Woah!! This is awesome! I've never seen anything like this before! And props to actually introducing the player to the mechanics. The levels feel well thought out, and there are details that prove you were thinking very carefully about user-experience, especially cool given the medium (e.g.: the space behind the exit to prevent blocking). And there is just something so cool about watching the levels unfold, the inherent beauty of a complex mechanism from simple part. All of it to set you up for the wonderful endgame - lvls 7-9 = masterpieces. The smoothes puzzle game I've played in a while. Also the music fuggen BANGS! It's like commodore-phonk. I was head-boppn the whole time. Spotify?
I have never seen a game with this design before. It's something amazing! If you add more levels and other mechanics, it will be a great game! Good job!
Yeah this is awesome. From level 5 onwards I was making a mental note to mention that level in the comments because of how much I enjoyed it but then every level just kept on getting better. Really creative game with an equally creative art style too, one of my favourites of the jam so far!
WTF this game! I never expect play a console game in LD, but it happened! It is very cool and make me memory back to my first game that is made by C++ and use console to play. Anyway, the puzzle is fun, but lack of complexity. I hope next time make more fun levels!
Nice puzzles in the style of traditional roguelikes. This could even be a series of levels in a bigger game. The chiptune music was cool and went well together with terminal graphics.
Had a good time with Colormancer! First of all the music is great, and It's pretty cool that the game runs in the actual console command terminal. The game is short and sweet, just the right amount of levels to feel challenging while not overstaying its welcome. Puzzles were just the right amount of difficulty for me, tricky enough to force you to think, but not convoluted.
Oh waw !!! Really skeptical about a command line game at first I was amazed by the cleverness of the game mechanics !! Had to restart the game at level 6 cause the closing doors system was not really clear for me since I did the lvl 5 too fast. But then I figured it out and the logic of levels 6, 7 and 8 were sooo satisfying ! Sadly I switch to AZERTY again to answer a message and when I got back to your game I forgot to switch to QWERTY, pressed Q and left the game :'( I'll start over later I think but anyway, really great entry !!
This was surprisingly good, I didn't expect an ASCII game to be so legit! 10/10 for innovation and level design. Really well thought out puzzle game that is simple but deep. I could see the core gameplayt of this being turned into a full fledged mobile app game.
For some reason it was hard my eyes after a while, which is weird since I am a developer and I look at the terminal all day at work. Maybe because you look intensely on a small area of the screen with things moving around in colors? I dunno.
Anyway, great entry and very unique and different from everything else I played!
ASCII style is really cool! And the level design is very smooth, easy to learn and interesting.
A problem is that the summoning position indicator(the block) seems occupying 2 characters and sometimes it twists the map. I don't know if it is a universal problem.
The seemingly-simple mechanics play out very well! I especially like the timing aspect combined with the "chain reactions". I think this has decent potential to evolve into a deeper and more interesting puzzle-solving experience, and current puzzles are already quite fun to play with. Chiptune audio is also a perfect match to a terminal-based game. Such a complete package of a "curses" style (which unexpectedly resonates with the theme??) experience is certainly a fresh and creative one for a solo jam!
There appears to be a few potential shortcomings. I'm initially confused about how the switches work — turns out the green-coloured player can directly interact with the green switches and exits, but this didn't become clear to me until a few levels in. Also, the correspondence between the switches and the gates is not clear. It can be fine if that's an intentional aspect of the puzzle, but if not, it might be a tough (in the terminal due to space constraints) but important design element to consider. Further, the player's left hand is too loaded (WASD and E/R are operated by the same fingers); it can be completely lifted by allowing alternative key sets.
Despite all these, I'm appreciating the fun experience. Kudos!
I'm successfully building this from source on macOS with a straightforward change to Makefile (new target with `GOOS=darwin`). If you are interested in merging the patch, I'll send it on GitHub.
It looks like the direction indicator I'm using isn't rendering well on your terminal @inkweeper , I'm guessing it's because your language is set to Japanese? (Or some other language w/o support for those characters)
Glad to see you were able to build it @kawa-yoiko. Feel free to open a PR for that change. I did manage to build it for mac, but never got around to releasing the binary for it. Cool to see it wasn't a blocker for you :)
@inkweeper's screen appears to be Simplified Chinese. Maybe try changing the code page by `chcp` (or can this be done in the program? I remember something like Turbo Pascal did it)
I'll echo what other folks have been saying - running in the terminal is very cool, the music complements it excellently, and the process of mentally mapping out a solution to each puzzle was fun! I especially liked levels 7 & 8. The "order of operations" kind of puzzling really shone in those puzzles, with the right kind of "gotcha!" feeling when I realized I overlooked something.
I do wish there was a way to identify which key interacted with which gate. I don't think it's a trivial problem to solve, but a level whose challenge hinges on me intuiting invisible connections (attempting a little level-designer mind-reading) is not as satisfying to me as one that depends on me "decoding" the information that's clearly presented in front of me. I could guess what switches corresponded to which doors in level 9, but that's not me interacting with a game system, that's me making assumptions.
I do think there could also be a way to keep the information hidden while still being satisfying, though: maybe it's right for the player to consider the "gathering information and testing behavior" phase of a level part of normal play. If that were the idea, it'd be super-duper cool to have some kind of note-taking feature built into the game. Like maybe I can select characters in the level and replace them with my own text (which is still given its matching underlying color).
That's all hypotheticals, though, and definitely very subjective. The game you made is a fun concept packed up in a sweet terminal-based package. Thanks for making it, I enjoyed playing!
Terminal game with wonderful chiptune music and subtle audio effects, good level design - world needs more games like this! Short enough for lunchtime. Extra points for publishing source code. Brilliant work!
Loved the puzzles in this! It felt like levels 1-8 were all tutorials and #9 was the first where things really started ramping up, I’d have liked to have seen it go even further with more puzzles! I also feel it would be valuable to have all things of a particular colour toggle when hitting that colour’s button, rather than having specific buttons bound to specific doors. That was kinda unintuitive, but otherwise it all made sense and I enjoyed it! ❤
I saw the screenshot and thought "Oh it uses ascii graphics" then I open the game and it IS AN ASCII GAME, IN MY COMMAND PROMPT, WHAT?! It is beyond me how you made something so cool, with such good puzzles in such a short time, with a fitting soundtrack, sound effects and with 9 smartass puzzles. I salute, oh mighty game developer. Now rest for the nights you slept have not!
This was a neat concept! I enjoyed the puzzles, and I think the sound effects were well done - I especially liked the rising pitches as you open more doors. I wish there was a way to tell which switches affected which doors though (e.g. switches a/b/c would open doors A/B/C etc). Great work!
Comments29
And props to actually introducing the player to the mechanics. The levels feel well thought out, and there are details that prove you were thinking very carefully about user-experience, especially cool given the medium (e.g.: the space behind the exit to prevent blocking).
And there is just something so cool about watching the levels unfold, the inherent beauty of a complex mechanism from simple part.
All of it to set you up for the wonderful endgame - lvls 7-9 = masterpieces. The smoothes puzzle game I've played in a while.
Also the music fuggen BANGS! It's like commodore-phonk. I was head-boppn the whole time. Spotify?
The puzzles were satisfying to solve and i enjoyed my time playing.
This is a great compo entry, good job!
For some reason it was hard my eyes after a while, which is weird since I am a developer and I look at the terminal all day at work. Maybe because you look intensely on a small area of the screen with things moving around in colors? I dunno.
Anyway, great entry and very unique and different from everything else I played!
A problem is that the summoning position indicator(the block) seems occupying 2 characters and sometimes it twists the map. I don't know if it is a universal problem.
There appears to be a few potential shortcomings. I'm initially confused about how the switches work — turns out the green-coloured player can directly interact with the green switches and exits, but this didn't become clear to me until a few levels in. Also, the correspondence between the switches and the gates is not clear. It can be fine if that's an intentional aspect of the puzzle, but if not, it might be a tough (in the terminal due to space constraints) but important design element to consider. Further, the player's left hand is too loaded (WASD and E/R are operated by the same fingers); it can be completely lifted by allowing alternative key sets.
Despite all these, I'm appreciating the fun experience. Kudos!
I'm successfully building this from source on macOS with a straightforward change to Makefile (new target with `GOOS=darwin`). If you are interested in merging the patch, I'll send it on GitHub.
Great work!
@inkweeper's screen appears to be Simplified Chinese. Maybe try changing the code page by `chcp` (or can this be done in the program? I remember something like Turbo Pascal did it)
I'll echo what other folks have been saying - running in the terminal is very cool, the music complements it excellently, and the process of mentally mapping out a solution to each puzzle was fun! I especially liked levels 7 & 8. The "order of operations" kind of puzzling really shone in those puzzles, with the right kind of "gotcha!" feeling when I realized I overlooked something.
I do wish there was a way to identify which key interacted with which gate. I don't think it's a trivial problem to solve, but a level whose challenge hinges on me intuiting invisible connections (attempting a little level-designer mind-reading) is not as satisfying to me as one that depends on me "decoding" the information that's clearly presented in front of me. I could guess what switches corresponded to which doors in level 9, but that's not me interacting with a game system, that's me making assumptions.
I do think there could also be a way to keep the information hidden while still being satisfying, though: maybe it's right for the player to consider the "gathering information and testing behavior" phase of a level part of normal play. If that were the idea, it'd be super-duper cool to have some kind of note-taking feature built into the game. Like maybe I can select characters in the level and replace them with my own text (which is still given its matching underlying color).
That's all hypotheticals, though, and definitely very subjective. The game you made is a fun concept packed up in a sweet terminal-based package. Thanks for making it, I enjoyed playing!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2131744728
Couldn't pass level 7. Hahahah