Fun game with some neat concepts. I got kinda tired constantly retyping everything - you could implement a numbering system so you can invoke each spell by it's number. The spell hints you get in notes are mostly useless past the first 2-3 spells. You should introduce some way of finding more hints - maybe reading the bookcases?
I finished the game but one part of the game was left unexplored it seems - the part with hot floor and two red buttons on each side of it, at the bottom of one floor, don't remember which - why was it unused?
Thanks. I would definitely make some changes like what you suggested if I planned to expand the game further, but I'm happy enough with what it is. I think it's fine for game jam games to have some rough edges, after all, one of the main reasons to enter a jam is to experiment with different ideas! I also didn't have time for any real playtesting during the jam, and I didn't feel like making significant gameplay changes after the fact.
The chest that portion would have given you access to was just a note showing the more obvious use of (rot13) YVTUGRA. I'm guessing you found the second note about it first and deduced the other use on your own.
Hi there! Congrats on the game, I loved it, it was very clever!
I wrote a short coverage as part of a new collective column on our French videogame website which notably contains a section for interesting Itch projects ;) Enjoy
I loved it, but I wished so many times for an undo button. I realized I did something wrong, and my only option was either to replay the entire game or try and work around it.
Cute concept. Enjoyed thinking laterally from the pictures about what the spell names could be.
Certain deductions using newfounds spells were delightful! However, some parts felt quite unfair / frustrating / un-systemic - objects i didn't notice in the corner of a room, being able to use spells in some contexts but not other similar contexts, edge cases involving the holes, etc.) It also felt like there was unnecessary busy work backtracking and scrounging around that detracted from the cool deductions that there were. Wish the level design was a lot tighter. I did appreciate the hints provided though!
Despite those things I found the concept cute and the ending was a fun surprise!
I do appreciate the feedback! I actually just found the stream vod from your discord link so I got to watch you type this after the fact. :) And yes, it was my first game jam and first completed game.
Your criticisms are totally fair and I too wish the level design was tighter. I spent most of the jam building out the systems - a number of aspects like making the UI were completely new to me, and I had essentially no code reuse from my other (unfinished) projects. So I ended up with about a day and a half to make all the levels, which meant I had little time for testing and iterating on them. I am glad I did the jam as it was great at getting me to actually finish a smaller project, but it was very stressful and I would love to actually have time to do playtesting with whatever I work on next. :)
All right, glad I came back to this. :-) There's a lot of cleverness in it. I still don't love the guess-the-spell-name mechanic (I'd be fine if it just told me that the spell I found was called "levitate" rather than making me go through a few hint presses), but since it's not much of an obstacle, it's easy enough to focus on the very good parts.
Really neat game! I got a bit stumped after a while but I enjoyed what I played. it's a very fun feeling getting a new spell and going back to previous rooms to get to where you couldn't get before.
I could have sworn I used that spell everywhere I could, but I suppose it just slipped past me. Glad to have gotten to beat such a fun and interesting game!
Just finished playing ! Wow ! Didn't expect such a good game ! :D
The mechanics are very cool, i truly had fun !! it was difficult at times, but i liked the challenge ! i have to say, i struggled a lot with the holes and yvtugra !
anyway, thanks for making this game (and without AI ! YEY) !!!!!
I think I may come back when it's been updated. I'm interested to see how it all works, but with three spells I'm not sure where I'm going next.
And...guessing the spells may be kind of a lot. I thought the ambiguity of the second spell was interesting--I know I'm not the only person who tried [rot13] "whzc" first, and I liked the little challenge of figuring out the right word, but for the third spell there were just too many options: I thought it was "fyvqr", and then tried "tyvqr", and even after hints for all but the first letter I was trying "fyvat".
Oh, certainly the hint method lets you work around it, but it's a basic flaw in a puzzle if the only way to get the answer is to ask for hints (or, in this case, to more or less literally spell out the answer).
Fair enough. I wanted the words to not be immediately obvious because if you see water and can just type "swim" then it's not much of a puzzle. It's certainly possible that I overcompensated and made the words too hard to deduce. It's tough for me to tell how difficult the puzzles are when I'm the one making them, and since it was for a game jam I didn't have much time for playtesting. Maybe I could have a difficulty option that changes the amount of letters you get by default. I also think it's fair to say that if anyone don't feel like the "deduce the words from the notes" aspect is working for them, they can just use hints to skip it since that is only one piece of the puzzle, there is still plenty more to do.
I may also need to write a little hint guide to provide some nudges to a few points of the game because I believe you are likely at what will be a common sticking point. I'm not exactly sure how to indicate what to do in game any better without making it too obvious. Who knew designing puzzles was so hard, eh?
I picked up the 2nd spell page and I'm 99% sure I know what the spell is, but when I type it nothing happens. is there a screen I have to guess on first?
You just have to be in a position where the spell is usable when you enter it. It is possible you aren't entering the correct word - it may not be the first thing that comes to mind. I tried to make them not too easy to guess. You can use hints when looking at the note page to reveal extra letters to make sure.
ahh I see. the first one was embarrassingly hard to guess, but the 2nd one seemed obvious. maybe it wasn't. or maybe I can't use the skill everywhere that I want to. seems a little unfair that there's no feedback.
Yes, didn't have time to figure out a way to save. What do you mean your arrow keys are locked in the typing area? The arrow keys and space for move/interact should be completely separate from typing and enter. The cursor is shown when you can type, but you should be able to move around normally as well.
I mean the typing area gets activated (even if empty) and then the arrow keys move my cursor (or not, as there's nothing there to move around) instead of me.
The cursor doesn't interact with the arrow keys, it's just a blinking sprite I added to indicate that you could type text into that field. There is no way for arrow keys to affect it, they only handle player movement. But if you can't move, then that is a problem. Are any of the keys working? Did the game lose focus? I found it was finnicky on itch and I had to click on the game before it would register any of my keystrokes. But I've yet to have it only work with some of them but not others.
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It would be nice, after typing a spell for the first time, to be able to click on it to re-cast it.
Fun game with some neat concepts.
I got kinda tired constantly retyping everything - you could implement a numbering system so you can invoke each spell by it's number.
The spell hints you get in notes are mostly useless past the first 2-3 spells. You should introduce some way of finding more hints - maybe reading the bookcases?
I finished the game but one part of the game was left unexplored it seems - the part with hot floor and two red buttons on each side of it, at the bottom of one floor, don't remember which - why was it unused?
Thanks. I would definitely make some changes like what you suggested if I planned to expand the game further, but I'm happy enough with what it is. I think it's fine for game jam games to have some rough edges, after all, one of the main reasons to enter a jam is to experiment with different ideas! I also didn't have time for any real playtesting during the jam, and I didn't feel like making significant gameplay changes after the fact.
The chest that portion would have given you access to was just a note showing the more obvious use of (rot13) YVTUGRA. I'm guessing you found the second note about it first and deduced the other use on your own.
Hi there! Congrats on the game, I loved it, it was very clever!
I wrote a short coverage as part of a new collective column on our French videogame website which notably contains a section for interesting Itch projects ;) Enjoy
https://gamesidestory.com/rab-en-vrac-3-allume-une-bougie-dans-la-chapel-avant-d...
Thank you! That's so cool!
Cool Magic Tower-like with a good mix of different puzzle types.
I loved it, but I wished so many times for an undo button. I realized I did something wrong, and my only option was either to replay the entire game or try and work around it.
Can you explain what you did that necessitated this?
Accidentally pushed a block one space too far, or destroyed something I needed before realizing I needed it.
Cute concept. Enjoyed thinking laterally from the pictures about what the spell names could be.
Certain deductions using newfounds spells were delightful! However, some parts felt quite unfair / frustrating / un-systemic - objects i didn't notice in the corner of a room, being able to use spells in some contexts but not other similar contexts, edge cases involving the holes, etc.) It also felt like there was unnecessary busy work backtracking and scrounging around that detracted from the cool deductions that there were. Wish the level design was a lot tighter. I did appreciate the hints provided though!
Despite those things I found the concept cute and the ending was a fun surprise!
I do appreciate the feedback! I actually just found the stream vod from your discord link so I got to watch you type this after the fact. :) And yes, it was my first game jam and first completed game.
Your criticisms are totally fair and I too wish the level design was tighter. I spent most of the jam building out the systems - a number of aspects like making the UI were completely new to me, and I had essentially no code reuse from my other (unfinished) projects. So I ended up with about a day and a half to make all the levels, which meant I had little time for testing and iterating on them. I am glad I did the jam as it was great at getting me to actually finish a smaller project, but it was very stressful and I would love to actually have time to do playtesting with whatever I work on next. :)
Really fun! Had to use some of the hints but loved all the little reveals
All right, glad I came back to this. :-) There's a lot of cleverness in it. I still don't love the guess-the-spell-name mechanic (I'd be fine if it just told me that the spell I found was called "levitate" rather than making me go through a few hint presses), but since it's not much of an obstacle, it's easy enough to focus on the very good parts.
That was so charming, I enjoyed this immensely
Really really great game
Great game, hate how I didn’t think of those words and I love the cool mechanic of the spell’s meanings…
Really neat game! I got a bit stumped after a while but I enjoyed what I played. it's a very fun feeling getting a new spell and going back to previous rooms to get to where you couldn't get before.
This is a really awesome game, though even though I got all ten notes I just cannot figure out what to do on floors 3 and 5.
Thank you!
I think I know what you're stuck on. Here are a few hints to help you get sorted out:
I could have sworn I used that spell everywhere I could, but I suppose it just slipped past me. Glad to have gotten to beat such a fun and interesting game!
Just finished playing ! Wow ! Didn't expect such a good game ! :D
The mechanics are very cool, i truly had fun !! it was difficult at times, but i liked the challenge ! i have to say, i struggled a lot with the holes and yvtugra !
anyway, thanks for making this game (and without AI ! YEY) !!!!!
Thanks so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
If you don't mind, could you rot13 the spell name you mentioned so nobody gets accidently spoiled. Thank you!
Ooh yeah sorry haha :)
I think I may come back when it's been updated. I'm interested to see how it all works, but with three spells I'm not sure where I'm going next.
And...guessing the spells may be kind of a lot. I thought the ambiguity of the second spell was interesting--I know I'm not the only person who tried [rot13] "whzc" first, and I liked the little challenge of figuring out the right word, but for the third spell there were just too many options: I thought it was "fyvqr", and then tried "tyvqr", and even after hints for all but the first letter I was trying "fyvat".
I plan to be back though!
Yes I found the guessing hard, too. But with the hint method it wasn't blocking. good compromise.
Oh, certainly the hint method lets you work around it, but it's a basic flaw in a puzzle if the only way to get the answer is to ask for hints (or, in this case, to more or less literally spell out the answer).
maybe the puzzle you solve is realizing you have to use the hint ;-)
point taken, tho.
Fair enough. I wanted the words to not be immediately obvious because if you see water and can just type "swim" then it's not much of a puzzle. It's certainly possible that I overcompensated and made the words too hard to deduce. It's tough for me to tell how difficult the puzzles are when I'm the one making them, and since it was for a game jam I didn't have much time for playtesting. Maybe I could have a difficulty option that changes the amount of letters you get by default. I also think it's fair to say that if anyone don't feel like the "deduce the words from the notes" aspect is working for them, they can just use hints to skip it since that is only one piece of the puzzle, there is still plenty more to do.
I may also need to write a little hint guide to provide some nudges to a few points of the game because I believe you are likely at what will be a common sticking point. I'm not exactly sure how to indicate what to do in game any better without making it too obvious. Who knew designing puzzles was so hard, eh?
I picked up the 2nd spell page and I'm 99% sure I know what the spell is, but when I type it nothing happens. is there a screen I have to guess on first?
You just have to be in a position where the spell is usable when you enter it. It is possible you aren't entering the correct word - it may not be the first thing that comes to mind. I tried to make them not too easy to guess. You can use hints when looking at the note page to reveal extra letters to make sure.
ahh I see. the first one was embarrassingly hard to guess, but the 2nd one seemed obvious. maybe it wasn't. or maybe I can't use the skill everywhere that I want to. seems a little unfair that there's no feedback.
yeah I was guessing the word wrong.
other note: I keep on getting my arrow keys locked in the typing area. And am I correct there's no save/restore?
Yes, didn't have time to figure out a way to save.
What do you mean your arrow keys are locked in the typing area? The arrow keys and space for move/interact should be completely separate from typing and enter. The cursor is shown when you can type, but you should be able to move around normally as well.
I mean the typing area gets activated (even if empty) and then the arrow keys move my cursor (or not, as there's nothing there to move around) instead of me.
The cursor doesn't interact with the arrow keys, it's just a blinking sprite I added to indicate that you could type text into that field. There is no way for arrow keys to affect it, they only handle player movement. But if you can't move, then that is a problem. Are any of the keys working? Did the game lose focus? I found it was finnicky on itch and I had to click on the game before it would register any of my keystrokes. But I've yet to have it only work with some of them but not others.