This game legit gave me anxiety as a child - how could it possibly get more stressful?
Try and get all the pieces into their slots - use one hand to grab a piece and distract the board so you can sneak the other one in before the hole changes shape.
Keep your distance, though, the board does not like hands loitering right over the holes!
UPDATE: Fixed the bug where it would shift into an already slotted shape, stopping progression
Supports Gamepad or Mouse/Keyboard (gamepad is slightly easier)
Tips: - If you loiter over the board for too long it will close up all its slots and not open them again until you back off - Picking up pieces gets the board's attention really quickly, but lots of movement also distracts him
Lisa Brown - Game Design/Code WIll White - Art Tony Manfredonia - Sound/Music
Updated with additional instructions: Try and get all the pieces into their slots - use one hand to grab a piece and distract the board so you can sneak the other one in before the hole changes shape.
This definitely conveys that feeling of intensity that many of us had with the board game. There are so many nice little polish things in this game that make it feel great. The "you don't have to hold..." message is so simple, but immediately makes me feel like the game wants me to succeed. (then immediately crushes you :)) Great work.
It takes some getting used to but once you do it's surprisingly fun and really satisfying when you beat that stupid game. The game does cheat though, I couple of times I've been down to one piece and it wouldn't change to any of my remaining ones whatever I did. Great audio and visuals as well.
Ha wow, once I figured it out it was actually really fun. Actually felt like I was fighting against this creature and trying to trick it. I love that the eyes convey almost everything you need to know, and there are little details that make it really satisfying to succeed.
It took a while for me to figure out that I should focus on the board's eyes in order to get a sense of what it's thinking -- once I got the hang of that, it was super fun to try to read and manipulate the AI. The presentation is really charming too!
First of all: the art is really cute and well done. The game itself is fun and is a great take on the theme. Yet I do find it hard to get to that sweet spot and be faster than the board. A little tweaking and I could see this work great on its own.
Fun game, very interesting mechanics with the distraction. Great art, music and sfx.
My only critisism is that controlls could be more responsive, the hands accelerate very slowly so they lag behind, this makes the timing very difficult, which makes the overall difficulty a bit harder than it needed to be.
Hi Avon! The controls thing was tricky to solve - originally when the mouse movement was one-to-one, it was too precise and no challenge at all, thus pretty boring. I also tried double keyboard controls, which was extremely difficult. Ultimately I picked having the hand follow the mouse position instead of mapped to it because it was the best happy medium we could find in the time frame, though I could probably make it feel better by addressing its sluggish acceleration. Ultimately, I think the easiest way to play is with a game pad, so I may call that out in the description
I've had a similar challenge with the mouse controls before, what I'd recommend is using a constant acceleration towards the mouse position combined with a deceleration that depends on the velocity(using the square of the velocity usually works well). You can then tweak the numbers until it feels right. Higher acceleration and deceleration makes the movement more responsive, lower more sluggish.
I will give that a try! Though that might be enough of a feature change that I'm not sure if I'd be able to update the build. Does tuning controls count as a bug fix?
Didn't read the description before jumping in, so at first I just put in the shapes and then I thought that was it... AND SUDDENLY! And then it became difficult as heck, especially since I decided to start on medium.
Had to roll back to easy after that and finally won after way too much ticking of the clock.
Basically everything was great, so I don't even really need to go into the details. Even telling me I didn't need to hold the mouse button. You thought of everything, didn't you?!
The rules are very diffuse about this, what you could do is post a link to a post-jam version, explain what is different, and people could decide themselves which one they wanna judge.
I forgot to mention this in my previous comment, but I think this game would really lend itself to gamepad controls -- each analog stick moving a hand and triggers to pick up/drop pieces.
so stressful! The game wouldn't detect my xbox controller (windows 8 64bit), I would try pressing a, and then after that didn't work if I clicked with the mouse it would think I was using the controller controls (maybe still detecting somewhat?), so I just used mouse.
I was able to beat the easy version after some effort, really love the pacing and the zooming in at the end (gahh basically). The box is pretty hard to distract!
It's quite a simple focused game, and that has meant you can really polish what you have - the whole thing seems pretty flawless in its presentation. At first I thought I was impossible but got the hang of it with a controller and enjoyed it. Actually the controller support was great, really tactile way to play
Fun, all the elements came together really well to set up feels. Easy mode is still hard for me though. I haven't wanted two mouses so much since Big Kahuna Reef Party mode.
Such a fun little game to play on a gamepad. Liked the way you would have to distract with one hand while controlling the other to get the shape in place. Nice touch and great use of the theme.
That easy mode was really hard. I did manage to get 2/3 in at least. Fun game, but quite challenging and I didn't really figure out any obvious way to confuse and/or trick the monster to make it easier to drop the pieces. The way I "solved" it was by swiftly moving in from the closest edge.
Haha awesome job guys, I really got thrown for a loop wen things got 'real'. Graphics, theme, humor...it's all there in spades. Hard as hell and it stresses you out properly as the clock runs down. Also there's Tony killing it on audio as he tends to do heh.
I like the flexibility of using the second hand as a distraction, or actually play with 2-players (which we did and it was quite fun)! Really nice entry!
I certainly appreciate the unusual interpretation of the theme. Thought the game had its interesting perks. I was really confused by the distraction mechanic. I couldn't tell which hand the board was focused on, and why. Knowing this would have drastically improved the experience.
Wow that's great! Surely one of the most innovative entry I've found so far. The monster-table animation is really nice. Good job!
M
Marius10 May 2016, 11:07
Hi, nice game and congratulations ! We're realizing a video with several winners of the Ludum Dare #35. Can you add your game on indiexpo.net ? (it's free) So we can include also your game in the video ;) p.s. write #LDJAM in the game's description
Comments43
The game itself is fun and is a great take on the theme. Yet I do find it hard to get to that sweet spot and be faster than the board. A little tweaking and I could see this work great on its own.
My only critisism is that controlls could be more responsive, the hands accelerate very slowly so they lag behind, this makes the timing very difficult, which makes the overall difficulty a bit harder than it needed to be.
Didn't read the description before jumping in, so at first I just put in the shapes and then I thought that was it... AND SUDDENLY! And then it became difficult as heck, especially since I decided to start on medium.
Had to roll back to easy after that and finally won after way too much ticking of the clock.
Basically everything was great, so I don't even really need to go into the details. Even telling me I didn't need to hold the mouse button. You thought of everything, didn't you?!
Amazing entry.
The rules are very diffuse about this, what you could do is post a link to a post-jam version, explain what is different, and people could decide themselves which one they wanna judge.
This game DOES really lend itself to gamepad controls -- each analog stick moving a hand and triggers to pick up/drop pieces.
:-)
I was able to beat the easy version after some effort, really love the pacing and the zooming in at the end (gahh basically). The box is pretty hard to distract!
Easy mode is still hard for me though.
I haven't wanted two mouses so much since Big Kahuna Reef Party mode.
Graphics, theme, humor...it's all there in spades. Hard as hell and it stresses you out properly as the clock runs down.
Also there's Tony killing it on audio as he tends to do heh.
Badass entry guys.
This is the greatest game of those which I've seen today :)
Really like the surprise change! :-)
Keep up the good work!
I had a hard time even on easy but once i cleared that it was much easier :D
Can you add your game on indiexpo.net ? (it's free)
So we can include also your game in the video ;)
p.s. write #LDJAM in the game's description