Nice entry! I ended up playing it till the end. It was fun figuring out what to do, but I failed miserably. So I finished the game by pure luck - by swapping lanes chaoticaly. It would be great to have some kind of help screen or tutorial level. The sound is amazing and the graphics is nice. Great job!

Thank you for your feedback @bereg! I agree, it is possible to solve the swapping puzzle through trial and error. If I had another day, I would have added more content which would probably improve the gameplay flow considerably.

nice mood. sounds are kinda good, and the changing levels kinda interesting. biggest problem so far has been player sometimes going outside of the screen.

I like the Myst-like atmosphere of the puzzle, reflected in both the graphics and the mechanics.

@tero-pulkkinen thank you! Player going outside the screen sounds like a bug. What resolution are you running at?

@blubberquark thank you, yes that is kind of what I was going for. I wish I'd have had more time for more puzzles and machinery...

Nice graphics, and the puzzles were interesting! Eta stumped me for a while, as it was hard to find anything that it reacted to, but once I did the rest was relatively smooth sailing.

The last couple of layers didn't seem very challenging? Perhaps if I had needed to use the swapping layers to get the symbol somewhere specific it would have been more difficult, but as it was there was already a layer in the right place. Maybe a more specific requirement like that would make it too easy to accidentally softlock, though?

Great work overall, extremely solid for a compo game!

Thank you @tjm good points. It's definitely uneven regarding difficulty and puzzle design. If I hadn't run out of time, I would have made at least one more type of machine where the "swapping star" made more of an impact, like you said. And/Or alternatively do something special when you align three stars, analogous to the orbs...

Really cool vibe to the game overall! I found my objective to be unclear. Good work :)

@dystoth thank you. I have done story-heavy games before, this is kind of the opposite. Who is your character? Why are they here? Where do they want to go? What is even going on? Who knows :laughing:

Made the lo lambda! Nice concept and game!

Great job! Enjoyed the graphics and thought it was a cool mechanic.

Super good concept!! I enjoyed the atmosphere a lot and also I really think this game fits the theme of the jam almost perfectly. What I did miss is a sense of direction or objective but I get it's part of the charm of the game. Great job man!

When I thought about the idea for the game I thought about the looped world where I should find way out. However I can't invent anything good. This is a good theme implementation I could thought of!

@celuloide thank you! Yeah about the sense of objective, it's actually a lot darker than that, because you spend your time running around and re-arranging those loops to (maybe?) get somewhere, but if you make it to last reality there are no more doors, no more artifacts, just endlessness...

@obi-one thank you. If it's any consolation: while I do think the looped world idea is good, I have *SO MANY* regrets regarding puzzle and world design, things that in hindsight should obviously have been done differently. That's the curse of Ludum Dare, isn't it, you're kind of stuck with the decisions you already made, because there is literally no time to go back and change things. But I also find it liberating. And there have definitely been Ludum Dares where I literally had *no idea* and ended up not participating, or ones where I had so little of the game done by the end that I chose not to submit.

Overall, I like the visuals and audio though I'm not a fan of cultist theme. I think you did a great job on them.

I like the concept. It feels unique and fresh. But I didn't figure out what to do after I'd climbed up to the top of the tower. Then I went straight to the bottom of it, but didn't found anything there either.

Thank you for picking unique mechanics and for the new (though small) experience!

This is the coolest entry I've played in this event so far. It was difficult but extremely satisfying to realize what was going on and I always love seeing something new. Don't feel bad about puzzle design because it's good and making a *great* puzzler in a compo is a *feat*. The visuals are gorgeous.

The ending got me confused. I kind of picked omega at random, went through the old theta/iota room and I was surprised that it worked.

> Text editor · “IDE”

gedit is probably what you mean.

@dmitry-mozgin thank you for trying it out. I realize it's not for everyone, but it's still valuable feedback, especially regarding the puzzle mechanic the game kind of leaves you to your own devices (but hey, time is limited during Compo).

@alaah wow, thank you! The ending is a bit obscure, yes. I chose the Omega character to hint that the journey ends there, and the other symbols on the wall are worlds you already visited. So you did pick the "right" one, it's also the first symbol and the only one in that uses a capital letter, I was hoping people would be drawn to it. There is only one ending by the way, you didn't miss anything.

Had I had more time, I definitely would have done at least one more puzzle where you pick stuff up and drop it on another artifact, to illustrate what's possible. Since the pickup-symbol is used only once it probably feels a bit random.

> gedit is probably what you mean.

It was Geany, actually :laughing:

I think this game has a lot of potential. Sadly, I did not understand much of it, sorry :-( I tried a lot and figured out some aspects, but I think there is a lot more I did not discover. In the screenshot below is how far I came, maybe I'm at the start, maybe I'm at the end. I don't really know ^^"

Long story short, I missed the context.

A tutorial level would have helped a lot, reading the description you ran out of time so I understand. I'll play the post-ld version later because I still liked it. I like the concept and art style and the audio queues are clear. The controls are solid.


@wouter52 I'm not sure there is a lot you missed, it's actually a lot more shallow than you think :laughing: For what it's worth, you're at the end: all of the symbols on there lead to places you've already visited (the pyramids indicate which world will open), except one symbol that you haven't seen yet. You can then pick up the new symbol and use a pyramid with it to open a new world. As you step into that world, the game ends.

So far the post-LD version is identical except for the starting world. I'll try to make some time for better puzzles this week, and I'll post that in the description.

@udo ooh really? Then I'll give it a try again later! I had fun with it and I really wanted to finish it as I read it was possible. I just didn't know how long the game would take, so I went on and reviewed some other games (-:

If you have time you can also play mine, it is about a thief hungry for gold :smile:

Wow, the music, ambience, sounds and smoothness of animations is epic. I'm not sure I understood what I was doing but I felt in the game with this bold ambience. It would be cool to make a start screen where you explain the puzzle mechanic. (I'm maybe foolish, I tried to take a door aligned with symbols, I try to activate symbols aligned with others and I had no other idea)

@neragoth thank you so much!

If I could go back to the first day of the jam, the puzzle mechanic(s) would be slightly different. Truth is beyond the positioning of the doors, there is no other puzzle where the horizontal alignment of the strips matters. It confuses a lot of players, and I completely understand why. All the other puzzles are based on the vertical alignment / stacking of the strips.

In hindsight, I probably should have taken one more day to make this design more consistent, but I had to go to work on monday... :neutral_face:

This game has indeed a good potential : good atmosphere, nice sounds, theme is respected and has some fun in his puzzling way ^^ It lack a little tutorial at the beginning maye, but for such a short game, maybe not since it would make the way too easy !
Good job anyway doing this by your own :)

I love this kind of puzzle games, I got stuck at some point so ... your game matches the theme in that aspect :sweat_smile: thanks for the timelapse, I remember when it used to be mandatory to record one to participate in the compo :thinking: it was the proof the game really was made from scratch :thumbsup:

@eldelhas thank you, and you're right the issue with providing a tutorial is that the game itself would basically seize to exist. I was hoping that exploration of the rules could be part of the gameplay without being tedious, however, I do realize that didn't quite work out as well as I had hoped.

@baylej thank you! But I swear it's not an endless game, you could probably speedrun it in about 30 seconds :laughing: About the timelapse, I enjoy watching other people post their timelapses as well, and I think it's a great way to communicate how people go about making their game.

Now that's original. This was a neat feature with the .. paralel levels or what ever you want to label it as. I saw you wrote that you didn't have time to do everything you wanted to, but it would be cool to see where this would end up with some more time and love :)

@thooom thank you! Yeah I don't know what to call them either :laughing: worlds? layers? strips?

Really neat mechanic and the room swapping and controls felt very smooth so great job with those! I think I got almost to the end from reading other comments but I ended up with three swap rows (the ones with stars instead of doors) so I couldn't do anything else because I couldn't figure out how to get out of the middle one.

Really polished, great sound. Well done!

Incredible entry! Very well done, fun to play, original, and nice to look at/listen to. Great job!

I played the post-compo version, but still did not understand anything :sweat_smile: Probably got too used to games explaining every single rule (or not having many rules to start with).. Still, I somehow finished the game on the first try without a faintest clue of what I was doing. (I played again, and understood a bit more, but still solved some puzzles by accident.)

The visuals and especially the music are incredible. There is this Hans Zimmer-esque feel of a vast universe right outside the screen :star:

@kuro thank you :smiley:

@eldar thank you so much! You are completely right about the puzzles (and I think @seanarooni had a similar experience but quit much earlier), they are the main regret I have about this LD. I should have spent more (or any) time designing this "on paper" before starting.

The problems here come from several choices that probably didn't work out for most players:

First I wanted people to explore the puzzles, let the game be its own tutorial. For example, explaining how the pyramids work beforehand would probably nullify a big chunk of this exploration. However, I don't think I created enough affordances for this learning effect to be enjoyable or meaningful.

I also had more devices/puzzles planned but I ran out of time. The choice was essentially more polish or more content, and I basically chose polish.

Second, because I ran out of time I couldn't do more levels/layers/watchamacallits. This means it's easier to mindlessly bruteforce. And in the end, I'm afraid, the effect on many players is basically "okayyy, whatever" instead of "oh that's neat".

I have designed puzzle games for LD before where these things were solved in much better ways, I think. As I said before, maybe I should have chosen Jam instead of Compo, but I had to go to work on Monday...

Overall I'm not unhappy with this entry, but I do agree there are shortcomings.

@udo I do wonder - do any of the LD games have a life after the jam grading ends? Meaning, is there an incentive to develop them further, or you're essentially left with a couple of friends trying it out, so there is no value in updating the game?

I feel like I saw several entries, and your game among them, that have an unusual (if not outright unique) premise, and I'd play as real games if they had more content than 2 days' worth. It's kinda sad that all these games are seemingly lost after the jam :(

Good question - I've been at that point several times, post LD, with an idea that I liked and I decide "screw it, I'm making a real game out of this", but it somehow never works out... a major factor is that life gets in the way, and serious projects are incompatible with my job :laughing: I'm not a game developer in real life. I've been dreaming of becoming one, but I don't have enough financial runway to not end up homeless (and 2020 put a big dent in my plans there). Right now I'm living vicariously through @timbeaudet, somehow he pulls off what I can't (yet): working a day job, doing indie dev on the side, streaming it every day. What's your perspective, @eldar?

> serious projects are incompatible with my job

How serious is serious though? I wonder if there is a lower amount of effort you could invest into making one of your games something bigger, but not quite quitting your job for it :stuck_out_tongue:

> working a day job, doing indie dev on the side, streaming it every day

Damn, what a stud. I barely find time to walk my dogs when I make a game :joy:

> What’s your perspective, @eldar?

I have a sob story about my high expectations of my first game. Over a year ago, I sat down and started writing a big roguelike game rooted in Greek mythology, with all kinds of cool features, but without any experience in game development. 3 months later, I put it up on itch.io, pestered all my friends, posted about it on Reddit, and got exactly 1 person (a friend) to actually play it through the end. Til now, it just lays there in near-pristine condition :sweat:

Now, I made many mistakes with that game (my lack of actual ability to make an engaging game being one of the top :joy: ), but it did teach me to lower expectations. So every time I start making a game and my brain starts convincing me that this is it, the new masterpiece the world's been waiting for, I tell it to chill and try to make sure I don't get sucked into another wormhole :sweat_smile:

That said, I don't think I'm particularly good at gamedev, and don't imagine sustaining myself through it, no matter how much I would enjoy that :( Based on my outsider's view of the industry, the only people who make good money in it are the people running mobile game studios (and would you really enjoy gamedev if you had to paper-press 5 titles a year, especially if they needed to be like Farmville?) or sweating on AAA games (no life), and neither really calls out to me... Or am I completely off here, and there is a lot of people doing what they love and sustaining themselves?

Whoah that got pretty personal pretty fast :thinking:

I think this is a typical experience as far as hobby/indie game dev goes @eldar . Especially the part where you describe how you put everything in your first game, hoping it will take off, I heard that so many times. I'm probably the wrong person to give advice on this, but from everything I've seen and heard, the most reasonable way forward is to release games often and regularly. Only after a few of these, *maybe* consider a larger project. The reasoning being that you need to build an audience first, and also train your gamedev muscles.

So you've got a feavorite genre, I think you can use that to slowly build a following. It's better than me, because I'm all over the place :laughing:

> That said, I don’t think I’m particularly good at gamedev

I don't think that's true. You made several games for LD, and they work pretty well as far as I can tell. You're probably deficient in the same way I am: not enough practice. But that can be fixed!

I had a very short run of making a game roughly every month (for like 3 months) together with a friend of mine. It was pretty great, although a bit stressful, and I wanted to make more polished games (ended up doing nothing instead). I think he got discouraged by the utter lack of feedback or interest. That's probably what kills most of us hobby devs, because it leads to a lack of motivation.

Yeah commercial viability is probably not a realistic goal :frowning2:

> Only after a few of these, maybe consider a larger project

I read that so many times prior to starting on it, but learning from other people's mistakes just isn't my strong suit :shrug:

> discouraged by the utter lack of feedback or interest

I think one of the problems of indie gamedev might be that the space is oversaturated (lots of people want to make games), but the audience isn't large enough. I want to elaborate on the second one - it's not like there aren't enough people in the world playing games, but a large part of them exclusively plays large-scale polished releases, and we don't have a good way to reach the large part of the rest. If we take Ludum Dare as an example - say it didn't have a rule that you have to have made a game to be able to rate, how many more people would you expect to show up and play these games?

> I think you can use that to slowly build a following

Unfortunately roguelikes are an even more niche, saturated genre than general indie games :sweat_smile: I feel like it's literally 1000 people who are currently working on a roguelike, another couple thousands actively playing different roguelikes, and then lots of people exclusively playing Slay the Spire and other big releases. So yeah I don't know, my outlook is grim :sweat_smile:

> But that can be fixed!

You're very uplifting :D

Anyway, didn't mean to overtake your game page with the discussion about woes (real or perceived) of indie gamedev! :pray:

Very interesting his interpretation of the theme. I liked the graphics and the sound too. I found the mechanics a little confusing at first. But I think that in the end I ended up understanding the experience in general. Congratulations.

@vphyre thanks for trying it out, sorry that it wasn't for you. I saw that you didn't get very far, and that's fair, because it *is* a little confusing.

@eldar

> learning from other people’s mistakes just isn’t my strong suit

That's also one of my problems :laughing:

What you said about the oversaturation and audience rings true to me. I think at the tail end of popularity (where we both probably are tbh) there are more people making games than people playing them. With that comes the realization that your first few releases are going to be basically just for yourself. But I do think that even niche developers with a *regular* output eventually reach an audience. The question is just whether one can stay motivated that long and where the personal cut-off point is for giving up.

> Anyway, didn’t mean to overtake your game page with the discussion about woes (real or perceived) of indie gamedev!

Honestly, I think that's part of LD, exchanging experiences and making friends. I still periodically drop by the LD IRC chat because I found so many like-minded people there (even though the place is a bit deserted nowadays).

Well, that was an interesting game! Made it to the end, but only after reading through the comments and finding out that Omega was the character I needed to pick up. Surprised that the cultist looked so dejected to make it out of the dungeon though!

I'd have liked to have seen more levels just playing around with the basic walls and doors - it feels like there's a lot you could do with those, and the walls kinda get dropped quickly in favour of unlocking different levels and new mechanics.

@ptsnoop haha, you're not wrong about concepts being abandoned too quickly, time just ran out (48h can be really short :laughing:). Don't think of it as a game, think of it as a loosely held-together assemblage of puzzle demos that don't quite work but has a weird amount of polish applied to it :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

> it feels like there’s a lot you could do with those,

I agree.

> Surprised that the cultist looked so dejected to make it out of the dungeon though!

Maybe because once they made it out, there was just an empty wasteland waiting for them.

Originally I wanted to incorporate story into the game through things and characters that would tell you little things as you walked by them. Had I been better at time management, I'd have included that alongside more actual puzzle content. But since the story didn't make it in there, I left the ending open as well. Honestly, I think it kind of works overall, because the player can just concoct whatever story they want in their head and it'd be almost certainly better than what I would have come up with :smile_cat:

This an interesting idea for a game. Really nice implementation. I also went with a looping cultist theme.