LudumData

Hiding Heisenbugs by ultrarat

[raw]
made by ultrarat for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

High level

A game for Ludum Dare 49, theme "Unstable".

A logic puzzle game about how external factors lead to unstable software even with tests.

You are the Heisenbug god. Place several bugs in the software being careful they only exist in places the tests won't detect them.

Here's a guide if you get stuck. ( There are multiple solutions. )

Only 3 levels made since doing a mostly solo game while adulting continues to be difficult.

Remember if you find a bug it's just intentionally being meta since the game is supposed represent being unstable, yeah let's go with that.

Gameplay2.gif

How to play/controls

Insert bugs in the software by dragging the bug pieces from the right side into the grid and avoid detection from the tests. Hit the submit button to run the tests when ready.

Use the clue description so that the bug remain invisible to the properties of the unit test runs.

Scans will go in a set direction and will stop if it hits a closed door in the row/column, unable to see any bugs behind those doors.

Features

  • Play as the enemy.
  • Meta instability.
  • Doors - the menace that is the source of many bugs in unstable games.

Things we wish got in but didn’t

  • audio
  • more levels - This was sort of addressed in a post jam version but there could always be more.
  • Bug's that stopped the scan in one direction.
  • Longer 3+ and/or conditionals. The game was heavily constrained by the UI design not having much text room and I wasn't sure how to fix this.
  • Pieces' that stopped the scan in one direction and maybe some other bugs with relational changes with other pieces.
  • Jokes about Daylight Savings Time and Time Zones. But those were too painful to write so I just couldn't.

Tools

  • Unity 2019.4.17
  • Paint.NET

StartingState2.png

Scanning2.png

HTML + windows on itch https://ultrarat.itch.io/hiding-heisenbugs
post jam version. Do not judge. https://mollyjameson.github.io/HidingHeisenbugsHosted/
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/hiding-heisenbugs

Ratings

Overall 613th 3.625⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 596th 3.55⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 278th 3.75⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 664th 3.625⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 207th 3.825⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Mood 861th 3.316⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 11🗳️ 21🗨️

Feedback

Nyles
04. Oct 2021 · 07:42 UTC
This has some seriously nerdy jokes.
goldenxp
04. Oct 2021 · 17:23 UTC
Congrats on finishing! It's a good logic puzzle game.
shared
06. Oct 2021 · 02:34 UTC
Pretty fun puzzle game, but I wish it had more levels
wedgiebee
06. Oct 2021 · 04:40 UTC
This was a blast! Played it twice cuz I was sad there weren't more levels! The test submission part is really satisfying - watching the test run one by one and seeing it light up all green made me feel like a genius. Also thought the wrong-solution error messages were super clear which I appreciated. I was relieved I didn't have to hunt around to find out what went wrong. A part of me wishes there was a way to concretely visualize beforehand what would/would not get blocked - like hovering over a platform and showing in yellow which squares it's gonna hit. But I also really enjoyed having to think about it for myself.

Thanks for twisting my brain!! Also premise was very funny but also disturbing and will keep me up at night thinking about infuriating bugs..............
Sceef
06. Oct 2021 · 06:48 UTC
Good puzzle
cppchriscpp
06. Oct 2021 · 07:10 UTC
As a software engineer by trade, I greatly appreciate your sense of humor! You could definitely expand this to be a really fun puzzler. As others have mentioned, the clear explanation of what went wrong helped a lot. (Also as someone who was once responsible for the scheduling system for morning reports in a complex system, I feel your pain on DST/timezones on a spiritual level :sweat_smile:)

I always try to leave a little constructive feedback, so I'll mention that when I started, I really wasn't sure what the doors were supposed to be. This was pretty quickly resolved through playing a little though. I really like some of the other planned ideas - there's a lot of potential here.

Thanks for a fun entry!
Zachary Barbanell
06. Oct 2021 · 07:18 UTC
Neat concept, though as mentioned in the description, would be neat if there was more interaction among the bugs, as far as I can tell the one on level 1 is the only one. Bet you could expand this into something with some really interesting puzzles, especially if you allowed bugs to modify the properties of the scanner.
Eli Delventhal
07. Oct 2021 · 00:23 UTC
I won! Pretty good start to a game. I think it's a good seed of an idea, sort of reminds me of BaBa Is You but a tad more complex / simple at the same time.

To make it more fun, I'd challenge you to figure out how to make it continuous (rather than running a single trial) and how to make it a little less to read and grok. Basically more frequent but smaller moments of problem-solving.
MalusKhan
07. Oct 2021 · 22:36 UTC
Very good puzzle game! A bit short but the main mechanics are very nice... I hope you are going to create more levels :)
Jaker
08. Oct 2021 · 05:58 UTC
Hilarious game with an interesting mechanic, and one that is on-theme! Great job. My only complaint was that it took me a few tries to understand how I was supposed to hide bugs. A simple demonstration of correctly and incorrectly hiding bugs at the beginning may remedy that.
Lisek Gagatek
08. Oct 2021 · 14:29 UTC
I think it's a really good idea for a puzzle game in general. It could use a lot of polish, especially visually - animations for running the tests would help a lot, to emphasize that it works in lines and help with players' confusion. Some kind of "scanning" animation" or similar would go a long, long way.
Sibi
08. Oct 2021 · 22:05 UTC
Cool proof of concept! Looks like you've run into a bit of feature creep with all these different conditions. It was fun figuring out which piece must go where. Some more visual indication of the rules would have been helpful. Had to re-read the rules quite often to remember which one was which.
Unfortunately I couldn't find any meta instability, so I guess there's room for improvement :D
piw
08. Oct 2021 · 22:06 UTC
Really cool game! There are many possibilities of extension, for example randomly generated puzzles. I think it may be developed more after the jam.
Raykon
08. Oct 2021 · 22:10 UTC
Have a few question for the game design: like what do the doors symbolize and why do moon phases depend on the machine. Also a bit too easy for my taste. That said, I liked the puzzle mechanics and the humor behind it, the game definitely has potential.
notke
08. Oct 2021 · 22:54 UTC
So relatable. GOTY
Naymsayk
09. Oct 2021 · 15:43 UTC
So initially I misread the prompt and attempted to put all the bugs in places they would be visible. That was kinda on me. Once I figured out what I was actually supposed to do I found a fun but silly themed logic game which was neat.
🎤 ultrarat
09. Oct 2021 · 17:10 UTC
@raykon The boxes on the side of the grids aren't just supposed to represent machines, but rather they represent individual test runs of software at a specific place and time on a specific machine. So that includes a lot of factors that will cause the software to possibly show different behavior that when a programmer tries to repro it in other circumstances will "work on my machine."

Yeah, the closed doors are a bit of a stretch. Obviously we're not artists and I mechanically just needed something that symbolized a tile the scanners wouldn't be able to look past and you couldn't put a bug down on the tile. I thought that closed doors are the cause of many bugs in video games ( Vox just did a whole video on it www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYEWsLdLmcc ) so fit right into a game where the theme was bugs ( also AI Agents often can't path through to get good automated test coverage.)
So really I skinned the blockers as doors there because it's funny to me that "how doors should work but often aren't worth the time to implement because so many things can go wrong" is such a popular game dev discussion.
🎤 ultrarat
16. Oct 2021 · 05:49 UTC
FYI @wedgiebee @zachary-barbanell @maluskhan @shared and others looking at the length, We added a few more levels in a post jam version, a more gradual ramp up mostly ( not for judging obviously, but good to finish a thing that was bothering me ): https://mollyjameson.github.io/HidingHeisenbugsHosted/
shared
17. Oct 2021 · 01:48 UTC
@ultrarat thanks for the headsup, I'll be giving them a try later tonight