[Game] Tornado Looking For Camel

[Ove Ahlman]

Hi,

So I have made a new game

https://oveahlman.itch.io/tornado-looking-for-camel

Features:

• 20 levels of varying difficulty level
  
• Self-inflicted movement restrictions.
• Dynamic goal 
• A different theme than most games.
• Camels
• Tornadoes

It was a fund game to create and I feel like you could surely make even more levels, without repetition and add more features. I do however think that the current pacing of the game and length should be quite in the sweet spot (maybe an hour of playtime I think). If you have any thoughts on especially the sounds and/or graphics please let me know since I allways feel a bit unsecure on these parts with my games.

Have Fun

Ove

[Alan Hazelden]

Neat idea!

I'm stuck on level 11 though.

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[Ove Ahlman]

Thanks,

So Level 11 is the second level using a "new technique" which was briefly introduced in the previous level. Here are 2 hints

Hint 1. From level 10 you learned that if you create a block, then you can shoot tornadoes without destroying a future path.

Hint 2: Here is a solution to level 11  WXSSAAXWDDDDSXD .

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[Alan Hazelden]

Ah that makes sense!

Level 10 definitely did not teach me that though - in fact it seemed overly easy. Is this an unintended solution? LLDXLLU

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[Ove Ahlman]

Ah.... Yes, that was an unintended solution. I have updated level 10 now so that it is no longer possible.

Thanks.

[Hand-E-Food]

I'm really enjoying this!

I think some of the earlier levels are a bit samey.  Maybe I used the solution required on the later levels on the earlier ones?

I'm stuck on the last level now.  There's always one I can't keep a path open to...

[Ove Ahlman]

I agree that the first 10 levels can feel samey, especially if you get how the mechanics work really fast. The point is to give a smooth transition for the players, to ease them first into the game, then into the easier techniques and then into the harder techniques. I like to do this by showing 1 level which is easy and then a very similar level where you instead have to use a different technique, since this provides a cool contrast. I can however understand if the start of the game feels a bit repetitive if you figure out the harder techniques early, which can then be used to solve many of the earlier levels quite in the same way.

I will keep this in mind for my future designs, Thank you.

The last level is really hard, one of the few where I too have to work for a bit before I see the solution. I think it is fair for it to be that hard since it is the last level the player hopefully trusts me in that it is solvable. Here is a small hint: start with WDWX.

[Hand-E-Food]

My game won't save on itch.io.  :-(

[Ove Ahlman]

Yeah, this seems to be a "feature" on itch.io . I guess you can download the game in order to have save active. :-(

[Stephen Lavelle]

People've been talking about this online. Apparently if you upload the game as a zip file saving works. 

https://github.com/increpare/PuzzleScript/issues/436

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[Hand-E-Food]

Thanks for the tips!  I'll get a download.

[Ove Ahlman]

Uhm.. ok... So uploading as a .html is bad but uploading a .html named index inside a zip is good. Weird... Well I guess I will do some re-uploads then...

Thanks for the tips Stephen.

Den tisdag 17 april 2018 kl. 13:52:45 UTC+2 skrev Stephen Lavelle:

People've been talking about this online. Apparently if you upload the game as a zip file saving works. 

https://github.com/increpare/PuzzleScript/issues/436

2018-04-17 13:45 GMT+02:00 Ove Ahlman <thel...@gmail.com>:

Yeah, this seems to be a "feature" on itch.io . I guess you can download the game in order to have save active. :-(

Den tisdag 17 april 2018 kl. 13:14:05 UTC+2 skrev Hand-E-Food:

My game won't save on itch.io.  :-(

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[Pedro PSI]

This game is very creative on many levels.
Thanks for sharing!


Having reached level 13, a few notes:

On level 4, I couldn't solve it without trying to press X to see what would happen, discovering tornado spawning by accident before it was introduced on the following level. Would it make sense to disable spawning until after introduced?

On level 5 is the information spot (white i) repeats the initial message. Is this really necessary?

On level 11, after the move sequence UXDDRRXULLDLLX two camels appeared. Was this intended?

Suggestions about graphics are always very subjective, but maybe you could try to:
- ditch the black background and use a more desert-like colour, perhaps yellow. For contrast then change letter colour to perhaps dark brown. Or maybe invert these two colours?
- animate the water too?

Pedro PSI

[That Scar]

Very interesting. It didn't look promising at all until level 10 but then it kept pushing farther and getting better.

Levels 16 and 17 opened up so many possibilities that I've spent a huge amount of time in them but the ultimate solution was quite simple and normal. Perhaps that's why I've found levels 19 and 20 easier, because I had already thought of all the implications before but the fact stands that the last 2 levels were, without a doubt, much easier for me.

[Ove Ahlman]

Thank you both, Pedro and ThatScar, for the comments.

@Pedro

It is not a problem that players discover X beofre it is needed, and the 4 early levels do not get that much easier with it, so I skiped the work of preventing players from using action before level 5.

Since we only talk about "press x" once, if a player skips it, the game will not be possible to finish. Thus I put in the discrete reminder in the level. I think it is discrete enough that it shouldn't retract any from the experience in general.

The double camel is a "known feature"... It can appear on multiple levels, and I don't think that it matters that much. If there was an easy fix for it then I would implement it, but the only good way I could think of is to, in some way, order the goals and then add camels in the order they were ordered in case of same time camels, but it feels like too much work for something which is really not that big of a deal.

Thank you for the graphics suggestions. Indeed it is very subjective, but I find this to be a hard thing to even get an opinion about, so others subjective input is nice. The background sugestion is great, I will implement this.The water is actually animated... but they seem to all use the same texture, so you cant see the animation, thanks for pointing this obvious fact out.

@ThatScar

Your comments regarding "up to level 10" agrees with what Hand-E-Food writes about the early levels being "Samey". I will take this with me for the future. It is interesting that you solved level 19 and 20 faster than 16 and 17. Indeed 16 and 17 are introducing some new concepts/patterns but I still find 20 so much harder. 

[Hand-E-Food]

I finally did level 20.  That was certainly different to the rest of them.  Well done!