MacOS Catalina.