Behold: Twinkle - a game about connecting worlds, erm, stars.
This is my second LD. Having not finished the last one I decided to go for a really small projet this time. Luckily it worked out quite well. Though, I had to drop some more ambitions goals, like multiple level packs with different rules and increasing difficulty. I hope that's something for the future.
The task is very simple: connect as many stars as possible without making a star-triangle. Sounds easier than it is. It is even connected to a quite young field of mathematics, namely the Ramsey theory.
I agree. I thought about not letting the player progress until he finds the actual maximum amount of connections. But decided to drop this rule to allow one to finish the game anyway. This was probably not a very good decission, since now the game seems too easy. To be honest, I have a concept for at least five more rule-set extensions, like arrows instead of lines. Unfortunately, even for this first extension I couldn't prove the maximum amount yet xD So, one way would be to find it brute force :)
Actually, at first, I made it so that you would restart without the stars moving. But decided it was nice to have some variety when you restart. Maybe this was wrong...
Cute game! We did some Ramsey Theory in college last year so this was interesting. I agree that it'd be nice to restart without moving the starts, because I tend to remember what I did before with the positions, but now that they've moved I can't apply what I remember. Good stuff, neat idea for the theme!
After the grueling final hours of my own LD push, this was quite possibly the best thing I could have played. A nice relaxing game about connecting stars.
Nice puzzle game; I enjoyed it. Would be nice to know what level I was on and how many there are. I agree that I want to restart a level that I failed to do it right.
Fun game! As you say, I think this is a good base for something more. Relaxing but still challenging. I did try to get the best score before moving onwards. The stars changing position each reset was a little annoying, and some placements were hard to see. Overall, I enjoyed it!
I appreciated the time I spent playing Twinkle, it's challenging and relaxing. I liked the living graphics, especially the breathing clouds. I really enjoyed your music composition, I found the volume a bit too low, but better a low good music than a high annoying one. I went until the 9 stars level. Maybe for a future version, an highlighting of existing links when the mouse is over a specific star could help to think (or maybe it makes it too easy???).
It's a nice game, I think the size of the project is perfect for a gamejam, you did very well.
Hi there. Interesting puzzle. Played with it for a while, fun to develop a strategy then have it ruined... Would be nice to retry same map instead of new one each time fail. Good job!
Thank you everyone for your kind words and valuable critiques. I plan to develop this prototype into a full game with a lot more levels and some puzzle-rule diversity. I will definitely listen to your suggestions. Once again, LD proved to be tons of fun and a great motivator, too.
Probably you shouldn't let the player progress to the next level until a certain score is achieved?