Stacked Up! by MashUpGames

[raw]
made by MashUpGames for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

PickingUpBox.gif As one of the robots in the Box Factory, your job is to deliver the boxes to their stations. These boxes can be a key help in you getting around, but don't damage them too much! Delivery.gif

Ratings

Overall 165th 4.018⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Fun 276th 3.768⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 298th 3.696⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Theme 83th 4.411⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 188th 4.286⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Humor 323th 3.524⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Mood 385th 3.768⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Given 46🗳️ 59🗨️

Feedback

Yorsh
01. May 2023 · 22:51 UTC
Amazing game ! Puzzles are surprizingly hard :o but very well thought.

Graphics and animations are very good. It's very rewarding to deliver a box and complete the level.

Some mechanics are a bit tedious to perform (like switching boxes order). It's not a big problem, but given that you made so many levels, I think you could have focused on less levels and a little more QoL improvements here and there. I would have prefered one puzzle by level, cause having to redo the first puzzle each time to attempt the second one is tedious as well.

Finally I found an exploit (I think ?). If you put a box under you next to a door, you can pass over the door easely. It's not game breaking but allow to cheese a few levels.

Overall it's very very good, I'm just nitpicking cause I played it for a while. Great job !
Aalula
02. May 2023 · 11:53 UTC
very cute game kinda frustrating that the boxes brake the fast, by the time i understand how to solve the puzzle the boxes are broken and i have to restart the lvl
innocuousuk
02. May 2023 · 11:53 UTC
Love this game! Very cool idea, executed well, plenty of levels and the art is great, good job on the animations!
Shiiigear
02. May 2023 · 12:01 UTC
Great game with great puzzles! kinda frustrating sometimes but the puzzles are still excelent. Thanks for this game!
Tommeh
02. May 2023 · 12:02 UTC
Very good puzzle game with a lot of interesting puzzles! I think the should have been more introductory levels because level 1-2 took long for me since I had to figure out both the box stacking mechanic and picking up boxed from a higher plane. But overall I though that this was very smartly made game and probably my favorite puzzle thus far.
powerlanguage
02. May 2023 · 12:05 UTC
Really enjoyed the puzzle design of this game. It wasn't immediately clear to me that you could pick up an adjacent box below you.
Maakole
02. May 2023 · 20:15 UTC
Great concept, and well designed puzzles. The controls aren't very intuitive, even once you get a hang of them. I think most of the game design could be upgraded just by having a persistent UI that shows to the player the robot's pickup zone. There's a huge amount of potential here if you choose to continue it.
Ethernal Tech
02. May 2023 · 20:16 UTC
I loved the puzzle mechanics, the game is very ingenious and the graphics are wonderful!!
Very good game, congratulations!
xbcw
02. May 2023 · 20:17 UTC
Really nice tutorial. I'm not sure if you could have the same puzzles but i kept wanting the pick up and set down key to be the same. The art and feel are wonderful.
Slightly Ajar
02. May 2023 · 20:22 UTC
I had fun with this one. I like that you went with the approach of a puzzle game. I did run into an issue where the package broke and I couldn't continue on the level (stuck on a lower floor and had nothing to boost me up), and there was no way to exit or restart that I could see. Other than that I enjoyed the art and the robot character. Good Job!
the neon shark
02. May 2023 · 20:24 UTC
The puzzles were pretty tricky, but fun. The controls were a bit annoying when trying to choose between picking up beneath you vs next to you. My only real complaint is that some levels felt like they had two phases. The first part was easy and the second part was tricky, but every time I failed I'd have to redo both parts!
skitefall
02. May 2023 · 20:26 UTC
Great puzzle game. The art is great and instructions are well placed.
Took me a while to realise that you can press esc to bring out the menu. You can include a button maybe or hint it at some point.
Also I found some UI hiccup on 1-2 ;) the stamps don't match

![Screenshot 2023-05-02 at 22.21.29.png](///raw/b91/25/z/5acfe.png)
LDJam user 287424
02. May 2023 · 20:27 UTC
Great game. I like the cute robot graphics. And the puzzles are really good. I eventually got stuck on one of the levels, but I have a feeling I'll be coming back to try and solve it again later. Which to me is the mark of a good puzzle game. Excellent submission!
DuncanT
02. May 2023 · 20:31 UTC
Thanks for playing all. Yeah @slightly-ajar, as @skitefall said there is a pause menu which is esc on keyboard or start on controller. We should have called that out somewhere as it's an important one :).
Koolruz
02. May 2023 · 20:33 UTC
I have a lot of good things to say about the game, and a few quality-of-life nitpicks that detracted from the experience of playing it.

First, the art, animations, tutorial design, and sound design are all very high quality! I loved the way you explained the controls to the player, and how the tutorials were puzzles that forced them to learn the different mechanics of the game! The only thing that was unclear to me at first was that taking a long drop while holding a package damaged it, but I did figure that out eventually - It might have helped to have a more explicit tutorial puzzle for that mechanic, instead of having it be discovered midway through a larger puzzle

The puzzles were also fun to solve - You had a sort of eureka moment when you realized what you did wrong, and immediately knew what to try next. That said, because they were very particular about what you did when, I wished that I had an undo button. Especially as the puzzles became longer and longer, a misclick or small mistake (eg: accidentally trying to drop a box when you're standing next to a wall) would often get you into unwinnable situations and forced to restart from scratch.

I ended up replaying the entirety of 2-2 four or five times in a row because I kept not paying attention as I was descending towards the exit door, and didn't pick the crates back up that I had used as a staircase to bring the final package back up to the delivery chute, and was no longer was able to get across the one-tile gap towards the exit door. It was really frustrating to have to spend another 30 seconds replaying a puzzle that I already knew the solution for, just because I had lost focus for a second when I thought it was over. This led to a weird spiral where I went on auto-pilot as I re-solved the puzzle, and kept making the same silly mistake several times in a row because I wasn't paying as much attention when I wasn't mentally engaged in solving the puzzle anymore :(

That said, it was still a really clever puzzle game, and I do love the polish that you put on it - Quality-of-life nitpicks aside, really good job on this overall!
BlackjackMusic
02. May 2023 · 20:40 UTC
Super clever puzzle game! Really enjoyed the ramping up in complexity and utilizing more mechanics. Definitely got a little frustrated at some points because it was a little finicky with whether boxes would drop in front of me or beneath me leading to them breaking sooner. Would've liked to see boxes respawn when broken so I didn't have to reset the level. On top of everything, the presentation is really nice and charming and fits the theme perfectly. Awesome work!
callbackthefunction
03. May 2023 · 02:09 UTC
Super smart puzzle game! I love that the tutorials are built in the gameplay experiences, also the assets are so beautiful and characteristic. Got a bit confused when the box is not dropping under the robot sometimes but overall a very enjoyable game. Well done!
Demuss
03. May 2023 · 10:33 UTC
Love the puzzle mechanic!

Super cute robota and generally good graphics

Very good entry
Jackaljk
11. May 2023 · 08:26 UTC
Great mechanics, great presentation and onboarding progression! It feels weird that the stack is FIFO when you're putting stuff down, especially when you need to reorder it and despite it being necessary to climb up, but you eventually get used to it. The animations for picking up and putting down are a bit too sudden but definitely ok for a jam. Good job!