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[Thordur]

Le'game: http://www.loomus.com/prismatica/playtest/

Le'landing page: http://www.loomus.com/prismatica/

Le'requirements: Windows or Mac with Unity Web Player Installed (link on page if needed). Apparently Unity Web Player and Linux aren't friends though

Le'feedback I'm looking for: General design and gameplay feedback of the whole experience so far as well as level design/difficulty curve comments (too easy? too hard? just right? don't get it?). Would you pay $5 for a finished iOS/Android version? What about PC/Mac/Linux? Any useful feedback on the landing page and general marketing material would be nice too.

Le'Pretty Pictures:

p.s. I'll be checking out some other games on this forum and commenting later tonight... sharing the love and all that

[RainWorldIsAwesome]

Very interested sounds hard in a good way

[Ooops]

Really well-made, looks very good with the bright colors. Looks polished as well. Not quite sure the song is fitting though, and it could quickly get repetitive if it's the only one in the sound track.

Now, I wouldn't pay for it because it's quite similar to a Rubik's cube and those kinds of puzzle frustrate me more than they entertain me but that's personal.

Your "landing page" looks really good too by the way.

[Thordur]

Thanks guys

Yest it's definitely a niche game, something for the "puzzlephiles" out there (of which I can sometimes be one if I'm in that kind of a mood). It just tends to annoy the living sh*t out of most "normal" people after the first 3-6 levels.

As an example of how surprisingly hard this thing turned out to be (cause on paper it looked & sounded easy as pie), I made 3 levels manually for the first playable prototype/proof-of-concept, something I figured would be "easy" -> "medium" -> "hard" and it took me some 3 nights (I work on this ~1-2 hors per night) just to get through the "medium" level... and then 2 minutes to get through the "hard" one. Turned out the things that controlled the difficulty were extremely different from what I'd theorized on paper (example: smaller levels are harder than larger).

But I knew I might have something here for a niche audience because of two things;

• First, when I was testing and debugging, I tended to lose myself in "having to" solve the level I started up instead of just seeing if the dragging mechanism bug was fixed now (or whatever
• Second, I had my wife give it a go and on level two (of another prototype with a steeper difficulty curve) she got all flustered and growled at the screen a lot and finally slammed the laptop shut and strode of yelling something about this being a stupid game and it didn't work and so on. Now that may not seem positive taken out of context, but this happens to be the exact same reaction I get from her when I hand her a Rubic's Cube or some other type of hard-but-good puzzle

On the music front; this is an Alpha build and the time I've spent on music so far consists basically ripping two songs of my friends soundcloud, who happens to be a really awesome (although a very specialized/niche musician) and throwing them unedited into the game, one for the menu and one for the gameplay, and then sending him a link to the build and calling him up for a conversation that went something like this:

• Me: "Hey dude, can I use your music in a game I'm making? I sent you a link to a prototype so you can see what I mean."
• Him: "Huh?" *sound of keyboard hammering and mouse clicking*
• Me: "I can't actually pay you or anything but I think I have a solid concept on my hands that might possible make some money and if it does you can totally have some of it!"
• Him: "Eh... well.. I guess so?... How wou..."
• Me: "AWESOME! Thanks man, you're the best!"
• Him: "Wait, whaaa..." *click*

The music will eventually consist of his work, similar to the two tunes already in, but there will be no vocals/singing and they'll be cut into more game-friendly loops and there will be a lot more of them (i.e. different tunes rotating between levels). Here's some of his stuff: https://soundcloud.com/svavarknutur ...just imagine it without the singing. I'd mostly want to use the tracks that are ukulele and/or guitar picking only cause I feel the simple and pure and dare I say "minimalist" style of the music as well as the overall calming and contemplative feeling of the songs fits well into the atmosphere I'm trying to create in the game.

Anyhoo, glad you generally like it and on that note I should get back to work... that thing won't code itself (although that would be so cool).

[jgrams]

I played through the first chapter and a couple levels of the second. These sorts of rotational combination puzzles usually give me fits, but I feel like I'm actually starting to understand out how to think about it. So I'd say the progression seems good to me so far.

When dragging, it's unclear to me how it decides which center to rotate around when there's a choice. It doesn't seem like it's just distance from the center. It has a tendency to rotate the one I wasn't thinking of. Maybe the game is trying to tell me something?

It doesn't show me which stars I got when I complete the level; it only shows them when looking at the chapter/level select screen.

It took me a little fiddling around to realize what "M:" and "R:" were ("moves" and "spaces rotated", right?). Maybe you should give them longer labels? Or explain them at some point? Actually I'm not sure why you have the second one at all...are you using it for scoring in some way?

And is it deliberate that the timer and the counters don't show up when you first play the level? I could see that you might be trying to make it more relaxing the first time through or something. But it would be nice if there was an option to always show it. Or maybe just have it retract into the edge of the screen, and have a little handle you could grab or click to slide it open or closed, and only do the current behavior if the user didn't leave it open last time?

As for your landing page...first off your IMGA acceptance video is hilarious. Not so professional, maybe, but I got a good laugh out of it.

I saw your "marketspeak-to-English" rationale for using "essentialistic", but my first reaction was, "That's not a real word!" Unless it's important to you, you might consider using a less esoteric word...

You need an apostrophe in "Prismatica's" at the beginning of the second paragraph under "About the Game". And I'm almost positive that you want "aesthetic" instead of "aesthetical" there.

Otherwise it looks good to me.

Edit: Oh. After you complete a level, I really want a "replay" button as well as the current "go on" and "chapter menu" buttons...

Edit edit: In level 1-03 (you have a screenshot above) it should be "colors between axes blend"

[Xienen]

Awesome game concept and execution is looking pretty good so far, as well.  This kinda game is right up my alley, so I might slowly play through the whole thing as time allows.

[zavist]

I feel the music shouldn't restart between levels. I like how relaxing the game feels overall, but this kind of takes away from it.

It would also be good to have a more convenient way to access the solution, but I'm not sure how you could implement that. Perhaps a button next to Pause, which overlays the solution on top of your current playfield temporarily.

The overall feel of the game is very enjoyable, the controls and animations are smooth. I'd love to kill time with this on the train

[joe_eyemobi]

First of all, well done on the overall polish of the game.  I am a big fan of minimalist style - so I think you've executed that well.

I played through a few levels then skipped ahead to see how the difficulty ramped up, which it did significantly!

I'm not really a puzzle gamer, but it's really impressive how you've created an original mechanic (from my own experience) which is easy to play but hard to master. 

In terms of recommendations:

• While it is a chilled out game, I agree with some of the other folks above about the music not quite fitting in.  Perhaps experiment with less or no vocals during the actual game itself
• I think the biggest point of friction (esp. with casual gamers) will be just picking up on the game mechanics.  They are pretty clear to us, but to a casual gamer they may get lost.  Perhaps an animation in the corner showing how you turn the cogs would be helpful.  A bit like at the start of angry birds - it shows a finger pulling back the slingshot
• You could experiment with adding more feedback into the game.  E.g. once you have completed a cog, show an effect and/or a sound to show that cog is done. This will also help with training the users on how to play

Other than that, it's an outstanding effort - keep us posted on how you go!