Cunctan's Square

Great execution of the idea. The theme fits very well. Did you implemented some sort os path finding algorithm? because the white blocks never bloqued the path to the green tile.

Anyway, the game have some lags and it freezed on level around 6. No, wait, it is back.

@katuiche yes, there is path finding to make sure it never blocks your path. Sadly, this makes it so that turns take long to process. Were you using the web verson? I think I might take down the web version if so because it cannot multithread the path finding, which makes the game freeze.

Thank you very much for the comment :)

I really like the transition effect, it really elevates what would otherwise just be really simple graphics into something that feels pretty polished.

The mechanic is executed well, and I appreciate that there is never an impossible situation with the white blocks. One thing I would have liked in the level design is fewer long tunnels. Red enemies tended to block my path there, and all I could do was wait.

If anything could be done to improve the performance, that would also be good, since it gets a little bit frustrating having to wait for the turn to complete.

A final note is that it would be good to have some predictability in the red enemies movement. It felt random which direction they went. Learning how to avoid them consistently would have been a neat feature.

Overall though, a great entry, and it was a lot of fun to play!

This was really fun to play! I'm surprised you went for enemies picking random directions design wise, but it actually worked out pretty well.

One thing to mention is the performance, it lagged quit a bit on me, specially during the transitions (of which I only got to see a few because sometimes the game would just stop). But that's how compo goes, you can't fix everything!

Anyways, I really had fun playing it. Great work here!

@gabe thanks. I have removed the web version, hopefully people will have less issues now.

@terracottafrog Now that I think about it, I see how frustrating long tunnels can be, especially if one or two enemies get stuck in them since there is only a 25% chance the will move in the direction you want.

Thanks for the feedback!

this is great! the main mechanic hits the theme spot-on, and i feel like the white blocks slowly encompassing you in a natural way without blocking your path feels fair and suspenseful (in a good and fun way!) the bloom effect and transitions are also so darn pleasing to look at :D

it's been said already, but i think giving some indication on where the red blocks would go would eliminate the unfair aspect of the randomness involved in their movement. also there are some cases where you can move directly through them (if you're standing right next to them, move into them and they move to your original spot, the level doesn't reset)

overall a very pleasant game, good job!

Had a lot of fun with this, made me scratch my head a fair bit once I'd got past the first couple of levels. The algorithms for the red square movement must have taken a while to work out at a conceptual level; I'd be intrigued to know what your process was =).

Cool little puzzle game, although the red enemies never hurt me and every 2nd or 3rd move would take 1-2 seconds.
Very cool that the exit path can never get blocked.

This is pretty neat. I loved all the glow and blur effects, they were so cool! I liked how it gave you instructions on how to play the game along the way, making the game so much easier for me to understand. The only problem I had with it was that it lagged a lot, but not too much as to make it unplayable. Really nice job!

Well played! I'm not a big fan of randomness in games, but I have to admit that red ennemies never bothered me in the way they acted. I'm super curious about your pathfinding algorithm for the level reduction, as I went for some similar interpretation of the theme (but with a different execution, ofc). It was really pleasing to play, the process time was not a big deal to me.

Great implementation of the theme. Loved the bloom! It made the boring looking programmer art interesting. Downloaded from itch app and still experienced the hiccups between turns other that that, not a bad game :)

Had some slow downs but nothing game breaking, more like a breather. I kept trying to predict the reds and finally figured out that they were moving random by the end. Cool mechanic.

I found that this game fits the theme perfectly as I just "Got it" as soon as I started playing. Unfortunately I couldn't play long due to time constraints and I think my computer was laggy. Also the movement of the enemies confused me as to if they were random or they had a specific pattern. I would've liked to have seen different enemies that have different patterns based on color, to help strategize better which direction I'd have to move in.

This game kind of reminds me of The Impossible Game for some reason. Might be because of the enemies and how they move by themselves.

A nice idea, and good graphics. I found similar to other commenters. Whatever you're doing between moves can take a very long time, and it really gets in the way of playing. Having all your enemies move at random is also not that fun - having predictable enemy movements can force players to strategise, which is a lot more fun.

@kassjak I had that feeling on the last day of making the game too haha. (World's Hardest Game is what I think you mean)

@divinenephron thank you and others who gave this feedback, I can definitely see how that could help.

Very cool game, the graphics (though simple) felt highly polished and the gameplay was intuitive and not too frustrating.

The game ran pretty slow while calculating turns for all the players and walls. I'm curious to see your algorithm and a post-jam improvement of it.

I'm still on the fence on whether or not audio would have made it better. :thinking:

Overall, I gave it a 4.5/5, mainly due to the performance issues.

P.S. What does Cunctan mean?

@samusoidal Thanks! Lol. I put shrinking into Google Translate to latin, and one of the results was cunctans, and I thought it sounded cool :)

Really nice idea! I think it would be more fun if the enemies were more predictable.

Reminds me a little my game. Nice entry!

Good game! I like the style, it's quite relaxing :)

Super cool game! It was cool to see a game that did a simple concept really well (instead of a more intricate one poorly). There were a couple times in the last level where the yellow tile was covered by wall before I could reach it, but otherwise I really enjoyed it! Also a very neat interpretation of the theme! Good job! :smile:

@derpyjish yea, that can happen. The processing was already taking too long per turn, so there was no way to also add in path finding to the buttons.

Thanks for commenting :)

Probably a very stupid question but... how do I start the windows version?

@erikkire Hey, you just have to double click the file. However, you must have java installed to run it (it is an executable java file). The same .jar file works on any platform