[Game] On Board

[curiousc...@gmail.com]

Hi there!

First heard about PuzzleScript from Alan Hazelden on youtube (at GDC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_okgL6HJX8&t=1438s) about a month ago. Could not get into gamedev with anything else as was quickly bored (not a technical type).
Opened PuzzleScript to play around and this happened: https://odd-chromosome.itch.io/on-board
Not exactly a puzzle game... a sort of an adventure.

Hats down Stephen and co. It's awesome - not only the tool but the whole environment - community and games. Seriously, concentration of interesting, creative and diverse games in one place is just unbelievable. Like one of those lucky (not all were lucky) '64 in 1' cartridges, where each game was unique, had different mechanics and sometimes even meant something.

PS For some reason could not share the game through PuzzleScript (401 unauthorized).

♥♥♥

[edderiofer]

Is the lack of undo really necessary in this game?

Also, I've gotten to the big tree (after removing every single log in the way; this is tedious work and I'm really not sure this is necessary either). Now what? I've noticed that I drown in certain spots in water and lava, but there's no indication as to whether this is anything helpful either.

[curiousc...@gmail.com]

Probably some experiences are just odd :-)

[Alan Hazelden]

There's a lot here! I stopped upon getting to the long line of logs - seemed too tedious to be worth doing. But until that I was enjoying some of the mystery of not knowing how big the world was.

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[curiousc...@gmail.com]

Yep, usually hate monotonous things myself but... for some reason it stayed there. One of the reasons is that player could instantly decide whether it is worth spending time with it or not. I guess it became a part of some quirky contract. Is it fair? Is it worth it? Who knows... :-) Some things just are.

But thanks for a word and the reference in the first place! I did not expect to find anything useful in that GDC video (it was quite boring before your part), but just let it play while drinking tea and 'wow! that's interesting' happened. So it was a discovery in itself, after 'logs' parts :-)

[That Scar]

Still not sure what I'm supposed to do but hey, I've played for at least 10 minutes and most of it!

[That Scar]

...and *enjoyed most of it.

[Jamie Perconti]

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 5:18 PM <curiousc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yep, usually hate monotonous things myself but... for some reason it stayed there. One of the reasons is that player could instantly decide whether it is worth spending time with it or not. I guess it became a part of some quirky contract. Is it fair? Is it worth it? Who knows... :-) Some things just are. 

This is pretty disingenuous given that the game is packed full of tedious chores, especially once you can get in the lava.

There are a lot of ideas here but it really, REALLY needs undo to be bearable, especially with the forced checkpoints every time you go through a door or dive in the water. The lava sections are also way too long. I was feeling really patient last night and played up to the house with the ghost, but I accidentally went through the door again and got locked into an unwinnable state (even if I hit restart, the ghost is too close to get around).

There are a couple of nice puzzles, particularly with the piranhas, but the lever in the tree at the beginning is really easy to miss, and you have to go through so much rote digging that few players will tolerate it.

Get a friend to play your games while you watch silently, and take note of what they enjoy, struggle with, and miss out on. Then use that information to make the game better.

Jamie

,

[edderiofer]

Oh, you can enter the tree with X. Somehow I didn't think of that.

Now, what the ACTUAL FUCK is with these underwater mazes? Seriously, this is horrible. I don't think you realize just how monotonous and boring the underwater mazes are.

Also, the page keeps crashing, which REALLY makes things annoying because that resets all my progress.

Oh lookie, piranha levels that send you back to the last checkpoint whenever you die! Now with added spikes that kill you! Did I mention how far back the last checkpoint was?

This game pisses me off and I refuse to play any more without good reason.

[Stephen Lavelle]

Guys please keep the tone respectful.  Shaking my head...

S

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[That Scar]

Oh crap, read 2 sentences by Jamie and they were full of spoilers that seem to happen much much further and I thought I was done with the game!

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[curiousc...@gmail.com]

Hey guys. Thanks all for feedback!

Jamie, thanks for details!
As far as description goes it's true. However, I'm not sure it was going to be a game at all (or anything else). It started in playing around with PS and later grew into an intention to transfer some experience (of discovery/exploration). Like the one where you go somewhere without much purpose and then suddenly stumble on the path and start wondering what is there and discover that there is something to it. Then you decide if it's worth checking for you or not.
So in a way it's more of an attempt to transfer an experience or PS used as a 'means of communication' (yep, undo is a dubious part of it, but there are some moments which are broken with redo for this kind of experience, so...) How skillfully or mediocre it was done (or whether or not some of friends would ever agree to play this) - that's another point. So in a way that is why it was shared :-) 'All inclusive'.

That Scar: that was an intentional attempt NOT to hint what could be there :-) As anyone have to answer the question 'why bother at all' on his own. That's a part of it.

Edderiofer: well, it's up there. It did not meant to be anything in particular, so... you are totally free to hate it or whatever.

Stephen: Na-ay, it's cool ;-) All in.
PS PuzzleScript is seriously awesome! :-) As a tool and as an environment.

[curiousc...@gmail.com]

Btw, Jamie, thanks for mentioning unwinnable state with this ghost (that surely was not planned as a part of experience), will check and fix it later through PS as sharing seems to work. At the moment, do not want to risk resetting someone's save state (not sure how this works).
About the screen itself. It was planned as a jump not a fall.

It's still doable (was testing it before in couple of scenarios) although the later part of the level would require some trial and error and I cannot guarantee that it would not break it at initial point again.

But if you find it tedious already - better skip it :-) As some final 'parts' would certainly require 'more of that'.

[curiousc...@gmail.com]

As the forum is suspiciously quiet - here is some nudge... 

I made some fixes and improvements to the game, so no stuck states anymore (hopefully) and added a soundtrack (it was fun). 

The game is still full of empty spaces, as it was made by design to have a feeling of lone wandering and uncertainty about having any goal. It has a pedigree of a game I played in childhood on neighbor's ZX Spectrum and could not find anywhere until recently, called "The Curse of Sherwood", which for a child had this feeling of mystery and freedom to roam. Which was later reinforced by somewhat similar feel from a clunky silent NES port of "The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt", yet that had this open feel of night mystery about it, hiding many secrets and having thematic interconnectedness of all areas. Eventually, it was stirred by a PuzzleScript very own game made by Rémi Töötätä with a similar feel, called Kishōtenketsu in the Countryside (and Alan's GDC talk, the link is somewhere above).

In any case, keep it real and keep this thing going, peeps! You produced a nice little island of curiosity, experiment and discovery here. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯