As always the great Pierce Brooks delivers a game that is a mix of awe, confusion, and terror. A true member of that elite group of developers that constantly surprises, yet remains humble and approachable in the face of their own greatness.

There are no words to describe Circleville, it is engaging, it is fun, but what is it... in a word, revolutionary.

@kory Thank you so much! Your thoughtfulness knows no bounds! <3

Maybe this is the point, but I uh...couldn't really figure out what was going on, lol

This is an interesting one.

I found this quite hard to play initially, took me quite a while to even figure out what the inputs were, wasn't sure clear you needed to drag your cursor in the right hand pane.

I see you mention this is supposed to be 'intentionally unintuitive', which I think you managed.

After I came to grips with the controls I played a few games. I thought it was interesting but not very fun? The strategy is fairly straightforward, and a lot of success comes down to luck with the placement of the goal.

I'd say the biggest strength of this game is that it's very novel to me. I've never seen a game quite like this before, and that's impressive in it's own right.

Would be good as a hacking minigame in another game with a bit more polish.

Likes:
* Inventive concept
* Has design goals that defy standard game practices, gives the game a strange but interesting feeling
* Novel controls

Feedback:
* I would have liked to see in-game instructions. I get that it's supposed to be unintuitive but at the start I was struggling to do anything at all, which isn't ideal.
* Not a lot else - feels like you achieved your concept well

Overall I think this is an intriguing entry. Big bonus points for making something that feels novel.

Truly bizarre. I always enjoy unpacking strange interfaces and mechanics. This sort of thing takes me back to my earliest experiences with video games, when they lacked the space and processing to explain or tutorialize and game design in general was still being discovered. I especially like the way the audio was generated, very interesting technique, and creates a surprising ambience. Excellent!

I liked the idea - I think it could definitely use more information a better difficulty curve, and a little more fun (or going in on another emotion) but this was something... interesting.

Played for about half an hour and think I got the controls figured out. The audio fits very well with the aesthetic for the game, like some old glitchy piece of arcane tech. The game is more of an inductive reasoning exercise to figure out the controls, and what looks like the main goal is just a way to test whether your ideas are correct. Once you've done that though there's not much of reason to keep on playing, which is fine but feels a bit lackluster. Would wipe my memory to play it again if I could.

@the-nacho I added some information about Circleville's control scheme, hope that helps! :)

@widdershin Thank you so much for such thorough feedback! I am truly honored.

"Would be good as a hacking minigame in another game with a bit more polish."
I totally agree, and I will likely be including a broader format of this type of puzzle in some of the spellcasting subsystems for my more long-term RPG plans.

"I would have liked to see in-game instructions. I get that it’s supposed to be unintuitive but at the start I was struggling to do anything at all, which isn’t ideal."
I had intended to add a video tutorial when application first launches but did not have enough time to both record it and cross-compile FFMPEG for all the platformss that I wanted to release on, so I instead spent the remainder of time before the submission hour began implementing the pitch-sliding sounds effects for when the solution focus point moves around.

If you like the aesthetics of this game so much, please check out an older Ludum Dare submission of mine called "Noise Runner" which can be found here...
https://web.archive.org/web/20210304034733/http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=65735
( Edit: I made a more accessible GitHub release available here...
https://github.com/PierceLBrooks/NoiseRunner/releases/download/ludumDare34/Windows_-_Dist.zip )

@khaotom I am a big fan of early CRPGs and the experience of playing through their gradually improving attempts at simulating the mechanical thrills of their table-top predecessors. Your high praise is much appreciated, as I seek to always imbue some component of that mystical confusion about a grander system into my games. Thanks for playing!

@lucas-guimaraes The emotional tone is quite one-dimensional here, I think if I were to polish this up for a mobile app store release eventually, some fun particle effects could easily lighten the mood :)

@unpronounceable I definitely agree that the novelty does wear off quite rapidly. That was not as apparent until the idea had come to fruition sadly

I surprisingly figured out what I was supposed to do quickly, although more a more specific tutorial would be useful. I like the idea of the puzzle. The controls are strange but it gets simple once you figure it out. I love the atmosphere of the game, with the raw binary audio and the very simplistic graphics, it really has an uneasy mood. It probably isn't very replayable, perhaps better as a minigame. Good job in making it in C++, it must've been difficult to really get it to work properly. Nice job.

This is weird and I love it. It kept my attention far longer than I thought. The simplistic graphics and the audio fit well. I also dig your method of generating the audio.

@lako @plexium-nerd Thanks for playing! Glad you both liked the audio & graphics :D

there should be a tutorial

I'm getting this logspam every frame: Failed to set DirectInput device axis mode: 1

Not sure if that is why I don't know how to play this game :D

I...guess I've won a few levels, but I still have no clue about what was happening and what was I supposed to do.

I really tried to understand, but it's like Lars von Trier's movie in this jam :)

I gotta say, this is probably the most esoteric game I've ever played and, as someone with a fairly extensive mathematics and computer science education, I had no idea what the heck was going on. Even after winning a few rounds, I was just drawing circles and watching the dot move, oblivious to my end goal, or what any of it had to do with distance sum inequalities. I suppose I could do the research to learn more about that topic, and then I may be able to understand it, but that's a lot of homework to play one game...

That and the music, while definitely novel in its creation method, isn't exactly what I would categorize as easy listening.

All that being said, this definitely has its place. One of the things I like about Ludum Dare is that it gives developers an opportunity to delve into the utterly bizarre, clearly what you've done here, and it gives me the opportunity to play it, which is always memorable. My game is about shooting asteroids. I suppose I don't have the brainwaves to make something like this.

As for actionable feedback, this could be a lot of fun if it was accompanied by a detailed explanation, understandable to laypeople.

I don't understand the idea.

Interesting idea. I think i understood it well enough to know what i had to do, but not enough to tell if i won the level or lost. But it was fun, good job :)

Super interesting game! I didn't really play anything like it before. It felt basically alien to me which is a super cool feeling. I don't think I managed to figure out how it works, I tried a few times and lost on round 4 every time. I thought I had to connect each color line at a distance similar to this colors dot distance from the center of the circle on the left picture, but it also didn't really seem to work that good.

Even though I didn't really understand how to play the game it really was super intersting to experience what felt to me like entertainment for beings from another dimension. Thanks for making this! Cool experience/game.

I got to level 4 and still have no idea what the objective is. But it sounds like math and the first link I found by googling "distance sum inequalities" looks like an essay about something other than geometry

Mathematical joy! It reminds me of how poor humans - me at least - can be at visualising. It's probably more effective to get quick at approximating maybe. I'm sure my cat could get good at it after a few years.

So, just to make sure I'm hearing this right, the soundtrack is *supposed* to be a nearly 9-minute loop of computer noise? Not complaining, that stuff's my jam, but it is a bit of an esoteric soundtrack to a game.

Overall, this was quite the baffling ordeal. I think I kinda got it by the end? But after a while I lost interest and just tried to draw shapes hoping one of them would match. But I do agree that it could make a pretty cool hacking minigame with a bit more polish.

I hope that games like this keep being created! It might be strange, but that's also the appeal: not having everything figured out the first second you look at something.

Interesting entry! Took a minute to understand how to manipulate the interface, but after that it clicked pretty well.

I guess I am not smart enough to play this one :(

I got through three levels but I have no idea how.