I'm currently playing Lazarr, and it's just amazing! The pirate ambiente is nice in terms of landscape, decoration, colors, background music (short clips, but I enjoy them). Plus the cute hint parrot. Of course I'm glad pirates never had laser guns ;-)
The game logic is well tuned. It starts with an introduction into the tools. First levels are indeed trivial, difficulty raises slowly level by level. But that keeps you motivated. Later levels get tricky (the cave and the sunken ship took me two days each to solve). I like that you cannot save in-level. The levels are short enough to restart the next day. But I remember some levels were not difficult but just tedious (e.g., the level with the spirals of mirrors).
I've not finished the game yet. But I don't expect bad surprises.
I found absolutely no bugs. It just works fine, no matter what crazy things you do with the lasers. Seems like all the bugs from the game Jam have been smoothed out. Something I really appreciate, that the game is still developing.
Practically no dead ends (one in the bombs level, but that one is obvious).
All in all, very Wuzzy quality I enjoy again and again. Nice one. I'm also playing a similar, professional game, The Talos Principle (VR), which sure has nicer graphics but I'd say, Lazarr is better in terms of logic puzzles.
The 1st levels are trivial; it’s intentional. I want to be sure the player has understood the game, so they had to be fool-proof. I plan to shake up the level order so the teaching levels aren’t all at once at the start.
You’re not the first one to complain about the spiral level. Maybe I need to make it much shorter or delete it, but then I intergrate the idea somewhere else. This game MUST have at least one level with a laser spiral because otherwise it doesn’t count as a laser game. :D
I'm a bit surprised you like that you can’t save in-level; that could be seen as a missing feature. But yeah, that one wasn’t on my TODO list anyway, most levels are short enough for it to not matter so much.
As for no bugs: I’m also not aware of any bugs, I can’t believe it myself. I started priotizing stability after I left MineClone 2 due to (among other reasons) frustration with the ever-increasing bug counter.
As for dead ends: Most levels should be solvable in all situations, but not always. In Inside the Box (the server), dead ends are forbidden. But in Lazarr!, I’m less strict to allow more puzzles. The existence of bombs implies dead ends anyway, but it creates a new layer of complexity where the player must think before exploding things. I’m still careful to avoid all annoying level fails, like when you fall into a hole you can’t get out of, etc. (please report any unfair dead ends as bug, thank you)
Lazarr! won’t have graphics like The Talos Principle, I’m simply not good enough for that yet, plus, the Luanti engine makes it hard anyway. But even if I’d switch engines, the blocky design would stay, as the whole game was designed around it, it is 100% intended. But Luanti’s recent releases offer more and more fancy shaders and light effects but must be enabled first, like volumetric lighting (which Lazarr! allows). I assume future Luanti releases will improve shaders and lighting more.
I'm currently playing Lazarr, and it's just amazing! The pirate ambiente is nice in terms of landscape, decoration, colors, background music (short clips, but I enjoy them). Plus the cute hint parrot. Of course I'm glad pirates never had laser guns ;-)
The game logic is well tuned. It starts with an introduction into the tools. First levels are indeed trivial, difficulty raises slowly level by level. But that keeps you motivated. Later levels get tricky (the cave and the sunken ship took me two days each to solve). I like that you cannot save in-level. The levels are short enough to restart the next day. But I remember some levels were not difficult but just tedious (e.g., the level with the spirals of mirrors). I've not finished the game yet. But I don't expect bad surprises.
I found absolutely no bugs. It just works fine, no matter what crazy things you do with the lasers. Seems like all the bugs from the game Jam have been smoothed out. Something I really appreciate, that the game is still developing. Practically no dead ends (one in the bombs level, but that one is obvious).
All in all, very Wuzzy quality I enjoy again and again. Nice one. I'm also playing a similar, professional game, The Talos Principle (VR), which sure has nicer graphics but I'd say, Lazarr is better in terms of logic puzzles.
The 1st levels are trivial; it’s intentional. I want to be sure the player has understood the game, so they had to be fool-proof. I plan to shake up the level order so the teaching levels aren’t all at once at the start.
You’re not the first one to complain about the spiral level. Maybe I need to make it much shorter or delete it, but then I intergrate the idea somewhere else. This game MUST have at least one level with a laser spiral because otherwise it doesn’t count as a laser game. :D
I'm a bit surprised you like that you can’t save in-level; that could be seen as a missing feature. But yeah, that one wasn’t on my TODO list anyway, most levels are short enough for it to not matter so much.
As for no bugs: I’m also not aware of any bugs, I can’t believe it myself. I started priotizing stability after I left MineClone 2 due to (among other reasons) frustration with the ever-increasing bug counter.
As for dead ends: Most levels should be solvable in all situations, but not always. In Inside the Box (the server), dead ends are forbidden. But in Lazarr!, I’m less strict to allow more puzzles. The existence of bombs implies dead ends anyway, but it creates a new layer of complexity where the player must think before exploding things. I’m still careful to avoid all annoying level fails, like when you fall into a hole you can’t get out of, etc. (please report any unfair dead ends as bug, thank you)
Lazarr! won’t have graphics like The Talos Principle, I’m simply not good enough for that yet, plus, the Luanti engine makes it hard anyway. But even if I’d switch engines, the blocky design would stay, as the whole game was designed around it, it is 100% intended. But Luanti’s recent releases offer more and more fancy shaders and light effects but must be enabled first, like volumetric lighting (which Lazarr! allows). I assume future Luanti releases will improve shaders and lighting more.