Rotate the sphere by dragging Select a hexagon with left click Then right click a tile to move tiles like a Rubik's Cube -Right click selected tile to twist neighbors clockwise -Right click on selected tile's neighbor to slide line of tiles in direction from selected tile to neighbor tile (Note: Cannot slide a line containing pentagons)
Form rings with tiles of a single color (red, yellow, or blue) and ring layers will be removed: -Around a hexagon score points -Around a pentagon to remove all layers on pentagon
A dark layer is added to a pentagon every time you slide or twist tiles GAME OVER if all pentagons are full of layers
TIPS: Some colors are more valuable than others Dark tiles cannot be removed Surround pentagon tiles as they fill up Press Esc for options menu
I really like this game. The initial learning curve was steep but the controls are silky smooth. The music is relaxing/fitting. http://i.imgur.com/1bBOfJ9.png 1575 :D
@Shigor, Yeah, I am sorry for leaving it out. I felt really sick during the submission day and didn't complete a lot of the features I should have included. In-game restarts, visual cues, and destruction/transformation animations were on the agenda. My biggest regret is not providing a tutorial of some sort. The gameplay is extremely abstract and it would have helped to shallow the learning curve.
If I ever decide to iterate on this game, I will definitely include these :)
Great music, very relaxing; definitely a game that makes you think, so good job on your idea and execution. Overall I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I really wish players would have the ability to rotate counter-clockwise instead of just clockwise. One small addition that would help this game go from good to great, IMO.
P
PIXEL^330 Apr 2014, 07:32
It's like the Rubiks Cube and Tetris had a baby that decided to be a body builder. I had fun with it even though I'm not good at puzzles. There was enough space for me to just look around for an easy looking solve and grab it. The strategy only netted my 725 pts though. But I couldn't get frustrated with that music playing.
Probably the hardest game I played in a long time. And the one spent most time on in this LD. Nice work. Didn't even know you could tessellate a sphere like this. Great job, full Innovation score :)
This was really great but also really hard. It took me a few attempts just to understand effective ways to slide and rotate for the desired result in the fewest number of turns. I already mentioned it in chat and you acknowledged plans, but I'll mention it again that a pentagon monitor that shows the current status would be very useful--at least a number indicating how many moves remain until total failure.
Amazing game, but I suck at it! D: Incredibly beautiful, and the soundtrack matches perfectly. Too bad I won't be able to see the different deepness levels the puzzle must have after some turns, wish I was better playing these kind of games! :D
I like the concept but I found it frustrating to play because it wasn't apparent which pentagons were filling up where. Also I didn't feel like the different color values added much to the game. In spite of that I still really liked it.
Good idea, not actually very difficult to pick up. The single most important suggestion I would make is that there be a counter of the number of dark hexagons left. They are hard enough to see as it is, and the game over seems very abrupt (with no retry button) because it is hard to know how many moves you have left. I assume the game can be won if all layers are cleared, but I did not reach that point. I was also not sure what the dark hexagons meant.
Interesting game. I could see myself playing this in the morning to get my brain functioning as a kind of zen puzzle. The contemplative music set the tone for this game perfectly. I think I'm going to come back and try to beat your high score later :)
This a fun, relaxing game. Thanks for not putting in a time limit! It's nice to have time to think about what moves to make.
Once the concept becomes clear, the game is quite fun. With that said, the way the tiles instantly shift when being rotated/slid makes it hard to tell what's happening, and hard to keep track of where tiles are going. Even having something like an icon over the mouse indicating a slide or rotate action would have been helpful. Having cleared tiles fade away rather than instantly disappear would have been helpful in this regard too, as well as maybe a height counter over the black pentagons for giving the player a better idea when they're in danger.
Really like the theme and gameplay of this. I would have liked to have seen some rotation animation and also a "low score" mode: I'd have preferred if the game were about "completing" the pseudosphere vs the somewhat arbitrary seeming "game over, stop playing now". It would have been a more peaceful experience to suit all skill levels (read: my terrible one!)
Regardless of these though, I had a fun time with this. Reminds me of Hexic crossed with Tetrisphere, rich pedigree indeed :D
Pretty neat puzzle game, but difficult. It felt like I died too unexpectedly. Maybe some sort of indicator that tells you how close to "danger" you are would be a little bit more guiding. Cool idea nevertheless :)
I really like the concept behind the game, it's engaging to play, and has the quality of feeling like a toy.
That said, I'm not a fan of the fail-state. Maybe it just needs the ability to rotate counter-clockwise, but I feel it might be more intuitive if removing any hexes lowered the pentagon layers. I didn't know for a long time whether the pentagon layers represented a shared meter or individual ones too.
I've got 1250. Love the music, relaxing and quite fitting. When I've noticed that there are layers of non-black tiles I suddenly realized that there's probably much more depth in the game than I've thought before, but it's far beyond my planning ability I'm afraid.
What I didn't like though is the way you limit player's moves. I like how pentagons prevent me from forming rings or from moving a line of hexagons, but making them end game counter is too much. I also don't like that once you've moved a dark layer from a pentagon it becomes very hard to locate one. IMO, the pentagons should always be dark and full-layered and should only stop you from rotating and shifting stuff. Make the game end when another tile reaches the pentagon's higher level instead and make few hexagons spawn randomly across the map instead. They could even fly from off the screen in a nice manner. In that case, you will always be able to locate pentagons, (as they always will be black and other tiles will never be black) and it will be more obvious to a player that he can prolong the game for him.
Of course, that could be just my own problem, but what I was confused about and disliked at first is the inevitability of the end (at first I thought that you have no way of increasing your moves count). No, the game SHOULD be finite, but people love the illusion of endlessness. Player should have some way to push back the inevitable, something to make them believe they can actually play the game forever. By obviously adding more tiles when player does not form a ring and obviously removing them when he does you make him feel that his actions are significant to the world and that he can control the game flow (which, in the end, of course should be only an illusion).
Sorry for the long and probably inconsistent comment (I've written it during a span of an hour of playing your game and discovering and thinking about its mechanics and adding few words every now and then, so no post-editing could fix that), for lots of critics, hope it was constructive. In the end I believe it's a great puzzle, that's why I think and write about it actually. Great work.
Well, I've played some more and realized that I didn't know all the mechanics in the game before. When I figured out that you can remove tiles from pentagons by circling them I've got 925 the first time without even trying. My first time I've got 1250 without ever pushing back the end, just by using up all the moves I had before every pentagon filled up. I guess that makes a good half of my original post irrelevant now.
I can definitely see the seed of a really cool strategy puzzle game in here, I think your challenge is just going to be clearly teaching people the skills they need to play the puzzles. This is totally doable! Just break down each interaction and layer up until players have mastery of each step and then I think it'll be really great. There's an edge case where when you view straight on different layers of the same color blend together, not sure what to do for that case but it's not too common. Nice work, you should totally keep working on this!
I actually thought the mechanics were quite intuitive. It took me a bit to figure out the best way to manipulate different patterns. There's not much of an incentive to form rings around hexagons. The music stayed pleasant the entire time. Very unique and fun game; awesome job with this.
Kinda a weird puzzle game! I included it in part 25 of my Ludum Dare compilation video series, if you'd like to check it out :) http://youtu.be/06U_lc3kLp4
My #1 suggestion would have some animation for moving/rotating the pentagons, and (most importantly) for when they're removed. It was kind of jarring seeing them apparently changing color (at first I thought it was a bug) when I completed a ring.
Cool music and good implemented controls. For me it is a little bit too abstract to be really lots of fun, but in the right mood this is probably a good puzzler.
Comments61
http://i.imgur.com/1bBOfJ9.png 1575 :D
If I ever decide to iterate on this game, I will definitely include these :)
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/THE0m0g.png[/IMG]
Great music, very relaxing; definitely a game that makes you think, so good job on your idea and execution. Overall I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I really wish players would have the ability to rotate counter-clockwise instead of just clockwise. One small addition that would help this game go from good to great, IMO.
~AlucardX60
-Interesting, fun concept
-Music/colors work well - not the most impressive but they don't grate
Bad (like I said in IRC):
-Kind of confusing to tell how the mechanics work, and what's happening on the other side of the polygon
3/5 overall, which is code for "I don't think this is that good but it be if you continued to work on it"
Having some graphical effects here and there would add a lot to the game I think (seeing the tiles move around for exemple)
Incredibly beautiful, and the soundtrack matches perfectly. Too bad I won't be able to see the different deepness levels the puzzle must have after some turns, wish I was better playing these kind of games! :D
PS, I just played my game for the first time since upload. I've improved a bit :)
http://gfycat.com/RequiredSizzlingBarnswallow
Once the concept becomes clear, the game is quite fun. With that said, the way the tiles instantly shift when being rotated/slid makes it hard to tell what's happening, and hard to keep track of where tiles are going. Even having something like an icon over the mouse indicating a slide or rotate action would have been helpful. Having cleared tiles fade away rather than instantly disappear would have been helpful in this regard too, as well as maybe a height counter over the black pentagons for giving the player a better idea when they're in danger.
Regardless of these though, I had a fun time with this. Reminds me of Hexic crossed with Tetrisphere, rich pedigree indeed :D
Great mix with mechanical and theme,
A really diferent game, god job!
This probably need some more animation and feedback to be a finished game.
That said, I'm not a fan of the fail-state. Maybe it just needs the ability to rotate counter-clockwise, but I feel it might be more intuitive if removing any hexes lowered the pentagon layers. I didn't know for a long time whether the pentagon layers represented a shared meter or individual ones too.
What I didn't like though is the way you limit player's moves. I like how pentagons prevent me from forming rings or from moving a line of hexagons, but making them end game counter is too much. I also don't like that once you've moved a dark layer from a pentagon it becomes very hard to locate one. IMO, the pentagons should always be dark and full-layered and should only stop you from rotating and shifting stuff. Make the game end when another tile reaches the pentagon's higher level instead and make few hexagons spawn randomly across the map instead. They could even fly from off the screen in a nice manner. In that case, you will always be able to locate pentagons, (as they always will be black and other tiles will never be black) and it will be more obvious to a player that he can prolong the game for him.
Of course, that could be just my own problem, but what I was confused about and disliked at first is the inevitability of the end (at first I thought that you have no way of increasing your moves count). No, the game SHOULD be finite, but people love the illusion of endlessness. Player should have some way to push back the inevitable, something to make them believe they can actually play the game forever. By obviously adding more tiles when player does not form a ring and obviously removing them when he does you make him feel that his actions are significant to the world and that he can control the game flow (which, in the end, of course should be only an illusion).
Sorry for the long and probably inconsistent comment (I've written it during a span of an hour of playing your game and discovering and thinking about its mechanics and adding few words every now and then, so no post-editing could fix that), for lots of critics, hope it was constructive. In the end I believe it's a great puzzle, that's why I think and write about it actually. Great work.
but I see that dark tile is added even we try an invalid move (maybe I'm wrong...), it's unfair...
My #1 suggestion would have some animation for moving/rotating the pentagons, and (most importantly) for when they're removed. It was kind of jarring seeing them apparently changing color (at first I thought it was a bug) when I completed a ring.