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[bitserum]

Cloudfall is a game made for the 2014 Indie Game Maker contest. The premise of the game is a no-hands-holding, relaxed exploration with an open world and a puzzling secretive environment.

Play it here: http://vatigogames.com/cloudfall/

We intend to create a full release at some point if there is enough interest, so any feedback and criticisms are highly appreciated.









The art is mostly a placeholder and will be improved upon. We needed something to build a game with quickly in a month of time.
Mostly the basics of the game have been fleshed out, except that currently there's a linear fashion of progression the players need to figure out.

*edit - updating links

[Quicksand-S]

That's placeholder art...? If you say so. I think it looks great.

-The cursor and "smoke" trail are the only visuals I really don't like. That sprite doesn't stand out much and it looks like it's been scaled down too much. Bits of the outline are missing.

-I found some of the visuals and level design to be misleading. I rained down over a hole, but only certain holes work for that. I know they look slightly different but maybe the altar one should be a bowl on a pedestal or something.

-The only thing I got to work was the Rain/Water power. Both fire and wind did nothing to the altars they were apparently supposed to affect. Do they use different controls? With fire, I was especially confused because I lit other torches without any issues.

-I didn't really enjoy wandering around, trying to find altars I'd seen before. When powers didn't work as it seemed they should, I really didn't want to go all the way back to where I'd gained the power.

-Apart from my issues with the powers, the game works great. It runs smoothly and controls very well. I didn't get stuck on any level geometry and all the powers were absorbed properly.

-I really liked an "easter egg" sort of area I found. That was a nice touch.

[jgrams]

-I found some of the visuals and level design to be misleading. I rained down over a hole, but only certain holes work for that. I know they look slightly different but maybe the altar one should be a bowl on a pedestal or something.

-The only thing I got to work was the Rain/Water power. Both fire and wind did nothing to the altars they were apparently supposed to affect. Do they use different controls? With fire, I was especially confused because I lit other torches without any issues.

I also found it confusing at times, but it's an exploration game, so I assumed that was at least partly intentional. It was entertaining enough that I kept at it until I figured it all out. Everything seemed to work OK for me.

I'm wondering if you didn't actually get the powers you thought you got? The visuals are fairly misleading in some places (e.g. the "bright" cloud which lights up dark places and ignites torches isn't the actual fire power). And I thought snow was wind for a little while... The actual powers are shown in the last gif on the OP. And you saying "easter egg area" makes me wonder...because you have to go inside most of the islands to finish the game.

Or maybe you did run into actual bugs, I dunno.

Anyway. It did seem a little strange and unnecessarily confusing that there are two levels of fire, and that snow is this odd fifth "element" or power or whatever. But I'm not sure how to make it better. And overall I enjoyed it.

[Quicksand-S]

...the "bright" cloud which lights up dark places and ignites torches isn't the actual fire power...

Oh, wow. Yeah...I never would've expected the power I got from fire, which also let me create fire, to not be the fire power. I just thought of it as a bug and moved on to look for other powers.

I suppose I could've figured that out from the last GIF, but most players won't have the benefit of that.

As for the snow/wind power, I was mainly comparing the symbols on the signs to the ones on the "altars" so there shouldn't have been any confusion. If I get a power near a "wind" sign then I'd expect that to be the wind power which would be used for the altar with the same symbol. I realize now that it's almost the way it works, but it wasn't obvious that I hadn't actually gotten the real power.


Update: I really liked the waterfall puzzle. I do find it very strange, though, that the player is kind of taught that powers are found naturally (with the water) only to have things work a completely different way with the other powers. I also have no idea why I got my first permanent power by doing things that had nothing to do with that element.

At least once, I was on the right track but thought I was wrong because it just didn't work. Potential spoiler: I used the rock above some vines in the fire area and it didn't break them because I didn't high enough. I assumed that I just needed some other power to get rid of them.

I got all but wind. It really seemed like I should be able to destroy the vines on the island above, to let water flow down. The fire power made a sound but did nothing. The rock didn't work in water. Manually watering all flowers by raining while moving didn't work either, even though it seemed like it should have. I think I'm giving up there for now.

The confusing visual language is, I think, the only major issue I have. I really like elemental puzzles and the overall style.

[bitserum]

Hi guys, thanks for the detailed feedback!

The visual cues are something that will need to be heavily improved with expanding the game. The intention for the first "fire" power was for it to be light that lights up these fire flowers you find in caves. It should have probably went another way with the cloud resembling a shining sun better and flowers be something like light bulbs or little suns instead of torches.

And the powers themselves should be expanded in their functionality.

@Quicksand-S
You were on the right track for getting the wind power. Walkthrough spoiler: The water needs to be frozen before burning the vines to get the to dry out. Is that too illogical though?
Regarding the Easter egg do you mean the island with the mural?

@jgrams
My reasoning was to have normal cloud functions (snow, rain, and possibly lightning at some point) gained from the environment. Might have to rethink the approach overall.

[Quicksand-S]

@Quicksand-S
You were on the right track for getting the wind power. Walkthrough spoiler: The water needs to be frozen before burning the vines to get the to dry out. Is that too illogical though?

My thoughts: I guess that makes sense. Maybe the problem is that there are multiple seemingly viable ways to complete the task. For example, I tried freezing the water, thinking that cracking the ice with the rock power might break the vines. Also, the fact that touching the vines with the fire power made a sound just confused me rather than making me feel like I was on the right track, because nothing happened. Maybe they could start burning and then the flame could go out.

Other things I tried (hidden just in case someone considers them spoilers):


-Dropping my rock-power self onto the water, to break the vines like I'd been "taught" to. Obviously, that didn't work. It seems like a waste that the rock isn't used for anything in the water, though.

-I noticed that the water down below seemed to be steaming, so I thought maybe I had to heat the water and do something that way.

-Sprinting right-to-left across the flowers, I managed to water two of the three and then I dropped into that small puddle with enough time to water the last one. For some reason, it didn't work. I'd suggest maybe increasing the size of that area slightly, so that it's obvious you can't water them all by being fast.

Regarding the Easter egg do you mean the island with the mural?

Yeah. It'd be nice if there was more optional "story" to be found on the islands.

[vatigo]

Hello everyone, I'm the other developer of this game.
Thank you guys for your feedback!

I agree that the light and fire functions are kind of confusing, we'll have to rethink that, I'll just say that it's a good thing we got rid of the 2 different snow abilities

We should probably make it more clear that there's a difference between active abilities like rain and snow and passive ones (which are in the right click menu).
Light ability kind of blurs the line because it's passive but fire flowers activate it.

I appreciate your insight about the puzzles, it's always difficult to put yourself in the shoes of the unsuspecting player when you already know the correct solution.

I like the idea of populating other caves with some story bits as well

[jgrams]

Oh; I forgot to mention that it heats up my Thinkpad more/faster than any other game I've played. Not sure if that's CPU or GPU usage, but changing the graphics quality in the Unity startup menu doesn't seem to make any difference.

[bitserum]

@Quicksand-S
Thanks a lot, that will help immensely for the future of level design approach. Overall having various ways of solving the same puzzle would be really cool too and is worth considering.
As for adding more story elements, that's definitely on the to-do list if the game gets expanded.

@jgrams
I'm not surprised, as it was really rushed the whole game is one big mess of colliders, sprites, lights and excessive particles. Due to the time limitation of the contest there was no time for optimization in the end. But I'm happy we managed to catch most of the bugs last two days

[The Sloth Jesus]

This type of game would work really well on mobile. To add on to what was already said, one puzzle I found misleading was the one where you burn the root to let the water fall into the cave with the ice flowers. I kept trying to find ways to break it with my rock power since that was how I broke the previous root. Then I tried fire, but on the left side it won't burn the root, only on the right side.

[Lappin]

I like exploration based games and this wasn't an exception. It was fun to try to figure out how different powers interacted with the environment and even more environment interactions would be fun. I for example liked the sound it made when you tried to burn the wet roots.

The visuals were great for only being placeholders! I did find a minor lightning bug in the cave at the top left corner of the map though.

It felt a bit strange that you couldn't fall through water with the rock ability, and what you could and couldn't do with the different fire abilities were a bit trial and error, (but that's exploration, right? )

Anyway, some people seems to think that the abilities didn't quite make sense, especially as you partly went for a "four elements" style, but weren't consistent. But I think this won't be a problem if you start adding more elements (both temporary and permanent). If the powers were more distinct from each other that would probably also help (If you want two different fire powers, there should be more clear what the bigger one could do and not.) Another thing that would be cool would be if your abilities had more visual impact on the environment such as being able to burn vines or make the leaves blow in the trees or something.

I didn't think the puzzles were too hard, but they were clever in the design. It wasn't frustrating at least . Puzzles involving combining several elements are fun and I'd like to see more of that!

Good luck!

[bitserum]

Thanks for the further feedback guys!

I agree the rock power is quite misleading, the interaction between various transformations and the environment should flow better. The transformations themselves will have to function in a slightly different way than now (not to have them reset instantly when an environmental element it touched, etc.).

@The Sloth Jesus I haven't managed to reproduce the bug with being able to burn the roots on only one side, but will look into it better.

@Lappin, really glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for the suggestions!
I wouldn't though throw poor design decisions on our part in the "exploration" bucket. Must fix all the things (regarding the rock/water part)

[vatigo]

The bug with burning root is when you're already touching the root and you transform to fire... it won't work because we only catch the beg beginning of the collision.
I fixed the similar bug with torch it's an easy fix.

I think we should make sure the player knows what the permanent powers do. We can do that for example by placing the powers inside caves and after you pick them up, collapse the entrance so the only way to exit the cave is to use the power you picked up. Or something like that.