LudumData

CERT by tjm

[raw]
made by tjm for Ludum Dare 54 (COMPO)

CERT - A Puzzle Adventure

CERT is an explorable puzzle book!

Discover a surreal, dreamlike world filled with classic deduction-based paper puzzles! You can print it with the provided PDFs, or play through it online here.

Images:

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

How to play:

  • If you're playing online:
    • Go to this itch.io page and use the embedded pdf.js viewer.
    • The "pen" icon lets you draw on the document. Once you've drawn something you can drag it around the page, which is useful for placing things on grids.
  • If you're playing using a downloaded file:
    • Download the "PDF (Facing Pages)" link.
    • For the best experience, open the PDF in a viewer that lets you draw and scribble on the document.
    • If you can't do that, I recommend using a pencil and paper to draw out the puzzles and make notes.
  • If you're printing the book on a home printer:
    • Download the "PDF (Facing Pages)" link.
    • These double pages are designed to print on A5 sheets.
    • If you only have A4 paper you can either scale them up or print two-to-a-page (if you do the latter I recommend cutting the sheets in half to avoid accidental spoilers).
  • If you're printing the book through a printing service:
    • Download the "PDF (Single Pages)" link.
    • This document is intended to be printed as an A6 booklet.
    • Bleed margins are not included.

Tools used:

Note:

For rating purposes, the CERT PDF file is both the submitted game and the "source code". The PDF viewer should not be considered part of the submission.

(Post-submission update 2023/10/02 1700 BST: Made three small text fixes in the dictionary. Added a version number to the back cover. Previous versions can be downloaded from github if people would prefer to test the game exactly as originally submitted.)

PDF (Facing Pages) https://github.com/tjm35/cert/blob/main/CERT-FacingPages.pdf?raw=true
PDF (Single Pages) https://github.com/tjm35/cert/blob/main/CERT-SinglePages.pdf?raw=true
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/cert

Ratings

Overall 38th 4.087⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 80th 3.841⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 8th 4.543⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Theme 174th 3.69⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 57th 4.087⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Humor 68th 3.425⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Mood 47th 3.891⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 43🗳️ 25🗨️

Feedback

cleitoneldorn
02. Oct 2023 · 18:13 UTC
This is awesome! Very inovative and diferent, I believe this is the first book that I ever saw on Ludum Dare! great work!
Gecko64
02. Oct 2023 · 18:27 UTC
A very innovative idea, I have never seen something like this ever!
Donitz
02. Oct 2023 · 18:40 UTC
​Very cool concept! It reminds me a bit about the Witness in the way you learn new rules as you go along.
Flying Butter Studio
02. Oct 2023 · 18:44 UTC
Ho my god!

Really want to play it with my girlfriend, she will love it! Thank you for all the work you provide to make this game!
I'm waiting her to test it, but i alreay love it too!

Thank you @tjm !
Kinami
02. Oct 2023 · 18:59 UTC
This is so cool! ✨

I kind of want to print it and play on paper, but I don't have access to a printer right now!

Well done!
candlesan
02. Oct 2023 · 20:45 UTC
This was great! I'll be honest - at first I was reading it as a PDF on my computer I thought "there's no way I'm printing this out just to play..." but after doing the first 2 puzzles "in my head" I realized, nope, I'm going to play this the way it was intended.

Cool puzzles, fun key at the end. I'm not sure if you don't have programming experience or if you just wanted to push yourself to make something physical but I would love to see a digital version of the puzzles! Could be the next New York Times hit!
fosf0
03. Oct 2023 · 03:58 UTC
I really like the concept! Nice job
knexator
03. Oct 2023 · 16:50 UTC
Excellent! I loved the flavor text in the dictionary
Sachadelsur
03. Oct 2023 · 17:59 UTC
what a great work!
Kaaleb
04. Oct 2023 · 22:47 UTC
Really innovative ! Really impressed by the fact you don't have other games like this one on your itch, it was so well thought, for example with the "peon" in the dictionary, or other details, it felt like it was your thing. Congratulations !!
Jimbly
04. Oct 2023 · 23:44 UTC
I guess I was reading it wrong, but I was amused that I read the first answer as "NOPE", and then even more amused to find it in the dictionary =). The second puzzle confused me in that the boxes didn't fit perfectly like I was led to expect from the first one (left one letter uncovered, but not used in the word), but it didn't mess me up much.

A number of the dictionary entries made me laugh out loud. A few I couldn't figure out or didn't get the reference.

Page 25 gave me a lot of trouble, since there were so many valid placements that didn't spell words. Page 37 gave me even more trouble, I ended up writing a program to help, and the real answer (which I had stumbled upon earlier, but dismissed as not a real word) apparently was not even in my dictionary -_-.

I finally completed this, both earning my certification (one day, you may also earn your certification in my game, perhaps ;), and winning the game =).

Really cool, and quite long, I think I spent about an hour and a half on this! I liked the imaginative setting, and nice sketches for some of them. My only complaint is the 2 mentioned puzzles which had lots of valid slottings of the pieces that just didn't happen to make words. A couple more numbers along the sides would have made them slightly more duduce-able, I think.
🎤 tjm
05. Oct 2023 · 10:11 UTC
Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

@jimbly Thanks for playing! It sounds like you might have either missed the rule on page 19, or not noticed some of the hex-shaped holes? Both of those could definitely have been a lot clearer; other players have reported problems caused by not noticing them, so sorry about that! The design is absolutely that each puzzle should have exactly one legal and deducible arrangement of pieces, so the right answer shouldn't ever be ambiguous.
🎤 tjm
05. Oct 2023 · 10:27 UTC
@kaaleb Thanks! Yeah, I've been a big fan of exploration puzzle games in this genre (like The Witness or Lingo) for a long time, but this is my first serious attempt to make one. A puzzle book felt like a fun way to approach it, with a lot of potential to do things that wouldn't work or wouldn't be practical in a digital game. Hope you had fun with it!
Jimbly
05. Oct 2023 · 13:05 UTC
@tjm I did see the rule on page 19, but ack, I misread it! I missed the "or circle" part, so was just avoiding hex next to hex -_-. Yup, that helps out a lot =).
🎤 tjm
05. Oct 2023 · 13:36 UTC
Ah, yeah, that would do it. :sweat: Keeping the rule to only hexes-and-hexes would have made it clearer and easier to remember, but unfortunately I don't think I could have made good enough puzzles with it. Thanks for persevering anyway! :smile:
Adam Gallina
05. Oct 2023 · 21:59 UTC
Really great entry!! I had a lot of fun playing, definitely would've been easier if I had a printer, but still fun. I really like how you put two valid interpretations of the solution on the first puzzle, and used one of them to explain how to read the answers, it made it feel a lot more fun even though I was looking up the wrong answer.
jebouin
06. Oct 2023 · 03:42 UTC
That was awesome! I'm not very familiar with paper puzzles but this book was not too complicated and had a lot of content for a compo entry. I'd like to play more like this, do you have any recommendations on similar books?
Germdog53
06. Oct 2023 · 04:28 UTC
This is very interesting. I enjoyed the change of pace and creativity. Nice work!
🎤 tjm
06. Oct 2023 · 07:14 UTC
@jebouin Thanks! As far as I know mine is the first puzzle book to combine this style of puzzles with exploration/adventure book gameplay - that's why I wanted to try it! For a similar style of "puzzle books with very light story" I can recommend [Blaž Urban Gracar](https://www.blazgracar.com/letibus)'s "Lok" and "Abdec" books, both of which were definitely influences on this.
JKazuk
06. Oct 2023 · 20:44 UTC
Wow this is so cool. Have never bothered to play a physical game before but the format makes it incredibly easy to approach. The writing is clever and the illustrations are beautiful. Really enjoyed playing this!
JUSTCAMH
11. Oct 2023 · 11:17 UTC
Amazing puzzle mechanic, I have never considered having a game entirely on paper but you've done it flawlessly. The one part that had me really really stumped was how were you supposed to know to rearrange empty spaces into a word? I had to cheat to see the word 'back' as an answer, and then I noticed, huh, yeah I guess that is in there, though I don't know the steps to learn that. I'm glad I cheated, because I had all three pieces, but nowhere to put them and was really lost as to where you wanted me to advance. There was also a spot earlier on where I got similarly lost, when I unlocked the hub, I was immediately excited to look around for other hub pages. But that led nowhere and I didn't know where to go, had to reread everything to find that in the corner of the hub page said to freely advance to next page, which was unexpected as I was looking for an unsolved puzzle or a hub icon. Still though I really enjoyed this game, it really was an adventure navigating the pages and learning the rules! :heart:
🎤 tjm
11. Oct 2023 · 19:19 UTC
@justcamh Thanks for playing! Finding the secret path out of the hub was definitely intended to be one of the most challenging puzzles; the idea was that each of the three paths gave you a different clue phrase, and by thinking about those three phrases together the player would figure out how to progress. It definitely requires the player to be in a particular mindset, though; perhaps it would have helped if I'd found some way to encourage players to reexplore old areas if they get stuck?

Thanks for commenting, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
JUSTCAMH
11. Oct 2023 · 22:11 UTC
Right I see that now. I did go back looking at other pages and at the three fragment pages especially, though throughout the game there had never been important info in the text, which was entirely for lore and story. I absolutely read this, though didn’t consider it relevant to solving as all hints were previously boxed. Even if it had been boxed, I would have had a tricky time solving this, but I think I could’ve managed. My big problem was I had no loose threads to continue with, but if I had these boxes of hints that I hadn’t used yet, I’d try piecing them together.
Greytyphoon
20. Oct 2023 · 20:14 UTC
Absolutely incredible! The quality is superb, the pencil-y font and images are splendid and really fit the mood. It was a wild, immersive adventure. The puzzles were super fun. It was a challenge to do them with no physical support, but still possible. Best game I've seen in this compo.