[GAME] Decker GO

[Hand-E-Food]

Decker GO

I love the Hitman GO, Lara Croft GO, and Deus Ex GO games released by Square Enix and wanted to try something similar myself.  Here's Decker GO, inspired by an old Windows roguelike, Decker, in turn inspired by the Shadowrun tabletop RPG.

Move through networks.  Avoid defensive ICE (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics).  Find the passcodes you need to compromise each network.  And ultimately, topple the corporate stranglehold on humanity!

Play it now!

This has taken me months to finish (with a lot of interruptions) and I'm actually happy with every single level I have.  I kept producing levels I loved, but were quite difficult.  As I became overly familiar with the game, I found it very difficult to build the intermediate levels.  I sincerely hope I have a good difficulty curve and don't demand massive leaps, at least not before the end game. ;-)

I think this game gets very difficult towards the end.  Due to some randomised elements, and the feel of the game, I originally disabled undo.  However, some of the later levels have complex solutions and I felt like an a'hole leaving it disabled.  :-)

[Alan Hazelden]

I got the enemies stuck in a loop here:

Also in that level, it was really unclear why I can't go through the gate to the red node sometimes - I thought it was because I had the yellow key but not the white key, even though that didn't really make sense. The following level made me realise what was going on, but even that level doesn't introduce the mechanic well.

I found it unclear how finding keys works - eventually decided that they're hidden in specific nodes, and some nodes don't contain anything? It feels weird that some are empty - I was initially assuming they all contained part of a key, and I needed to search all nodes containing purple to get the purple key.

In this level above, I initially searched just one of the nodes in the upper area. It happened to be the one with the purple key, so I thought I might need to go down to the bottom area to do something to disable the sentries to go back to search the other two nodes in the upper area. I made it a lot more complicated for myself than I needed to, because I was assuming that to complete a level I needed to search all the nodes.

The level introducing stealth/one-use keys - it felt like I only needed to use these through poor planning rather than because they were vital to the level. That may not be true, but that's what it felt like - feels like it might be worth reworking this level to make it more obvious why they're crucial to the solution.

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[Stephen Lavelle]

1: this is ridiculous technically

2: the connections between nodes are really dark for me/difficult to see

got a couple of levels in. not really sure about why gates change colour sometimes.

[Hand-E-Food]

Thank you for all the constructive feedback!

On Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 11:02:48 PM UTC+10, Alan Hazelden wrote:

I got the enemies stuck in a loop here:

Bugger, I thought I'd weeded all of those out.  I can guarantee that if this happens, you've gone completely off track.

Also in that level, it was really unclear why I can't go through the gate to the red node sometimes - I thought it was because I had the yellow key but not the white key, even though that didn't really make sense. The following level made me realise what was going on, but even that level doesn't introduce the mechanic well.

 

Along with Stephen's comment, I see I need to introduce those gates properly.  They're simply different.

 

I found it unclear how finding keys works - eventually decided that they're hidden in specific nodes, and some nodes don't contain anything? It feels weird that some are empty - I was initially assuming they all contained part of a key, and I needed to search all nodes containing purple to get the purple key.

 

I thought it would be better to have semi-random locations for keys, but I see how this is confusing, especially given most puzzles here are deterministic.  I thought the first level demonstrated this, but there is a lot to understand in this game.

 

In this level above, I initially searched just one of the nodes in the upper area. It happened to be the one with the purple key, so I thought I might need to go down to the bottom area to do something to disable the sentries to go back to search the other two nodes in the upper area. I made it a lot more complicated for myself than I needed to, because I was assuming that to complete a level I needed to search all the nodes.

I don't think I can fix this one.  There are some levels that rely on empty or inaccessible databases.  :-/

 

The level introducing stealth/one-use keys - it felt like I only needed to use these through poor planning rather than because they were vital to the level. That may not be true, but that's what it felt like - feels like it might be worth reworking this level to make it more obvious why they're crucial to the solution.

The point is there is no plan that lets you get the white and yellow keys without an alternate escape route.  But I get what you mean that they just feel like a cheat.  It was partly inspired by a similar power up in Deus Ex GO.

[Hand-E-Food]

On Sunday, August 13, 2017 at 12:46:25 AM UTC+10, Stephen Lavelle wrote:

1: this is ridiculous technically

I'm actually not sure what you mean by this?

 

2: the connections between nodes are really dark for me/difficult to see

I'll see what I can do.  I was trying to make the player and ICE stand out, but I may have taken it too far.

[Stephen Lavelle]

>I'm actually not sure what you mean by this?

it's a feat of programming

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[Hand-E-Food]

I've updated the game.  The paths are a bit brighter.  Rotational firewalls are introduced a level later and with text.

[Hand-E-Food]

Ha!  Yeah.  It was difficult getting things in the right order.  I bet you never thought you could apply SOLID principals to PuzzleScript?  :-p

I discovered the game doesn't work unless there's at least one Sentinel on each level.  But what system worth hacking wouldn't have some kind of defence?

[edderiofer]

On levels 6a, 6c, and 7b, I found it difficult to intuitively predict exactly what the behaviour of the sentinels would be. I blame the sentinels all having different periods.

Also, the sound effects got really irritating and I didn't realize I hadn't turned on tab muting in Chrome.

Either way, though, game complete. That last bit was really nice.