A very nice simple idea really well executed. That last level had me confused for a bit. I only wish there was more levels which is always a good jam game problem to have! Great work!

Excellent little puzzler, lovely music. And props for Rust implementation!

Decent game, wish there were more levels to play with. Great start in ldjam!

Very nice, of course your getting +rep for rust. Own engine as well? That's impressive. I tried to use bevy for my teams last ludum dare and wasted so much time implementing trivial shit. Anyway your game is good, nice music and sfx as well. I just wish there was more of it, it's only like 1 minute long.

Great game. More levels would have been nice :)

Pluses for your own engine and tech - I tend to gravitate often towards custom solutions and I know how much work goes into baking your own stuff, congrats! I like the overall mood and polish - the music contributes a lot to that, so you picked the correct one. It misses more levels (especially more like the last one), but for a LD entry that is already quite good. Thanks!

The fact that this was made in a custom made engine is impressive. The graphics are good looking and so the sound design is nice as well. Its a shame that there are so few levels, the game has an actually pretty solid puzzle concept.

Nice fun puzzle game! Short and sweet but was a cool mechanic and concept. Love to see more!

i like the idea, appreciate you including controls in the game,

This was way too short! D: Just when I felt like I got the game and started to get excited it was over. In other words, you really got me interested with the simple puzzle mechanics you showed off. I think you could do a lot with this :) And having made it in your own engine in rust is just super impressive! Really well done!

One little thing which was a bit weird to me was the controls for moving the camera. Something like left mouse button would have felt more natural than spacebar I think.

Congratz on your first LD entry! The game is short and sweet indeed and I see potential in this one! Had a little difficulty controlling the game, as the WSDA keys seem to be mapped on an angle. But after a while I got used to it. The graphics are well done and the sound effects fit to the general aesthetic

Plus points for self-hosting, just checked out your website. Cool stuff~

Loved the game, congrats <3 very soothing and cute

Great game overall! Didn't realize that the levels looped with no changes, I was thinking that there was some twist the second time around haha. But yeah very interesting idea for sure, I'm actually pretty curious how the actual wave itself worked, I can't actually think of a good solution that wouldn't be expensive or massively over-complicated lol.

Anyway yeah I had a lot of fun I like these kinds of puzzle-esk games so it was a good one.

Nice puzzle mechanic idea and a relaxing atmosphere. The slight difficulty curve was a nice touch and final challenge was quite clever too. Could imagine how complex you could make puzzles like this. Nice work!

Simple idea excecuted really well! The graphics look great and the progression is really well designed to allow the player to figure out the rules over time. The last puzzle took me a few attempts and felt really satisfying to solve.

More levels with more difficult set up would obviously be a good addition, as would an 'ending', but such is the way with jam games. Great job!

Always impressed to see games with custom engines in game jams. Plays smoothly, easy to understand. Surprisingly moody for how minimalist it is. I feel like the last level gives a great glimpse of what can be built off of the fundamental concept. Welcome to the LD club!

I've been absolutely blown away by everyone's your wonderful feedback and critiques; thank you all so much.

Today I published a log of my Ludum Dare #57 experience, breaking down how I approached making this game, and reflecting on what I learned from the event--for those of you that are curious, you can read it here: https://www.caer.cc/logs/ldjam-57/.

Responding to some of your comments directly (so sorry for the long delay!):

- @gamesplusjames @amikatag @oxnh @jamesgames1000 @marudziik @locke8 @clymm @skyeward : I'm so happy that the biggest complaint was that...you all wanted to keep playing. :sob: You've all inspired me to continue work on this project post-jam; I'll be sure to share updates here, and on my personal site.

- @wuppos : You made a good point about the mouse controls! I do a lot of work with 3D solid modeling for robotics engineering (aka CAD), and got (perhaps _too_) used to the spacebar control from there...I'll see about adding more intuitive left or right click controls in a future version of the game.

- @wouter52 : Ironically, the WASD keys originally were mapped to the world space/grid instead of the screen space (like it is now), since I thought it might be more intuitive. Based on your feedback, and some other friends' feedback, I think I'll add a toggle to change between the two types of control schemes.

- @snowdrama : The wave occlusion was one of my favorite parts of this project. I explain how it works here: https://www.caer.cc/logs/ldjam-57#making-waves. TL;DR, I do some really sketchy 2D ray-tracing.

- @scoobysnacks @skyeward @atmospherium : One of my main (but undocumented...) goals was to give players everything they need to learn to play _in the game_, and _without explicit tutorials_. I'm so happy you all enjoyed the way I presented the controls and ramped the difficulty curve.

- @krummja @oxnh @marudziik @locke8 @wouter52 @blackpulse @soul-grinder @atmospherium : On a personal note, my past few years (not this one!!) were very tough on my emotions and mental health--one of my goals in this jam was to craft the beginnings of something that _felt_ calm, soothing, and/or loving. I'm so glad you all enjoyed the ambience.

- @krummja @oxnh @marudziik @locke8 @wuppos @atmospherium : For more than a decade I've wanted to dabble in making a game engine, but I heard from more than a few people it'd be a bad idea to make one without a game to go with it. I love that so many of you enjoyed that I used a custom engine, and having had so much fun using it during this even, I'm excited to continue working on it!

Thank you all for the warm welcome to LD. :heart:

What an interesting concept. A simple idea, very well executed. I can only imagine how much of a full game this would be. Can we hope to see it one day?

Congrats!

this is so pleasing to play! intuitive, great atmosphere. definitely worth making more levels!

This is really cool and minimal style. Love the mechanics, and the difficulty escalation. Would love to play more levels, or even better to have a procedural level generator for this so you can play "endlessly"