Unread Messages by shimmerscale

Help texts get to their destinations by drawing connections between cell towers. In-game tutorial included!
I'm planning on expanding this game after the jam with more levels and mechanics, so follow me on Itch/Twitter/YouTube for updates!
My YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PastelCherryGames
My Itch.io: https://pastel-cherry-games.itch.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PastelCherryDev
Post-jam bug fix: Fixed sprite stacking and being able to pick up power ups when on a different tile.

| Link | https://pastel-cherry-games.itch.io/unread-messages |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/unread-messages |
Ratings
| Overall | 154th | 4.029⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 172th | 3.912⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 63th | 4.114⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 197th | 4.279⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 305th | 4.114⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 443th | 3.424⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 522th | 3.609⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
I love the simplistic, yet effective art style! I would've loved to have a bunch more levels to play. I agree with aviv-levy about the ramp of difficulty, but I guess under time constraints you wanted to showcase your best level yet. (I have a bit of experience designing puzzle games so I know it can be a struggle to make good levels, especially under time pressure)
Good job, I enjoyed it!
Very innovative ideas.
Nothing to complain about really :smile:
@aviv-levy @poshdan Thanks for letting me know about the bug and the difficulty spike! I'll be sure to fix those in the post-jam version :smile:
Bonus points for making sure the paths that go through hackers are reverted if the key is picked up, but there were still a few bugs - one where clicking on an item's inventory slot several times just deletes it from existence, and another when removing an amplifier doesn't fully retract the path.
But that's minor stuff, overall the game is great! Good job on this one
Would have loved to have more level with varying level of difficulties.
Overall great entry good job :smiley:
Also the hacker icon being animated is maybe a little distracting.
Anyway it's a really nice entry, the minimal style works great and the puzzles mechanics are well thought.
It's always difficult to design good puzzle mechanics and levels but I feel this really some potential.
Enjoyed the art style and in general very polished game, the explanations are spot-on and the boxes shown in the bottom corner very helpful while playing the game. Good job!
Some feedback points: The graphics and music are great. I like these style of games. The puzzles went from easy to pretty hard very quickly, I think that this is ok because you have a level select screen. Very smart for a ludum dare enrty.
When the bridge was introduced, I thought I needed to route both paths over that transmitter. I was fighting the game a good 5 minutes until I noticed that I could drop the bridge icon on top of interfearance ^^
I think this game deserves a post-jam version with 5 more levels. This is awesome