Why Deliver Y ? by Aurel300
| Link | https://aurel300.itch.io/why-deliver-y |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/why-deliver-y |
Ratings
| Overall | 39th | 4.275⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 163th | 3.925⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 45th | 4.2⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 778th | 3.725⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 224th | 4.225⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 73th | 4.15⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 17th | 4.475⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 17🗨️ |



You get hard locked on that ending by the way. Had to refresh and try the normal one. Glad you had enough of a foresight to have a cheat for that (too).
Awesome way of telling a story really. Supported the gameplay very well so that even a slide puzzle hater such as I managed to breeze through it without any loathing. Also very glad that you didn't include any time/move limit so you can puzzle out those solutions in peace.
The lock picking mini game was my favourite part of the game really. Too bad it was very underused and that having no time pressure or anything really made it less of a hurdle. And now that I think about it, even the "enemy" detecting and moving mechanic was pretty much just scraping the surface. But obviously it was already pretty large scope for a jam and of course it's better the keep it tight feeling and have players wanting more than get repetitive. And the story could have easily handled few more levels of suspense to make the pacing better, now the end came kinda fast in my opinion.
The arrow keys didn't work on the level cleared menu. Of course not a major issue as I switched to WASD and mouse anyway after figuring out that the lock picking needs mouse anyway.
I think this might have been the only part where it happens but it wasn't great that you get ambushed from a blind angle because you had to flashlight on and have to replay the level to learn about it and keep your light off. Guess it hits two birds with one stone by teaching you about the restart too. 🤷♀️

Then of course you go and punish that blind faith in turning off your flashlight at the start of each level like this... 😶

Was it actually intentional that you could use the flashlight as a glorifier "skip turn" button? I felt like I cheesed at least one level with it.
It looked and sounded awesome! Nice pixel art and animation with just a few frames. Kudos. Perfect color choices too. 👍 Music fit the mood very well but having some jazzy drums (with brushes obviously) would have been sweet addition as a classic noir style detective trope. Did you do it yourself by the way? Didn't see any mention about it and I recall you having someone else usually tackle that part.
Didn't like the i in the font though. Of course it's just an opinion. Interesting choice though but it does make the text harder to read. There were some overlap too like this.

What's with the rank? It doesn't seem like rating on how well you did on the level and I at least couldn't find any difficulty selection or such.
Good job! 👍 Very full experience with practically no issues. Left me wanting more. Wanting more slide puzzles, guess I'm going crazy...
Only note I would make is that I completely forgot I use toggling the flashlight to skip a turn. It's a really cool puzzle, but I got completely blocked on it until I actually came back and was reading other peoples comments, even though I was able to solve everything else.
Would love to see some more done with this. Also I have to wonder if the lockpicking puzzle should be replaced with something that fits a bit... better? Like was mentioned, there's no time pressure, or reason to try to go fast.
@zahkros Yeah, the theme is… there-ish (:
@antti-haavikko Thanks for the comment as always! I'm glad I made you enjoy a sliding puzzle, I don't generally like them either :D The mechanics indeed could have been utilised more, I did not manage to actually work on most of the levels until relatively late in the jam (with ~6 hours to go or so). Clearly some levels could have been a bit more balanced/polished! I realised the flashlight button was a skip turn indeed, and it was my intended solution for at least one level. The music is mine, yes, I just noodled on the piano for a couple of minutes and it sounded ok as a soundtrack. I considered recording a drum track over the piano as well, but I am not as good with the drums as with the piano. (Also the jazzy brush sound is a bit tricky to replicate on electronic drums.) Yeah the font is not intentional really, I should have turned off the outlining instead of setting it to the background colour. The rank at the end of the level is either "hard-boiled" (because you're a hardboiled detective) or when you lose it is "fried" (because egg pun). I forgot to make it "poached" if you get jailed.
@gametrodon Thanks! Yeah, I considered timed lockpick puzzles. On the other hand, it would have been the first thing that is actually time-sensitive in an otherwise turn-based game.
@michael-darling Good point. I made sure to make the tile swapping much faster for the enemies when there were too many on the board, but there could have been something for the player as well. I agree the "end of level" sound was a bit jank but I didn't want to record more :D
It's very cool that you managed to make clever uses of the sliding puzzle mechanic.
Otherwise great film noir atmosphere, and clever game design idea!

A seriously fantastic puzzler!
@dxk2294 @shane-gadsby Thanks for playing!
@tricky-fat-cat Thanks! It's always nice to catch the LD regulars during streams also.
@wendel-scardua Really happy that someone noticed the pun :sob:
@honest-dan Diolch am chwarae'r gêm! (I hope Google is not making me insult you somehow.)
@roroto-sic There is a cheatcode to unlock all levels just in case!
Here’s the stream if you wanted to watch initial thoughts (timestamps in the description to jump to your game!) [youtube link](youtu.be/Y-lHyYRQspI)