Blocked by zimny11
Hello everyone!
This is my first time trying to make a puzzle game. I'm not sure how it went. The difficulty of the puzzles is probably all over the place :D
Description:
There are 10 levels. The 6 normal and 4 additional. The additional ones were added at the end and are mostly composed of mechanics I wasn't fully able to use due to the time, but they work - they are just not as challenging as a few others.
The goal of the game is to move Glass Shape into the Target Area. All Targets must be covered at the same time. The Glass Shapes always start to move to the right. And will continue that movement, if uninterrupted. You have at your disposal 3 types of Active Blocks:
Movement Blocks - Changes direction of movement of the Glass Shape in any of the chosen directions, vertically or horizontally.
Rotation Blocks - Changes orientation of the Glass Shape either clockwise or counterclockwise. Rotation can move Glass Shapes over Wall without destroying them. After rotating, Glass Shape will continue the movement in last direction it was moving in, if it will not encounter another Rotation or Movement Block.
Remover Blocks - Melts part of the Glass Shape.
Move and orient all 3 types of blocks to guide Glass Shape into the Target Area.
Running into a Wall will result in the destruction of the whole Glass Shape. Running into more than one Active Block at the same time will result in the destruction of the whole Glass Shape. The only exception is: if Glass Shape is rotated onto another Active Block, by Rotation Block. Rotation Blocks can be used to chain movement. If your Glass Shape broke press Restart Button to respawn it.
There are two phases. The first one is Building Phase where you can move Active Blocks freely. Active Blocks cannot overlap with anything else. In that phase, Glass Shape is inactive and will stay in one spot. After pressing Play Button, the Playing Phase will start. In that phase, you cannot move anything, and the Glass Shapes will start to move. Pressing the Restart Button will move you back to the Building Phase and reset the position and orientation of Glass Shapes. But all Active Blocks will stay where you put them. The last button is the Menu Button, which allows you to go back to the main screen.
Good luck!
All comments and constructive criticism about difficulty and game mechanics are especially appreciated!
ISSUES: There is a bug that I was unable to find and fix. Sometimes the correct solution does not count. All you need to do is to re-run the level with the Restart Button.
Controls:
Mouse Left Button: grab/drop Active Blocks
Mouse Right Button: rotate Active Blocks
M key: Mute the Music
Tools:
Game: Godot 3.5
Music: BeepBox Online
Sound Effects: My recording from the phone and Bfxr
Sprite: Piskel Online
Font: BitFontMaker2 Online
| itch.io | https://zimny11.itch.io/blocked-ld54 |
| itch.io | https://zimny11.itch.io/blocked-ld54 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/blocked |
Ratings
| Overall | 138th | 3.692⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 135th | 3.673⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 87th | 3.808⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 137th | 3.846⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 259th | 3.173⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 216th | 3⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 255th | 3.042⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 34🗳️ | 50🗨️ |
- The factory style of puzzle reminds me of Zachtronics games like Infinifactory!
- I think there's a lot of QOL to add like being able to speed up the playing phase and swap between phases more smoothly, but that's not so important for a jam game!
- The game was pretty intuitive to me at least, I was able to understand what was going on without reading the instructions first lol. That being said making a clearer distinction for the player as to what phases it is may be useful, I did not even realize there was text in the top left telling me what phase I was in until I was done playing.
- Many moments where I was just one space off or needed just one more piece created a really fun and intense sense of aporia, which is great for puzzles and revelations!
- Some surprising level design was very fun, like seeing A1 for the first time.
- To me the game mechanics did not feel very unique or innovative but the level design makes up for it!
Overall, Great job!!
The second issue is the playback speed, as others mentioned as well. Having to rely on trial and error for some levels to make everything fit it takes just too long.
The idea is solid though and makes good use of the theme. With a bit of overhaul this would make a good "full release" web game for puzzle lovers.
I missed the instructions on playing at first; I would've liked to see these in the game.
Interesting mechanic, fun to play, overall it was a great game!
I do agree with some of the other commenters about the speed. There's quite a lot of waiting for it to travel though the level.
## Stream of thoughts
### Level 1
Ooh, so that's how it works, it's a bit like ice puzzles!
The playback of the action feels a bit slow... it would be nice if it was a bit faster!
### Level 2
How does this spinny thing work...? Oh, it rotates things relative to itself!
### Level 3
Huh? Just one goal block? Is getting a single piece of glass there enough?
Buttons feel a bit slow to press...
It seemed like the glass shape broke for no reason at a certain point. Weird...
### Level 4
This looks hard...
Oh, it actually is easier than I thought. If only the glass piece didn't move so *slowwwwwww*...
The rotating animation is smooth and satisfying though...
Wait, maybe it's not so easy. OHHHH, I can rotate the rotators!!
Ok, this takes way too long. I'll try another level.
### Level A1
Oh, fancy! Two pieces at once! Nice and clean! Done.
### Level A2
...it's still locked?!? I guess this is it, then!
## Comment
Clever puzzle game overall, but I'm too tired to think it through...
Desperately needs to be faster in the Playing Phase!
Let the player speed that up.
The presentation is smooth, and looks polished. The rotate effect is neat!
But generally Godot 2d games seem to play pretty sluggish on my machine (which is not very strong, but still, it's a plain simple 2d game, nothing taxing). Not your fault though.
Well done!
Regarding difficulty, I thought 6 was easier than 4 or 5 due to only having rotations and the intended path feeling a bit more telegraphed. A2 was probably the trickiest since it involved using parity to pick which piece goes to which target so they can all be active at the same time, which I think would be hard to notice if you aren't already familiar with the concept. Actually, after writing that, I realized that I was probably supposed to just count path length and went back and solved it that way, so the parity stuff was probably unintentional.
I didn't think to screenshot 5, but I did post my original A2 and B2 solutions below:
I'd suggest some UI corrections
- Add move by step button as a setting (for strugglers)
- Fix some input lag
- Add settings to speed up animations
On level 5 I was able to not use one rotate block, so maybe there are different solutions.
That could be another game mode: Find several (all) solutions
But it's overall solid game, I like it
At one point, I ran into a bug where I placed a block on the walls by accident, I couldn't get it back out :sweat_smile:
Overall, with more juice I think this concept can shine! Nicely done
the biggest missing feature for me was the lack of fast-forward. When I was iterating on a later part of a puzzle (especially in stages 4+), I often waited around for a good while until finally got to the part I was actually testing
Also, while visible, the angle and direction changing blocks could've been more visile in their direction. bigger, more glowing arrows, etc.
Overall tho, this was really nice!
Puzzle games often struggle with the difficulty curve, but I think this game nailed it. It gradually became more challenging, keeping me engaged without feeling overwhelmed.
Oh and the particle effect upon winning was a lovely touch!
Well done!
- A2 was not really design to use parity. I had that mechanic in mind for something I did not implemented - timed switches and gates. The "intended" solution was to realized that each glass block is 11 moves away from one of the targets. But it is interested to see you had another solution to it! Below the solution I had in mind.
-B2... just wow! That rotation block was intended to be used, I did not found the solution you presented while designing this level. Really interesting to see something like that! Below the solution I had i mind (there are few combination of this one).
One more time, thank you for taking time to play it and for going extra step to post your solution!
but that's a minor minor detail... great job
Most things have already been suggested i think - clearer visuals for which direction/rotation the elements go, fast forward and ideally also a manual time control (as sometimes i wanted to look at specific situations far ahead and think them through in my mind, which works well if i can pause or go forward/backward). This was the biggest hurdle in pacing, to watch the whole level over and over again to progress on the late bits. Can be done in your head alone, but the lazy variant is playing it out :D
A few usability things could also make it more fluent, like the level auto-resetting if you touch the pieces, level start with space or the buttons being a bit faster.
I made it to level 5, but 4 took quite long that i'm not sure i have the willpower left for this one.
Very impressive entry especially for compo, congrats! Top innovative for sure :)
The puzzle difficulty seemed alright. The hardest one for me was level 5 "Tricksy", as it required thinking a lot of steps ahead. I've spend a lot of time on that one before I decided to cheat a little bit and make myself a real-world hacking tool for your game:
which made it much easier to plan everything. :D
I think my biggest issue with the game, especially in this level, was that when you fail the Glass Shape breaks and disappears immediately, and if you click play again you have to wait a long time for it to travel to the failure point. One part of that issue is something others have already mentioned and said a speed-up button might help.
While I agree, I think a better solution would be something like a "step-back" button, which would allow the player to basically rewind time one (or more) steps and implement fixes on the run. It would be obviously more difficult to implement, since instead of a building mode at the start and playing mode after you'd need the ability to pause and make changes, but I think it would be a better solution, as it would waste less time and therefore feel less frustrating. The only issue with it might be that the puzzles would then be too quick to get through, so it might need some testing.
Another idea would be to add two buttons - one for speeding up, which the player could hold pressed for faster speed and release to slow down again, and another for a "skip to next block" functionality, which would rapidly move everything until the next block was encountered. It would help with getting through all the waiting time when the shape is just moving bigger distances in a straight line.
The other issue I had in level 5 was that in the right part of the map the shape was moving rapidly from one rotation block to another, so I kinda lost track in what position and orientation it ended up when it broke. Maybe leaving some sort of ghostly shape or pieces of broken glass on the tiles where the shape last broke would help to mitigate that?
Smitner mentioned the issue of blocks getting stuck on border tiles, and I've seen that one too. It happens when you've got a block on a border tile and you click the "play" button to change the state. After that you can't pick that block anymore.
I guess one way of dealing with that would be to not allow the block to be moved over a border tile, changing the blocks location only when the cursor moves over an empty space. Another would be to remember where the block was picked from and checking all block locations on changing from "building" to "playing" state, reverting wrongly placed blocks to their origin.
I liked the additional levels. They weren't too difficult (though I've spend a bit of time on A2 to calculate the solutions), but they've shown you have some pretty good ideas on how to expand the game with more mechanics.
Visually the game is pretty good, everything looks clear enough and is easy to understand at a glance. Sounds are good too, as is the music, though it would probably be better if the music looped in the background - right now I have to press M twice to restart it once it finishes.
Overall it's a pretty cool idea, and well executed. Nice job!