How to play (TL;DR version)

Really cool take on the theme, very impressive that you were able to make this and so many levels in such a short time. The game does feel rather complicated, but you've done your best to clear that up with the in-depth tutorial both in the game and in the description. Good work!

- took a bit to figure out the logic/etc... but then it became a nice puzzle game.
- the web version locked up when I completed the first level.
- made for a very nice puzzle game after figuring out the gameplay loop and the goal state of the game.

Nice to see HaxeFlixel still in use. The concept is a bit hard to understand and use well and I think it will need a bit more refinement for it to be an effective and fun game. I found that even once I understood how to create the barriers their effectiveness at helping me find the invader was limited, and simply visually scanning for the invader was the most effective way of finding it.

It's little hard for me,haha~But it's really a game with creativity!(maybe I encounter a bug? When I read all tutorial and enter level 1 and click a white block and press a key 'i'at my first time to play this game,it crash.)by the way,the music is a little simple,when i played a period of time ,its not so good for me haha:P

The first time I played this it didn't let me type in any of the boxes, so this game was really confusing. I watched the video and then read the tutorial and revisited it though and found it to be fun.

I like the options that you have for sorting out and detecting the bad data. The only real problem was the repetitiveness of the whole experience. The music loop is a little too short and once you come up with a good solution you just apply it over and over again to every level.

I really like the concept and the idea of writing equations to physically sort data is super cool! It would be great to use this same concept in another game also!

Interesting concept. The tools provided are interesting and relatively unique ways to manipulate the field and try to find the target. I'm also a fan of the aesthetic you chose with. That paired with the music was oddly relaxing to sit and play for a bit.

I found that putting a while loop that collects all data (in my case while(>=1)) worked wonders in determining where the invader was. This is a fun puzzle game, good concept and a technical yet good use of the theme. I do think the game would have benefited from some more audio, simply a sound for button clicks would have helped. Some additional mechanics sprinkled throughout would have made the experience a lot more fun as well, as it quickly becomes repetitive. Perhaps maybe you could "unlock" the if statement in let's say...level 3, I just think it would help with the sense of progression. This game is put together very well, the menu is very clean and concise. Overall I had fun exploring the concept, a lot could be done if it were to be built upon.

Wow! I wasn't sure what to expect but I actually had a lot of fun playing around with this. At first I thought "this is going to be overly nerdy" but I think it grew with me, I just needed to have the patience to figure out the rules.

My favorite trick is once I've figured out what number the imposters are, let's say "3", then I do a "while(3)" on one side with a "while (!0)" next to it. When the good guys get knocked out of while(3), then they get scooped up by the while (!0). Very quickly it becomes very easy to see who the bad guy is. Finished level 10!

Really cool concept and I like the elegance of the execution! Like others have commented, I think some work should be done in level design to avoid repetition. Adding progression through the levels with unlocking the different statements would help the player get used to the different tools at their disposal. Good job nonetheless, quite impressive for a 48h entry!

As everybody already states: what a great concept! Too bad my keyboard wasn't compatible with the game, and gave different characters than expected :( looks amazing though!

@m8rix aww man that's what I was worried about. I couldn't find a good built-in way to get text input in OpenFL. I'm just mapping key codes to characters using ASCII values, but that probably won't work on some non-standard or international keyboards. :(

This one is in a close race with Danger Beat for my favorite game of the jam.

Took me some while to get you actually had to type the commands after that it was very fun to play. just to bad if you make a typo you have to remove everything and cannot use the arrow keys

Very interesting concept! The keyboard input wasn't working the first few tries, but it worked after restarting the game

Good game with a really simple but expressive mechanic.

Very cool concept and nicely executed! As others have said, it's a bit tricky to understand but once you have it it's good fun. Grat job!

This is one of the best game jam games I have ever played. Such a clever idea, and brilliantly executed. I found it really fun strategising about how to best use the different types available to separate the balls and focus my attention in one area. I beat the first four levels and my brain started to hurt but I may come back and try it again. There is so much choice available on how to play it, within the limited yet varied constraints. My only mild criticism is that the audio track is very, very short and repetitive, but even the tone of the audio suits the mood of the game, and I understand why there are no sound effects, it would be too overwhelming. I like the minimal but tasteful gameplay graphics, the UI aesthetics could be nicer but it's just fine as it is. Really great job, I am truly impressed.
(EDIT) I forgot to mention, but the glitch of the barriers not funtioning properly when touching each other is frustrating, it would be easier if you could realy seal areas of fully without some of the balls slipping out, but even this bug is fairly minor and could even be considered something that adds to the challenge.

Really good idea and convince you to play more. This is more than a loop game.

The concept is great and this is a pretty unique approach to the theme :)

My challenge with the game is the keyboard layout, I'm not using a US layout (or keyboard for that matter)

Maybe you could add an option to enable some buttons after you create or edit a code block?

Like:

- if(
- while(
- 1
- 2
- 3
- <=
- \>=
- )

so basically a small on-screen keyboard that let's you input all possible combinations?

I'll be honest, this was pretty confusing. :sweat_smile: It should probably start off a bit easier. In the instructions you wrote "An easy trick to narrow the search for the invader is to collect each number into a separate while block" but you only get one while block in the first levels, so you can't even try that. I also watched the video and I didn't understand how you found the invader. The instructions didn't mention anything about when or how the numbers go down? I assume it's just a timer, but I'm a bit unclear on that.

Update: Managed to get through a few levels and kind of got the hang of it, but it starts feeling a bit tedious to me... I wanted to like it, but maybe my brain just doesn't quite gel with this game. I am also left wishing I had more powerful tools to separate the balls... like a wall that only lets things through one way depending on the requirements.

I do feel like being a bit of a curmudgeon: are there any loops in this game? The "while" blocks don't really behave anything like loops in this game.

@pekuja yeah I realized yesterday afternoon that I never explained how/why numbers go down!

* When a ball touches an invader, its number goes up after a 1 second delay
* When that ball touches another ball, its number goes down immediately.
* A ball's number will never fall below its original value, and will never go above 9

I wanted to add some more tools besides just `if` and `while` blocks, but I didn't want to overwhelm the player with too many options, and I didn't want to risk making the game too easy with overpowered tools. I figured that most players would simply struggle with learning the rules of game (which so far seems to be the case based on all the feedback I've seen!). If I continue to work on the game, I'd want to try experimenting with other gameplay elements, like obstacles, balls with different behaviors, etc. before adding more tools.

BTW, in the youtube video I posted above, at around 3:20 you can see how I made a pseudo one-way block using a while and an if. The invader in the while(3) block changes the 3s to 4s, so they pass through the if(3). If they hit another ball on the other side, they go back down to 3, and can no longer pass over the if(3) block.


and RE: loops...you kinda have to use your imagination :laughing:. You could imagine the while blocks as being the main loop of a simulation (visualized by the balls inside bouncing around)... Plus, the invaders will always be **stuck in a** while **loop** since their numbers can never change!

Fun and clever little mechanics in this, which I thankfully went to after reading your most recent commented explanation, which helped. Good experience.

As other have said it was really difficult to figure out what to do, even after reading the tutorial, I would rather have the tutorial broken into multiple levels teaching you parts of it.
Still this is a really innovative concept, I really liked trapping them slowly and figuring out who is the invader. Really interesting design.

Really cool implementation of Maxwell's demon! :) Soothing music. The interface was a bit clunky, especially with the different keyboard layout. I wish there had been more variety between the levels because I found a simple quick strategy that worked on all levels (which I guess I'll keep to myself unless I find out how to do spoiler tags here?).

Nice game! Very unique...

Very original idea. I had a bug the first time and I could'nt write in the white box. I had to view the video to know that I should be able to do that and then reload the web :P. The entry is very chanellger, great job!

This is a very interesting game! There was certainly a lot of information to read through first to get an idea of how to play, but once the basic rules were understood I feel like it offers a lot of creativity for how you would like to go about the problem solving. Overall the music and visuals set an appropriate tone and I enjoyed it!

This is a really intriguing idea and I think there's a lot of potential here.

Unfortunately, like other people have commented, I had a bit of trouble playing the game because it assumes an american (or at least western) keyboard layout. My parenthesis keys aren't on '9' and '0' so I kept accidentally inputting the wrong symbols... :sweat_smile:

The colour-coding of the blocks is clever, but `<2` and `>2` mean completely different things but are both highlighted in the same colour. On the other hand, I can't immediately think of a better way of colouring the blocks...

The gameplay is unique enough that it would really benefit from an interactive tutorial, or at least a bit of hand-holding in the first couple of levels. It would have also been nice to see more variety in the levels. Maybe some with pre-existing walls, or balls of varying sizes, that sort of thing. As it stands, the later levels are like the early levels, just with more balls; they don't expand upon the core idea any further.

Fortunately these are minor issues that don't interfere with enjoyment of the game, especially once you get the hang of the idea. I also quite like the music. It works well as soothing, "thinking" music.

Good job.

I loved the chill music :) I didn't know about `if(!0)` so I used `if(>1)` instead. This game got a bit easier once I just used all my `if` statements as vertical separators. Once I figured out a mechanic that I could exploit, it kind of took away from the fun, though then the game felt a bit like "Among Us" in that I was starting to suspect numbers, and clear them. The problem I had I guess is that I wasn't incentivized to be more creative with these barriers. It could have been nice to unlock different statements like maybe just start with `if` and earn the `while`. Once I figured out how to do level 2, I jumped to level 10 and beat it easily.

A bug, or maybe something I missed was I didn't know how to get back to the levels menu after I win or lose. I had to refresh the page.

Also, I wonder what more mechanics and depth you could add onto this. The idea of having a bad cell, is cool, and it is interesting trying to find it. Like maybe different values behave differently. Maybe some impostors do a specific kind of change of number - like maybe some reduce the value of others? I'm really curious where you can take this. Thank you for the game :)

cool little game! Enjoyed the mechanics, was a little hard to figure at first.

You gotta tell me how you came up with this idea, it's brilliant and the first true 5 star innovation I can give!

I've always enjoyed sniper deduction games. I actually have quite a bit of hours into https://store.steampowered.com/app/303590/Hidden_in_Plain_Sight/

I've always wanted a single player version of that, but I couldn't figure out a way for the AI to be interesting. You bypassed that altogether by having the invader have unique properties vs a unique deduction system. You managed to create a rare, single player sniper deduction game which I didn't think was possible.

The game is super fun with lots of emergent gameplay. I had fun tinkering with code blocks, though admittedly I played it safe lots of times with simple leakers and letting it run. I didn't mind that because I found it fun and challenging to try to spot the invaders manually to some degree. I did peek at the video you provided which I'm grateful for. You showed a lot of concepts I wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

One of the few LD47 games I plan to try more in the future. I'll be browsing your older games in hopes it's just a much a gem as this one :)

Super interesting concept! I really like the pace of observing and trying to figure out what's going on! Paired with the music it was a relaxing and fun experience!

Also thanks for putting so much effort into the tutorial and the video!

Great game mechanic and plenty of levels. But the frustration of writing on a non English keyboard together with the analysis paralysis to draw the perfect square at the perfect time made me quit way too early. Also the TL;DR instructions doesn't tell you about the while and if blocks. So the playing flow for me went something like:
LDpage > TL;DR > Play > Easy zap first level > Impossible level 2 > Check Youtube video > Realizing you can impact the playing field > Struggle with non-english keyboard

So it is like the best LDgame Ive tried but the onboarding was really rough (for me).

Still with the instructions were a bit confusing until I saw a bit of the video. Also, the EU keyboard layout was a bit of a problem until I got what was going on ^^U Other than that, pretty original concept ;-)

A wonderful entry, took a while to get it, but was quit engaging afterwards!

Feels like "if(<4)" is the most useful block around and just helps to eventually jail every invader cell, provided you bisect the space well.

Very satisfying to figure out! Such an engaging game! Not overly easy, not overly hard (when you get the hang of it). I had fun trapping the data and hunting down invaders in increasingly elaborate ways (*insert evil laughter here*). Really well done!

Graphics is simple but informative - and you don't need much more than that in such a game. Music is perfect, even though the loop is short, it does not interfere but creates a great background.

If I had one complaint, it would be that I wish I could shrink/grow already created boxes.

Done and done :smile:


Ran into a bug where the keyboard no longer worked after tabbing out so I had to restart and It didn't save in local storage or something sadly, but I did beat it! great game! One of my favorites!

@peachtreeoath glad you liked it! Funny that you mentioned Hidden in Plain sight because that was actually the exact game I thought of when making this! I originally just had the code blocks mechanic implemented, but no gameplay other than that. After trying a couple of crappy ideas, I was randomly reminded of the Ouya, and Hidden in Plain Sight was one of my favorite games there.

First time I tried the game I couldn't write anything in the white box. I had to reload the page to be able to do it. Your game is very interesting and clever. At the beginning I could identify directly the Bad ball in the first level. Then it was more difficult because with the white box and my french keyboard it was a mess to write something. But it's a very good concept.

That was interesting! Really hard to get into but kinda satisfying when you get the hang of it. The game play itself isn't really all that intuitive and would greatly benefit from an extensive tutorial which explains all mechanics. I didn't really understand all those while/if-stuff in the user interface. Selecting something on the grid did just stop the game until I released the selection again with the right mouse button. That's an issue that will cost you a lot of players I think. Having the controls as intuitive as possible and giving the player the correct feedback at the right time is crucial. The art was very basic but worked as intended. I also appreciated the music loop very much :) Seeing that this was a compo, it's not a surprise, that a lot is missing in regards of player comfort. And since this genre isn't really my cup of tea, I was only really able to beat the first few levels. Still, I really like the approach and risks you took to implement something unique. Kudos for that!

haha awesome @ale! That's not a commonly known game so I'm happy to have found another player :)

Absolutely fantastic game, loved every minute (past the first five where I was figuring out what the hell I should do).

I kept using if(!9) blocks to isolate sections, that worked so well I barely used anything else.

Very clever and unexpected idea, and really challenging too! Nice works! ^_^

I was really confused at first, but after a while (and some trial and error) I was able to zap some invaders. I like the mechanic, pretty unique for a compo game. The music is very soothing as well. A little bit more time to polish and this would be a nice game to play once in a while. Well done! :)

Interesting concept! At first I was really confused, then I saw your video on the game, it made all clear. So, I think that it misses of a solid tutorial in order to get well the game's concept.

Moreover, the music is really nice, and relaxing! :)

Overall, gg for your work!


Well, this is hard to review.

I'll start by saying that, after I've understood it, it's a nice concept. Being a compo game I can understand it's not so polished, and it works enough to be playable and show off what your concept is.

My biggest complaint is about learning how to play.

To be honest I've made a huge mistake, I thought that I could learn how to play just by playing, something I always try to do, so I skipped the tutorial in game (though I read a bit the description of this page).
This game totally can't be learned by playing it, it's not so dramatic, but you really need to make the tutorial mandatory.

What I was not getting (before looking at the tutorial in game) is:
1. You can drag with the mouse to create a big block: at first I made the if block and while with only one little block and I was like "no way", after I discovered I could create a larger block it all made a lot more sense
2. the hp goes down and the red icon goes down too if you hit something (hp for errors, red icon for successes), here the problem is a lack of sign & feedback, because it's not very visible that hp are going down and you have to explicitly look at them, but that happens only after you know you have to look at them to see the result of your action. A simple yet ugly text in the center of the screen that says (error/success) would have helped

The other issue I had was with writing while/if block. In the html version my keyboard was not working so I was confused. I then decided to download the window version and it went """fine""". I say fine that way because the keys were not the one on my keyboard, and parenthesis or > symbol were somewhere else (heck I've not even managed to find the = symbol), so I struggled every time I had to type something. I don't know how u parsed the keyboard input but maybe there should be a universal way that does not rely on the kind of keyboard you have (I've an italian one). Also, creating a block, cancel your action, deleting them, etc..., is not very intuitive and a bit clunky.

I didn't want to quit the game, I really try to give almost every entry a huge chance before dropping, and that's what made me going forward. I also was a bit curious because it was clear I was missing something. Reading the tutorial in game surely helps, even though I don't know how much for a "fresh" player since I really played it a bit before reading it and was easier to understand to me (at some point I just forgot it was there otherwise I would have looked at it sooner).

After all of this I finally knew how to play and the game worked well enough (I'm not sure but maybe sometimes they managed to exit the while loop if there were too many balls in it).

After completing the first levels, I just found a strategy that seemed the only one needed, nothing complex just a while(x) block, a huge vertical if(x) block and another while(!x) block. This led me to find the impostor just by waiting, so I went straight to the level 10 and won it.

This sadly show off another issue: the levels themselves are not very different to play, and the difficulty after the first 2-3 levels, if you've understood the game mechanics, is just about how patient you are, not about using a lot of blocks in a weird way (as said, I went straight to level 10 because the in between levels seemed a bit pointless to play).

Being a compo game, the real big issues for me is just about teaching the mechanics, the "difficulty" thing is not a real issue since in 48hours and being alone is not easy to create a compelling progression, I pointed it out just to let you know what I thought about it.

Don't take my words too harshly, I just like to give a detailed view of what my thoughts are, hoping they can help you to improve the game, but only if you think it should be improved in the first place.

Very unique idea and because of that it's a bit hard to grasp what you are supposed to do, both in terms of mechanics and strategy.

My strategy was to create if statement that blocks all balls ( if(>0) ) and try to spot ball that is not incrementing.

Music is great and fits perfectly. Definitelly gave me puzzle game vibe.

Cheers!

@toccio94 Thanks for the detailed feedback! Yeah the onboarding is definitely the biggest challenge for this game, because there's a lot to explain. I tried to keep the tutorial easy to read, but I ended up missing some important details. The various bugs also make the problem worse. The reason balls were escaping is probably because you had some blocks touching each other (which is a bug). And the keyboard bugs are a limitation with OpenFL that I didn't have time to properly work around. There were also some UX stuff I missed before release (like highlighting when you use too many blocks)

loved the game concept. And plus point for the good tutorial. enjoyed playing.

I really enjoyed this game. An interesting gameplay and implementation, with lot of room for strategic thinking and becomes very rewarding. I would say that a demo stage or tutorial stage would help.

I can see this as a tabletop game as well.

It takes some time to figure out the logic but overall the gameplay is cool and it's impressive that you made so many levels in such a short time

Nice concept! Haven't really seeen anything like this before. Music is calm and doesn't seem too repetitive, that is nice. Maybe a bit too hard to get into it at first (tutorial was quite helpful). Overall nice game!

This is a creative take on the theme for sure! I really enjoy the mechanics, especially the use of code blocks. The music is soothing and you've created an impressive amount of levels (even more so for compo). It's fun to play, challenging, and thankfully includes an in-game tutorial. My only suggestion would be a continue/next button after you beat a level to proceed to the next rather than having to hit abort. Great job!

I beat all the levels! The typing didn't work for me at first, but after a while and maybe refreshed it worked and I didn't run into any other issues.

So, by level 3 or 4 I basically used the same solution for all the puzzles.
I would start with a while(< 4) block on the left and a if(> 3) wall next to it. All the balls would get stuck inside unless they were higher than 4, which I then captured in a while(< 7) block on the other side. Eventually there would be only a few 3s left and I could determine if it was an invader, and I could decrease the left code blocks by 1 (while(< 3), if(> 2)), and wait again for 3s to filter out.

Could see starting the game with more restrictions as a tutorial, since typing code can be tough for some.
Nice job!

I have to admit it's a nice idea and an interesting point of view of the theme. Good work.