I totally understand the style is not everyone’s cup of tea and I already suspected some people wouldn’t like the theme to begin with. But if the game made people feel uneasy, that’s kind of the point. If every game was 100% “friendly”, things would get boring. :P
The reason for this very dark theme is pretty much random. It started with the word "Eyeballs" and it all more or less developed to some weird surreal otherworld where it starts at a cult. In fact, I actually planned for it being more “gore”-like, where you would spawn inside a giant freakish creature but it was just too difficult to create the textures for that.
I’m probably going over all my thought process in detail in a post-mortem later. There’s so many things I still want to say.
What I’m not going to do is a “friendly” version because then the whole idea kind of falls apart and I don’t want that. But people can always make texture packs if they want them.
I openly admit the level with the suspended balls was pretty mean. At least I left two important hints and it turned out many people still solved it.
I technically classified it as "gore" because in level 3 there are two small streams of blood. I actually meant to make this game much more "gore-y" where you would spawn inside some arcane creature but it was too hard to create textures so I instead just went with the stone.
Yeah, the timer is intentionally short (1 second) because if I make it longer, the player could easily circumvent many of the level's puzzles because you're too safe when unseen.
My idea is to add new HUD indicators to show how close you're from being "unseen" or something.
It's true. In this year I indeed tried to "play it safe" and not attempt anything too daring, just come up with a simple concept and execute it as well as I could. I wonder if the level reset was too punishing. Maybe I should have set checkpoints or something?
Thank you! Thanks for including your game time. In my tests I took like 15 minutes for a full playthrough but obviously that was because I already knew the solution. xD
Perhaps I should have made it clearer that walking into darkness is a bad idea. The eyes can't see you when it's too dark, that's why.
For a future update (if I do it), I thought of improving the HUD display to show "how well" the eyes can see you so you know better when you're close to be out of sight. Also a "light crystal" to show how dark the spot you're in.
I have a different opinion. I have no problem with trying to reinvent the voxel sandbox genre if the concept is interesting enough or adds a new twist or is just well-executed and avoids design flaws of similar games. Even if a game is similar, I think we should be fair and rate a game on its own merits.
I feel flattered you name-dropped Repixture tho. :D
This survival game tries to be a little different and I appreciate the new art style.
2×2 textures? :-) It was interesting to explore the different biomes and the cute trees you built. I like the night sky. This simple glow effect in the clouds was nice to look at. I like when people use the simple tools of Luanti without any hacks to create a nice effect.
But I admit I didn't play with the highest graphics settings tho.
I disliked the vertical hotbar and quickly switched to the horizonal one. It's very hard to get used to the vertical one.
The downside is that the gameplay feels lacking. Unfortunately, I don't know how to proceed. I tried to make iron ingots but the instructions are just too confusing. After trying a few times, I gave up. I managed to make fire at least and light some trees on fire lol.
I wish this game had a crafting guide. Not even the README tells me a lot of information. Which is a bummer because I would have liked to see the other parts of the game. :-(
Overall, I have to give a thumbs down because of the confusing gameplay and the game help … well … doesn’t help me so I quickly became stuck in this game, not knowing what to do. :-(
But still thanks for posting this, it was still interesting to look at for a while.
I almost feel like I played this game before in previous game jams which also featured space stations. Sure, it's not exactly the same, but not very innovative. :-(
The story, sorry, just feels lackluster. You wake up in a space station and try to figure out what happened. You basically run from area to area to do some thing in a simple quest system. The graphics are okayish. The audio is … ugh. The heavy breathing makes me nervous. I know the breathing is intentional but still.
I did not really have fun playing it, playing it once was more than enough.
I think the reason is the game just failed to set the right mood/atmosphere to me, there is not really a sense of danger. And the story was not really capturing to me. Sorry. :-(
This game is technically a complete game but extremely simple. You just throw dice in the hope to get only the number 2-6 but not 1 so you add to your score. Sorry, but I don't think this is enough to justify a full
entry in the ContentDB, frankly. I would have expected at least a couple of dice games, and not just one.
Also, for such a simple game concept, I think polishing is absolutely crucial. A simple but well-polished game can make a world of a difference. Sadly, this game is not polished at all.
It's just a mishmash of existing mod code, including the dice (this is literally my own dice2 mod btw), are just copied into the. While this is not forbidden (I'm not arguing from a copyright / game jam rules standpoint), it kind of misses the point of a game jam if you couldn't even be bothered to make the key aspects of the game yourself.
And the core game mechanic is very unpolished. Using the chat to show the game status is an absolute no-go for me. At least the game itself works but that's not enough to create a fun game. :-(
The concept (explore different star systens and planets) sounds exciting on paper but in practice I get bored very fast. I'm really sorry, that's just how it is. :-(
OK, sure, this game has a large number of worlds and star systems to choose from but … I don't really have a reason to explore. Sure, I get different metals and plants and stuff but I don't really know what do to with it. And sadly, most planets feel the same.
Maybe I'm just too arrogant to find the fun part of the game but the game doesn't show me where the fun is.
I think the reason is the game suffers from the "Big Empty Sandbox" problem as described by Jim-Stephanie Sterling. The game advertises how "big" it is and that may be true but the problem is, there aren't many interesting things you can do in the big sandbox, the big worlds quickly repeat themselves. The sandbox may
be big, but it also feels empty. Which is poison for any sandbox game. Good sandbox games allow you to do stuff. Lots of stuff.
Unfortunately, it looks like this game was left in a very early stage. It's like a pre-alpha? You spawn in some kind of room of metal and all you can do is go through the exit and then you see a large empty world.
The puzzle idea is not that innovative (It's mostly a Bloxorz clone), but it's OK.
I appreciate the author has put thought into the push/color mechanic.
Especially the puzzles get hard fast. It seems the author took their time to put it all together.
Unfortunately, they're hard not in an engaging way. It feels very punishing early on.
The game mechanics take time to get used to and the early levels do not do a great job introducing them. You have to memorize the help page (that is only shown once and then gone forever. Not great).
What is especially confusing is the meaning of color. You might think the colored side of the block must touch the colored floor tile but no. It only counts if the matching color is on the opposite site. Very confusing. Oh, and also not friendly to colorblind people.
The biggest downside of this game is the complete lack of polishing. There is no level selection. There is no music. The sounds are the most generic sounds ever. The block you're moving is not visibly animated, instead it takes steps instantly. Even Bloxorz, a simple old Flash game, featured such animations. The lack of animations makes it hard to follow what is going on. The active block looks identical to the passive blocks you can push around, making it easy to forget which one is "your" block. There is no "undo" or "restart level" feature. The background is literally the default sky. The textures also don't look that great.
The lack of polishing is such a shame because I think the game does have potential but if the game looks like default.
Neutral rating because the puzzle idea is nice, but the generic look and feel ruins the experience for me, sadly. :-(
I liked the dark blue gloomy atmosphere. The game comes with cut scenes which was a neat surprise, but it was somewhat hacky because Luanti doesn't allow you to lock the camera yet.
Basically this is a dungeon explorer/puzzle game. You have to explore the dungeon and solve simple puzzles by moving some kind of electricity (?) with a wand. I like the mix of "ancient mystery dungeon" and "electronics". The story is simple but I kind of wanted to know how it ends. It seems you cannot die, so it's entirely a puzzle game. It's nice to explore dungeons without deadly danger behind every corner. :D
There are not many types of blocks, but the level design I have seen so far is nice. It feels like the dungeon is absolutely HUGE for a game jam game. The sliding doors were a nice touch that sets this dungeon apart. And they work absolutely perfect, with no flickering, seams or other visual oddities.
Overall, I liked the mood of this game, even if there wasn't music.
Unfortunately I was unable to complete the game because I was stuck at the part after you free the prisoner. I was unable to find a way across the abyss. Maybe I will be able to finish it later.
But I think for this simple concept the game was very-well executed. Thumbs up from me.
I think this game has the best artwork of the game jam. The village is simple but cute. The surrounding landscape is cool. I liked the red plants. I liked the mini-lanterns. I liked the simple huts. The level of darkness
(that this game is about) is just right. I'm just a sucker for good pixel art. ;-)
This game is a simple adventure with a very simple quest system. You need to use books from a library to fend off the darkness. What was a little weird is that you have to literally type something in the chat to proceed but OK.
I would have wished the game would be a bit larger because the story is REALLY short. Especially the Library was surprisingly small and actually not a really important part of a story. Given from the title, I would have expected the search for books would be important but it turned out to be very easy.
Many people just outright refuse to talk to you and do not contribute anything to the story. But I guess this is what we get in a game jam. ;-)
While I enjoyed this short game simply because of the world/map, I have to say, the story itself was a bit generic. Why is the darkness evil? Why does it hate books or knowledge? How does it affect the villagers? I think this could have been explored more. But still!
Anyway, while the game may be short, it is very solidly executed start from finish. Therefore a recommend from me.
Resources are scarce and you have to pick the perfect starting spot if you don't want to be forced to wait FOREVER for your resource counters to grow. Growing your empire becomes hard soon. In a non-fun way.
The only way to reasonably expand is by storage units where yourpeople can drop off resources. But it comes at a hefty price: 500 stone! Which is half the amount you get from a big stone mine.
And those are rare and, of course, don't regenerate. Food and wood regenerate and won't be a problem early in the game but for stone and metal, you must expand into the deserts. Which is quite hard or impossible if you picked the wrong starting position. Once a stone/metal mine is too far away, you come to a screeching halt.
The game has a workaround. I can always collect resources manually but this is slow and feels a bit like cheating but often is the only way to proceed. :-(
After I have build every building and I depleted the metal and stone in my nearby surroundings, I quickly lost interest even before the first goblin army arrived.
This game really puts Luanti to its limits by doing things that seem impossible. It's a 3rd person shooter which is highly unusual for Luanti.
The gameplay is quite well-executed. While the objective is quite simple (walk to all control points and survive against the hordes), there are 5 difficulty levels. The mining laser is very fun. There is a surpringly large number of weapons and they feel mostly balanced. I would have wished if there was some kind of unlock mechanic and multiple levels.
Well, there are 5 difficulty levels. I managed to beat the first 3 so far.
The graphics qualitily is good but inconsistent. First we have a very nice-looking robot model which is expertly executed. Also the GUI is well-made pixel art. The robot rotation is absolutely smooth. The shooting particles and sound effects are well-made.
BUT then we have odd floor textures with visible seams everywhere. Lava textures are just textures and for some reason don't hurt you.
But the biggest downside of this game is that it's quite obviously a giant HACK and uses MANY dirty tricks
to work. I appreciate the experimentation for a game jam and love that it was attempted. And I rate this game very high. But it's not enough for a ContentDB recommendation due to instability.
The map is full of dark spots, making it quite unfair/frustrating to fight the enemies because they're basically invisible in darkness. The darkness isn't a fog-of-war. The map doesn't light up close to you. The camera movement is very weird due to the hacky nature of this game but it's amazing it works at all.
I give this one a neutral rating but only because of the HACKS. But for a game jam, this is great.
I think this game is a great demonstration of why Luanti needs more camera options. :D I hope one day there will be a way to fix the hackery so that it becomes a serious game.
EDIT: Oh, the audio of this game is good. Voice acting in a game jam game is very cool. :-)
This game has a simple quest: You must slay some hidden beast. To do that, you have to discover two areas and then drop into some kind of dungeon.
The graphics are custom and include 3D models but everything looks really bad and clunky.
Then the game has a lot of bugs: The beast didn't even spawn in the final arena (and I didn't bother to check why). There are missing textures. You can dig through the ground and fall into the void (and the game doesn't reset you).
The game overall is quite boring. The quest is too simple, you basically just have to walk in a small forest to reach targets on a map. The map helps you.
The final dungeon looked a bit better than the rest, but it still was just a (mostly) simple linear corridor and unfortunately, at the end, no beast to be found here (bug?).
This is barely even a game. There's not much to do. It looks like a VERY early pre-alpha version. Just a grass biome with small trees, an ocean, and that's it. No music, no sound, no mobs, no crafting (at least I didn't discover any recipes), no plants besides trees.
I think the Italian translation was never complete. In the latest version it's a bit better, but still incomplete. Whenever something isn't translated, it falls back to English.
Correct, I stopped doing it when I got no user interest. It is tedious to do so. Do you think it should be optional?
You know my philosophy. Either do it right, or remove the feature. That’s better than to pretend the software has a feature when in reality it’s very broken. An alternative would be to clearly mark this feature as experimental, and it must be enabled first.
Correct. I do not know any of those, e.g. arabic. Do you? I would appreciate help regarding that.
No. I know at least enough to know that naive approaches to render Arabic will not work. I also know using a text shaping library like Harfbuzz would solve this way more elegantly instead of re-inventing the wheel in a mod. One idea would be adding Harfbuzz (or similar) in Luanti, that would be nice.
Rendering them as U+FFFD REPLACEMENT CHARACTER might result in text like “Ame�lie”, unfortunately.
Yeah, this is what I did in my fork but of course it would be better if combining marks just worked. At least the replacement character tells the user this character is unsupported. Thankfully, Unicode includes a lot of codepoints where diacriticals are "baked in", so to say.
One possibility would be partial support for combining marks, so those cases that are implemented will render, the unimplemented cases will lead to replacement chars (until implemented). Admittedly, in my fork I have thrown combining marks away entirely. The Unicode rules are quite complex and overwhelming.
Please change the mod name of the modified version to rp_unicode_text
Alright, alright. I’ll rename the mod in Repixture. Admittedly, I only had lame excuses. I never disagreed with your reasoning btw and I’m perfectly aware this was bad practice, I just made up ad-hoc excuses lol.
Thanks!
Sugarcane can randomly start to grow next to papyrus plants on dirt with grass, but it takes a long time.
(the whole plants system is subject to a rework when I start to work on this game again)
This game is a simple puzzle game and a good time-waster when you're bored. The gameplay is 2D but with (cheap) 3D graphics. There are a lot of ideas which are all over the place. And an absolutely massive number of levels. You either have to eat all apples, push boxes, blow up TNT to break walls, open doors with keys, push linked pyramids around, etc.
The biggest downside of this game is the lack of polish. No sounds, no music. The graphics are a mix of Minetest Game and programmer art. There are no animations for events e.g. TNT doesn't visually explode, it just disappears. Fire isn't animated, neither is water. When you shoot arrows, there's no shooting animation. And so on. Events (like level completion) are shown in the chat.
The levels are okayish. Most of the levels do a good job in introducing new puzzle elements, but there are 2 game elements which can be tricky. What's a bit annoying that a few levels are duplications. Those should be removed.
Let's say the levels are good enough I keep coming back to this game.
Controls are straight-forward: Movement keys to move, jump key to fire a ball (rarely used), sneak key to reset and Aux1 key to undo last move. Unfortunately, the undo only works for the last move. The level selection is less pleasant: You must punch literally blocks with the word "WORLD1" on them. You must manually select the next level after you completed one. This gets tedious.
The game is not well-programmed. It has a surprisingly high CPU use and a single move has a noticable lag/delay. (ca. 1/5 of a second, which adds up quickly).
Some puzzle elements like the blue arrow only exist in one direction.
Some puzzle elements are just outright annoying. There is a block that turns the light off, one activates a 30s timer
Thanks!
In a post-game jam update the powerslide confusion should be fixed by now. What wasn't obvious in the game jam version is that you can't use your powerslide when you're not on enough solid ground. On top, it also was a little buggy. But it should be fixed. Also there is now an icon showing clearly when exactly you can perform your special action.
I hereby solemny swear that it's possible to collect and save every electron in this game. I tested this multiple times over and over because I wanted to get this right for sure. This includes the game jam version.
And there is actually a way to get back up from the long red cable at the bottom of Transport Pipes. But it involves a little bit of thinking and attention to detail.
A sequel has been floating in my head for a while, maybe I'll start it when my other projects are done.
Thanks for this review, it made me think! First of all, I won't implement your suggested ideas as this game is finished for me. This was done for a game jam and I'm only 50% happy with the end result or story. But I'm happy with the technology I achieved (like I wrote a complete mapgen just for this game, the heavy use of leveled nodes that have fine-tuned heights (rather than just full blocks and slabs), or how the light orb moves very well).
It was a nice experiment. For a full-blown cut scene, there wasn't time. But I didn't plan one anyway.
I think the game is "good enough" for a game jam but I don't think it has potential; the whole overall gameplay didn't really work out for me. Such is the life of a game dev: You don't know what gameplay is good without trying it.
But still! I like the idea of a camera pan showing the actual forest, I agree that could have explained the story better. It's unfortunate the messages went away too fast for you. I also agree some kind of message log would be nice. You're not the only player who couldn't follow the story at some parts. The game could indeed have done a better job here. Or in general, the whole plot point of "the forest is dying" ... I don't think the game as a whole communicated it well.
I suppose making cut scenes in Minetest is possible but it involves some ugly ugly hackery.
So although I probably don't want to make updates to this game anymore (only bugfixes), these are good ideas to keep in mind for future projects. So thanks.
Ah yes, PvP is indeed missing and I already considered to add it. My idea was to add some fighting dolls, you know, like in the middle ages (idk).
BUT! I am currently sitting on the fence of whether I make a complete new tutorial from scratch or I just extend the current one. The code is dated and I don't like that the signs are so wordy, and that the game makes no good use of the HUD, etc.
Have you tried to find all electrons yet? If you start the game world again after you reached the end, you return to the Hub again. (sorry, there's no bonus for collecting all electrons tho).
The content for this game was made for a game jam in only 3 weeks and I don't plan to add new content. Only bugfix/maintenance updates. This game is officially finished.
But there might be a successor game to this one. Who knows? :D
This mod originally was made by sorcerykid for the JT2 server, I just picked this mod up. Since then, I've seen this mod in use on the A.E.S. server in June 2024, which was nice to see.
Strange, I wasn't aware of any lag issues. Weird. This doesn't happen to me (neither Minetest 5.8.0 or 5.9.0). Placing or digging blocks is near-instant to me. If you know more about this, file a bug report please.
And yes, the mobs are just reskins except for minor code changes. It's just Mobs Redo, mostly. You caught me there. :D And it's true, it's not supposed to stay like this.
The game I envision here is actually much different from the current version which should be considered just a draft, none of the current features are set in stone. But I haven't touched this game for a long time, no idea when I return. And a little spoiler, the game I envision will also have more lore, not just the simple startup text in chat.
Thanks for your review (even if this is for an early draft version).
There is just something magical about this particular style of music. This music is nice to listen to even if you're not playing.
The non-rotating eyes are intentional. And a bit of Trial and error is part of this game.
But I agree it would have been better if they looked different. I’ve added “make non-rotating eyeballs look different” on the TODO list.
OOOOhhh. The game was just incomplete. Okay, I’ll see how future versions turn out.
Sorry, I can't see the white dot. But I tried something …
Can you please take a look here?: https://codeberg.org/Wuzzy/Eyeballs/issues/17
Thank you! I’m glad to hear I apparently have a “style” now. :-)
Well, you can’t claim you weren’t warned. ;-)
I totally understand the style is not everyone’s cup of tea and I already suspected some people wouldn’t like the theme to begin with. But if the game made people feel uneasy, that’s kind of the point. If every game was 100% “friendly”, things would get boring. :P
The reason for this very dark theme is pretty much random. It started with the word "Eyeballs" and it all more or less developed to some weird surreal otherworld where it starts at a cult. In fact, I actually planned for it being more “gore”-like, where you would spawn inside a giant freakish creature but it was just too difficult to create the textures for that.
I’m probably going over all my thought process in detail in a post-mortem later. There’s so many things I still want to say.
What I’m not going to do is a “friendly” version because then the whole idea kind of falls apart and I don’t want that. But people can always make texture packs if they want them.
I openly admit the level with the suspended balls was pretty mean. At least I left two important hints and it turned out many people still solved it.
Eye like this review. Thank you! :-)
I technically classified it as "gore" because in level 3 there are two small streams of blood. I actually meant to make this game much more "gore-y" where you would spawn inside some arcane creature but it was too hard to create textures so I instead just went with the stone.
Yeah, the timer is intentionally short (1 second) because if I make it longer, the player could easily circumvent many of the level's puzzles because you're too safe when unseen.
My idea is to add new HUD indicators to show how close you're from being "unseen" or something.
That bug never occured to me, no idea what caused it. :-( I want to fix it when the reason is found out.
It's true. In this year I indeed tried to "play it safe" and not attempt anything too daring, just come up with a simple concept and execute it as well as I could. I wonder if the level reset was too punishing. Maybe I should have set checkpoints or something?
Thank you! Thanks for including your game time. In my tests I took like 15 minutes for a full playthrough but obviously that was because I already knew the solution. xD
Haha, I knew the hanging balls level was hard. There's a reason I left the hints. ;-)
May I ask you what the "visual bugs" and the "soft lock" were because bugs should be fixed.
Perhaps I should have made it clearer that walking into darkness is a bad idea. The eyes can't see you when it's too dark, that's why.
For a future update (if I do it), I thought of improving the HUD display to show "how well" the eyes can see you so you know better when you're close to be out of sight. Also a "light crystal" to show how dark the spot you're in.
I have a different opinion. I have no problem with trying to reinvent the voxel sandbox genre if the concept is interesting enough or adds a new twist or is just well-executed and avoids design flaws of similar games. Even if a game is similar, I think we should be fair and rate a game on its own merits.
I feel flattered you name-dropped Repixture tho. :D
This survival game tries to be a little different and I appreciate the new art style. 2×2 textures? :-) It was interesting to explore the different biomes and the cute trees you built. I like the night sky. This simple glow effect in the clouds was nice to look at. I like when people use the simple tools of Luanti without any hacks to create a nice effect.
But I admit I didn't play with the highest graphics settings tho.
I disliked the vertical hotbar and quickly switched to the horizonal one. It's very hard to get used to the vertical one.
The downside is that the gameplay feels lacking. Unfortunately, I don't know how to proceed. I tried to make iron ingots but the instructions are just too confusing. After trying a few times, I gave up. I managed to make fire at least and light some trees on fire lol.
I wish this game had a crafting guide. Not even the README tells me a lot of information. Which is a bummer because I would have liked to see the other parts of the game. :-(
Overall, I have to give a thumbs down because of the confusing gameplay and the game help … well … doesn’t help me so I quickly became stuck in this game, not knowing what to do. :-(
But still thanks for posting this, it was still interesting to look at for a while.
I almost feel like I played this game before in previous game jams which also featured space stations. Sure, it's not exactly the same, but not very innovative. :-(
The story, sorry, just feels lackluster. You wake up in a space station and try to figure out what happened. You basically run from area to area to do some thing in a simple quest system. The graphics are okayish. The audio is … ugh. The heavy breathing makes me nervous. I know the breathing is intentional but still.
I did not really have fun playing it, playing it once was more than enough.
I think the reason is the game just failed to set the right mood/atmosphere to me, there is not really a sense of danger. And the story was not really capturing to me. Sorry. :-(
This game is technically a complete game but extremely simple. You just throw dice in the hope to get only the number 2-6 but not 1 so you add to your score. Sorry, but I don't think this is enough to justify a full entry in the ContentDB, frankly. I would have expected at least a couple of dice games, and not just one.
Also, for such a simple game concept, I think polishing is absolutely crucial. A simple but well-polished game can make a world of a difference. Sadly, this game is not polished at all.
It's just a mishmash of existing mod code, including the dice (this is literally my own dice2 mod btw), are just copied into the. While this is not forbidden (I'm not arguing from a copyright / game jam rules standpoint), it kind of misses the point of a game jam if you couldn't even be bothered to make the key aspects of the game yourself.
And the core game mechanic is very unpolished. Using the chat to show the game status is an absolute no-go for me. At least the game itself works but that's not enough to create a fun game. :-(
The concept (explore different star systens and planets) sounds exciting on paper but in practice I get bored very fast. I'm really sorry, that's just how it is. :-(
OK, sure, this game has a large number of worlds and star systems to choose from but … I don't really have a reason to explore. Sure, I get different metals and plants and stuff but I don't really know what do to with it. And sadly, most planets feel the same.
Maybe I'm just too arrogant to find the fun part of the game but the game doesn't show me where the fun is.
I think the reason is the game suffers from the "Big Empty Sandbox" problem as described by Jim-Stephanie Sterling. The game advertises how "big" it is and that may be true but the problem is, there aren't many interesting things you can do in the big sandbox, the big worlds quickly repeat themselves. The sandbox may be big, but it also feels empty. Which is poison for any sandbox game. Good sandbox games allow you to do stuff. Lots of stuff.
Unfortunately, it looks like this game was left in a very early stage. It's like a pre-alpha? You spawn in some kind of room of metal and all you can do is go through the exit and then you see a large empty world.
That's it. That's the whole game. :-(
The puzzle idea is not that innovative (It's mostly a Bloxorz clone), but it's OK. I appreciate the author has put thought into the push/color mechanic.
Especially the puzzles get hard fast. It seems the author took their time to put it all together.
Unfortunately, they're hard not in an engaging way. It feels very punishing early on. The game mechanics take time to get used to and the early levels do not do a great job introducing them. You have to memorize the help page (that is only shown once and then gone forever. Not great).
What is especially confusing is the meaning of color. You might think the colored side of the block must touch the colored floor tile but no. It only counts if the matching color is on the opposite site. Very confusing. Oh, and also not friendly to colorblind people.
The biggest downside of this game is the complete lack of polishing. There is no level selection. There is no music. The sounds are the most generic sounds ever. The block you're moving is not visibly animated, instead it takes steps instantly. Even Bloxorz, a simple old Flash game, featured such animations. The lack of animations makes it hard to follow what is going on. The active block looks identical to the passive blocks you can push around, making it easy to forget which one is "your" block. There is no "undo" or "restart level" feature. The background is literally the default sky. The textures also don't look that great.
The lack of polishing is such a shame because I think the game does have potential but if the game looks like default.
Neutral rating because the puzzle idea is nice, but the generic look and feel ruins the experience for me, sadly. :-(
I liked the dark blue gloomy atmosphere. The game comes with cut scenes which was a neat surprise, but it was somewhat hacky because Luanti doesn't allow you to lock the camera yet.
Basically this is a dungeon explorer/puzzle game. You have to explore the dungeon and solve simple puzzles by moving some kind of electricity (?) with a wand. I like the mix of "ancient mystery dungeon" and "electronics". The story is simple but I kind of wanted to know how it ends. It seems you cannot die, so it's entirely a puzzle game. It's nice to explore dungeons without deadly danger behind every corner. :D
There are not many types of blocks, but the level design I have seen so far is nice. It feels like the dungeon is absolutely HUGE for a game jam game. The sliding doors were a nice touch that sets this dungeon apart. And they work absolutely perfect, with no flickering, seams or other visual oddities.
Overall, I liked the mood of this game, even if there wasn't music.
Unfortunately I was unable to complete the game because I was stuck at the part after you free the prisoner. I was unable to find a way across the abyss. Maybe I will be able to finish it later.
But I think for this simple concept the game was very-well executed. Thumbs up from me.
I think this game has the best artwork of the game jam. The village is simple but cute. The surrounding landscape is cool. I liked the red plants. I liked the mini-lanterns. I liked the simple huts. The level of darkness (that this game is about) is just right. I'm just a sucker for good pixel art. ;-)
This game is a simple adventure with a very simple quest system. You need to use books from a library to fend off the darkness. What was a little weird is that you have to literally type something in the chat to proceed but OK.
I would have wished the game would be a bit larger because the story is REALLY short. Especially the Library was surprisingly small and actually not a really important part of a story. Given from the title, I would have expected the search for books would be important but it turned out to be very easy. Many people just outright refuse to talk to you and do not contribute anything to the story. But I guess this is what we get in a game jam. ;-)
While I enjoyed this short game simply because of the world/map, I have to say, the story itself was a bit generic. Why is the darkness evil? Why does it hate books or knowledge? How does it affect the villagers? I think this could have been explored more. But still!
Anyway, while the game may be short, it is very solidly executed start from finish. Therefore a recommend from me.
Resources are scarce and you have to pick the perfect starting spot if you don't want to be forced to wait FOREVER for your resource counters to grow. Growing your empire becomes hard soon. In a non-fun way.
The only way to reasonably expand is by storage units where yourpeople can drop off resources. But it comes at a hefty price: 500 stone! Which is half the amount you get from a big stone mine. And those are rare and, of course, don't regenerate. Food and wood regenerate and won't be a problem early in the game but for stone and metal, you must expand into the deserts. Which is quite hard or impossible if you picked the wrong starting position. Once a stone/metal mine is too far away, you come to a screeching halt.
The game has a workaround. I can always collect resources manually but this is slow and feels a bit like cheating but often is the only way to proceed. :-(
After I have build every building and I depleted the metal and stone in my nearby surroundings, I quickly lost interest even before the first goblin army arrived.
Sorry, but this game wasn't really fun to me. :-(
This game really puts Luanti to its limits by doing things that seem impossible. It's a 3rd person shooter which is highly unusual for Luanti.
The gameplay is quite well-executed. While the objective is quite simple (walk to all control points and survive against the hordes), there are 5 difficulty levels. The mining laser is very fun. There is a surpringly large number of weapons and they feel mostly balanced. I would have wished if there was some kind of unlock mechanic and multiple levels. Well, there are 5 difficulty levels. I managed to beat the first 3 so far.
The graphics qualitily is good but inconsistent. First we have a very nice-looking robot model which is expertly executed. Also the GUI is well-made pixel art. The robot rotation is absolutely smooth. The shooting particles and sound effects are well-made. BUT then we have odd floor textures with visible seams everywhere. Lava textures are just textures and for some reason don't hurt you.
But the biggest downside of this game is that it's quite obviously a giant HACK and uses MANY dirty tricks to work. I appreciate the experimentation for a game jam and love that it was attempted. And I rate this game very high. But it's not enough for a ContentDB recommendation due to instability. The map is full of dark spots, making it quite unfair/frustrating to fight the enemies because they're basically invisible in darkness. The darkness isn't a fog-of-war. The map doesn't light up close to you. The camera movement is very weird due to the hacky nature of this game but it's amazing it works at all.
I give this one a neutral rating but only because of the HACKS. But for a game jam, this is great.
I think this game is a great demonstration of why Luanti needs more camera options. :D I hope one day there will be a way to fix the hackery so that it becomes a serious game.
EDIT: Oh, the audio of this game is good. Voice acting in a game jam game is very cool. :-)
This game has a simple quest: You must slay some hidden beast. To do that, you have to discover two areas and then drop into some kind of dungeon.
The graphics are custom and include 3D models but everything looks really bad and clunky.
Then the game has a lot of bugs: The beast didn't even spawn in the final arena (and I didn't bother to check why). There are missing textures. You can dig through the ground and fall into the void (and the game doesn't reset you).
The game overall is quite boring. The quest is too simple, you basically just have to walk in a small forest to reach targets on a map. The map helps you.
The final dungeon looked a bit better than the rest, but it still was just a (mostly) simple linear corridor and unfortunately, at the end, no beast to be found here (bug?).
This is barely even a game. There's not much to do. It looks like a VERY early pre-alpha version. Just a grass biome with small trees, an ocean, and that's it. No music, no sound, no mobs, no crafting (at least I didn't discover any recipes), no plants besides trees.
:-(
I think the Italian translation was never complete. In the latest version it's a bit better, but still incomplete. Whenever something isn't translated, it falls back to English.
I hereby solemny swear that all diamonds can be found.
I give you a hint: Not all diamonds spawn as items. ;-)
FYI: The tower is the final level of the game by the way. They key to victory is to look at all spots for buttons.
You can teleport to any level with the
/levelcommand.You know my philosophy. Either do it right, or remove the feature. That’s better than to pretend the software has a feature when in reality it’s very broken. An alternative would be to clearly mark this feature as experimental, and it must be enabled first.
No. I know at least enough to know that naive approaches to render Arabic will not work. I also know using a text shaping library like Harfbuzz would solve this way more elegantly instead of re-inventing the wheel in a mod. One idea would be adding Harfbuzz (or similar) in Luanti, that would be nice.
Yeah, this is what I did in my fork but of course it would be better if combining marks just worked. At least the replacement character tells the user this character is unsupported. Thankfully, Unicode includes a lot of codepoints where diacriticals are "baked in", so to say.
One possibility would be partial support for combining marks, so those cases that are implemented will render, the unimplemented cases will lead to replacement chars (until implemented). Admittedly, in my fork I have thrown combining marks away entirely. The Unicode rules are quite complex and overwhelming.
Alright, alright. I’ll rename the mod in Repixture. Admittedly, I only had lame excuses. I never disagreed with your reasoning btw and I’m perfectly aware this was bad practice, I just made up ad-hoc excuses lol.
Thanks! Sugarcane can randomly start to grow next to papyrus plants on dirt with grass, but it takes a long time. (the whole plants system is subject to a rework when I start to work on this game again)
This game is a simple puzzle game and a good time-waster when you're bored. The gameplay is 2D but with (cheap) 3D graphics. There are a lot of ideas which are all over the place. And an absolutely massive number of levels. You either have to eat all apples, push boxes, blow up TNT to break walls, open doors with keys, push linked pyramids around, etc.
The biggest downside of this game is the lack of polish. No sounds, no music. The graphics are a mix of Minetest Game and programmer art. There are no animations for events e.g. TNT doesn't visually explode, it just disappears. Fire isn't animated, neither is water. When you shoot arrows, there's no shooting animation. And so on. Events (like level completion) are shown in the chat.
The levels are okayish. Most of the levels do a good job in introducing new puzzle elements, but there are 2 game elements which can be tricky. What's a bit annoying that a few levels are duplications. Those should be removed. Let's say the levels are good enough I keep coming back to this game.
Controls are straight-forward: Movement keys to move, jump key to fire a ball (rarely used), sneak key to reset and Aux1 key to undo last move. Unfortunately, the undo only works for the last move. The level selection is less pleasant: You must punch literally blocks with the word "WORLD1" on them. You must manually select the next level after you completed one. This gets tedious.
The game is not well-programmed. It has a surprisingly high CPU use and a single move has a noticable lag/delay. (ca. 1/5 of a second, which adds up quickly). Some puzzle elements like the blue arrow only exist in one direction.
Some puzzle elements are just outright annoying. There is a block that turns the light off, one activates a 30s timer
This review was written for version 2.15.1.
Thanks! In a post-game jam update the powerslide confusion should be fixed by now. What wasn't obvious in the game jam version is that you can't use your powerslide when you're not on enough solid ground. On top, it also was a little buggy. But it should be fixed. Also there is now an icon showing clearly when exactly you can perform your special action.
I hereby solemny swear that it's possible to collect and save every electron in this game. I tested this multiple times over and over because I wanted to get this right for sure. This includes the game jam version.
And there is actually a way to get back up from the long red cable at the bottom of Transport Pipes. But it involves a little bit of thinking and attention to detail.
A sequel has been floating in my head for a while, maybe I'll start it when my other projects are done.
The reason they're that big is because they're falling nodes and they can form stacks nicely.
Thanks for this review, it made me think! First of all, I won't implement your suggested ideas as this game is finished for me. This was done for a game jam and I'm only 50% happy with the end result or story. But I'm happy with the technology I achieved (like I wrote a complete mapgen just for this game, the heavy use of leveled nodes that have fine-tuned heights (rather than just full blocks and slabs), or how the light orb moves very well). It was a nice experiment. For a full-blown cut scene, there wasn't time. But I didn't plan one anyway.
I think the game is "good enough" for a game jam but I don't think it has potential; the whole overall gameplay didn't really work out for me. Such is the life of a game dev: You don't know what gameplay is good without trying it.
But still! I like the idea of a camera pan showing the actual forest, I agree that could have explained the story better. It's unfortunate the messages went away too fast for you. I also agree some kind of message log would be nice. You're not the only player who couldn't follow the story at some parts. The game could indeed have done a better job here. Or in general, the whole plot point of "the forest is dying" ... I don't think the game as a whole communicated it well.
I suppose making cut scenes in Minetest is possible but it involves some ugly ugly hackery.
So although I probably don't want to make updates to this game anymore (only bugfixes), these are good ideas to keep in mind for future projects. So thanks.
Ah yes, PvP is indeed missing and I already considered to add it. My idea was to add some fighting dolls, you know, like in the middle ages (idk).
BUT! I am currently sitting on the fence of whether I make a complete new tutorial from scratch or I just extend the current one. The code is dated and I don't like that the signs are so wordy, and that the game makes no good use of the HUD, etc.
Have you tried to find all electrons yet? If you start the game world again after you reached the end, you return to the Hub again. (sorry, there's no bonus for collecting all electrons tho).
The content for this game was made for a game jam in only 3 weeks and I don't plan to add new content. Only bugfix/maintenance updates. This game is officially finished.
But there might be a successor game to this one. Who knows? :D
This mod originally was made by sorcerykid for the JT2 server, I just picked this mod up. Since then, I've seen this mod in use on the A.E.S. server in June 2024, which was nice to see.
Strange, I wasn't aware of any lag issues. Weird. This doesn't happen to me (neither Minetest 5.8.0 or 5.9.0). Placing or digging blocks is near-instant to me. If you know more about this, file a bug report please.
And yes, the mobs are just reskins except for minor code changes. It's just Mobs Redo, mostly. You caught me there. :D And it's true, it's not supposed to stay like this.
The game I envision here is actually much different from the current version which should be considered just a draft, none of the current features are set in stone. But I haven't touched this game for a long time, no idea when I return. And a little spoiler, the game I envision will also have more lore, not just the simple startup text in chat.
Thanks for your review (even if this is for an early draft version).