This game is a direct sequel from Artifact from last year, and has the same feel. Sadly, it is MUCH shorter and not as vast.
I dislike the use of AI for a title image, especially in a game jam.
The first room was surprisingly difficult because it turned out to be a parcours puzzle, so it was irrelevant to the "Line of Sight" theme of this year's game jam.
while probably not strictly required, I figured the parcours section of the game were easier with the secret sprinting feature. The game never mentioned you're allowd to sprint. :-/
The second room was more interesting and introduced the first actual "line-of-sight" puzzles. But those puzzles were very basic, you just had to activate a few switches. The hardest part was finding the right spots to walk to and parcouring. Not really enough for a new game, even a short one. Even a short game should at least explore a little bit the unique mechanic it introduces. This game did not do that.
And the third room already ended the game. :-(
I really love the graphics and textures, it's very mysterious and dungeon-ish. The story is not really that interering and frankly forgettable, but maybe that's because the game is too short for the player to "connect" to any of the characters.
BUT! I do believe the Artifact series has potential to become something really great if more time is spent on it. There is something special about this dungeon atmosphere …
Sound design was only a few simple sounds but no music or ambience, although these dungeons really YEARN for some audible ambience.
The cut scenes have improved compared to last year's Artifact. The game uses a formspec trick to force the camera to be fully locked during cut scenes, so the glitchy camera twitching is gone. GENIUS!
Finally, this game is shizophrenic about its own name. Artifact, or Artifact One? Hmm …
Indeed, in retrospect the level design is probably the most important part of a game like this, but I didn't end up actually developing it much. To be fair, this was partly because I only had about 2 weeks to work on the game due to Thanksgiving, most of which were spent making the mechanics and underlying APIs work properly, but I also (again) didn't quite have a clear enough picture of what I actually wanted to make to be able to make it.
Yes, there should probably be some indication that sprinting is indeed implemented; I already didn't really like breaking the illusion by showing the message about the blackrod, though, so I didn't actually add a similar message for sprinting. I suppose I could either a) show such messages as a small, muted label at the bottom left corner rather than a bright box in the middle, or b) re-add the inventory formspec as a progress tracker (known elsewhere as an achievements page), with milestones for learning the controls.
Part of it is that the only real new mechanics introduced are the interactions, which aren't much of a mechanic to explore on their own. I toyed with the idea of a more complex circuitry-based design, but never ended up deciding what such a design would actually look like.
The graphics are indeed probably the biggest point in favor of the game at present. And yes, the story didn't end up getting explored anywhere near as much as I wanted. In the future, I probably ought to make it move more slowly (to match the atmosphere a little more), and focus more on auxiliary world-building details.
I don't think I'll want any actual music in this game, but some kind of subtle ambience is something I ought to look into sometime. Sadly, my sound design skills are currently only at the level of putting one noise on top of another and tuning the frequency, so 'sometime' likely won't arrive anytime soon...
I called this one Artifact One solely to distinguish it from the original, which I wanted to keep available for historical reasons. It's not Artifact Two because the plan is for Artifact Two to actually continue the story chonologically; for all practical purposes, this is just a replacement for the original Artifact, not a sequel.
In the future, I think what I want to do is move the game into more of an RPG realm than the pure puzzle design it has now. That would probably involve something like:
Making the environment a whole lot bigger, both to fit more mechanics and story and to strengthen the exploration aspect.
Making the environment more dynamic. Currently you can break leaveas and that's about it. Some kind of movable objects (push, pull, collision) would be more interesting (and could also factor into puzzles).
Adding a map. This would be able to show the whole facility or the nearby area, with names and labels to make it seem more real.
The achievements page mentioned above. This would allow for player-initiated hints as well as better organization.
Adding collectible items. Some of these could perhaps serve as currency, while others could be things like keys that tie directly into progression.
Adding some sort of XP system. Maybe as a bar like usual, but maybe something less currency-like such as having only named levels that are advanced by game events and unlock further progression. Perhaps this could be implemented as a subset of an energy system.
Combat. This would be the big difference between 'walking and puzzles with a bit of survival' and 'puzzle-adventure'. The biggest challenge here would be deciding what the adversaries should actualy be. Maybe some sort of ad-hoc 'creatures', or maybe something related to the current non-boss. Ideally, they would tie into the puzzles to some extent also.
A more sophisticated energy system. The current one only reaches an approximately walkie-talkie level of complexity; extensions should make puzzles actually require thought. Perhaps this could be based on circuits, or perhaps on physics. Perhaps I could combine both paradigms somehow.
Strengthening the co-op requirements. Right now it's just 'Key can trigger X, Vix can trigger Y'; ideally the puzzles would be such that you have to not only consider what each character can do (or even how well they can do it), but also when, where, why, and how they should do it.
(DISCLAIMER: Written by a game jam participant)
This game is a direct sequel from Artifact from last year, and has the same feel. Sadly, it is MUCH shorter and not as vast.
I dislike the use of AI for a title image, especially in a game jam.
The first room was surprisingly difficult because it turned out to be a parcours puzzle, so it was irrelevant to the "Line of Sight" theme of this year's game jam. while probably not strictly required, I figured the parcours section of the game were easier with the secret sprinting feature. The game never mentioned you're allowd to sprint. :-/
The second room was more interesting and introduced the first actual "line-of-sight" puzzles. But those puzzles were very basic, you just had to activate a few switches. The hardest part was finding the right spots to walk to and parcouring. Not really enough for a new game, even a short one. Even a short game should at least explore a little bit the unique mechanic it introduces. This game did not do that.
And the third room already ended the game. :-(
I really love the graphics and textures, it's very mysterious and dungeon-ish. The story is not really that interering and frankly forgettable, but maybe that's because the game is too short for the player to "connect" to any of the characters.
BUT! I do believe the Artifact series has potential to become something really great if more time is spent on it. There is something special about this dungeon atmosphere …
Sound design was only a few simple sounds but no music or ambience, although these dungeons really YEARN for some audible ambience.
The cut scenes have improved compared to last year's Artifact. The game uses a formspec trick to force the camera to be fully locked during cut scenes, so the glitchy camera twitching is gone. GENIUS!
Finally, this game is shizophrenic about its own name. Artifact, or Artifact One? Hmm …
Indeed, in retrospect the level design is probably the most important part of a game like this, but I didn't end up actually developing it much. To be fair, this was partly because I only had about 2 weeks to work on the game due to Thanksgiving, most of which were spent making the mechanics and underlying APIs work properly, but I also (again) didn't quite have a clear enough picture of what I actually wanted to make to be able to make it.
Yes, there should probably be some indication that sprinting is indeed implemented; I already didn't really like breaking the illusion by showing the message about the blackrod, though, so I didn't actually add a similar message for sprinting. I suppose I could either a) show such messages as a small, muted label at the bottom left corner rather than a bright box in the middle, or b) re-add the inventory formspec as a progress tracker (known elsewhere as an achievements page), with milestones for learning the controls.
Part of it is that the only real new mechanics introduced are the interactions, which aren't much of a mechanic to explore on their own. I toyed with the idea of a more complex circuitry-based design, but never ended up deciding what such a design would actually look like.
The graphics are indeed probably the biggest point in favor of the game at present. And yes, the story didn't end up getting explored anywhere near as much as I wanted. In the future, I probably ought to make it move more slowly (to match the atmosphere a little more), and focus more on auxiliary world-building details.
I don't think I'll want any actual music in this game, but some kind of subtle ambience is something I ought to look into sometime. Sadly, my sound design skills are currently only at the level of putting one noise on top of another and tuning the frequency, so 'sometime' likely won't arrive anytime soon...
I called this one Artifact One solely to distinguish it from the original, which I wanted to keep available for historical reasons. It's not Artifact Two because the plan is for Artifact Two to actually continue the story chonologically; for all practical purposes, this is just a replacement for the original Artifact, not a sequel.
In the future, I think what I want to do is move the game into more of an RPG realm than the pure puzzle design it has now. That would probably involve something like: