next »

[BilbyCoder]

Nitere
A Colour Matching Puzzle Game by Binary Sprite

About The Game
Nitere is a strategic colour matching puzzle game.  Players must direct beams of light around an increasingly chaotic board. Each game piece placed by the player will increase the risk... and the potential reward.





Features

• Strategic puzzle game
• Variety of powerups
• Adjustable difficulty via board size and colour range
• Customisable colours - find your optimal setup
• Two board themes

Open Beta
The game is feature complete but we need testers.  We are providing access to the beta version of the game on itch.io for free. When we have finished testing it will be released as a paid downloadable game for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. Nitere will also be available for Android through Google Play and for iOS devices through the App Store.

We are looking for general feedback on the game, particularly things which might be bugs.  I have basic analytics set up so just playing the game will give valuable feedback.

If you want to provide some feedback to us directly for some reason you can do so at [email protected]

You can play Nitere now at http://binarysprite.itch.io/nitere

[Quicksand-S]

I thought this was kind of a cool game and I don't have any major issues or bugs to report.

The tutorial was quite well-done. That said, I still ended up feeling like it hadn't actually prepared me at all because I didn't know what to do with all the extra converter nodes that didn't have emitters associated with them. It felt wrong to have them just shoot beams at the walls of the level or the unused sides of emitters.

Bug? I tried submitting a level I hadn't done anything to and a power-up spawned (the kind that creates an emitter).

Bug? Depending on the window size, the grid lines can look pretty bad. In a maximized window on my screen, parts of the lines are bright while other parts are dark. It looks very strange.

Keeping emitters on the board if they weren't used previously often left me with unusable emitters taking up space at the edges of the board. I guess that's my fault for using a certain play style, but it seemed strange.

It felt a little strange that the tutorial stayed on the page I left it at.

I found it a bit unclear how many points I would get for any particular action/setup.

Overall, I thought the game was pretty enjoyable. I like the concept and the visual style. Also, the way you've set up level progression to require a certain score seems like a really good idea. I like that a lot.

[BilbyCoder]

Thanks for looking at the game.

We've had a bit of feedback that people find it unusual that not every node can be cleared in a turn.  I'm still debating if I want to change that.  It would take a bit of work to have the game create completely solvable puzzles each turn, and that wasn't the sort of play I was aiming for.

The first potential bug you raised is something I need to fix.  It was worse before, I had a bug that each time you opened and closed the options menu it had a chance to spawn a power-up. 

Interestingly I never considered clearing and replacing emitters whether they made a link or not.  I'll have to give that a trial run and see what I think.

I set the tutorial to continue from the page it was left at due to its length.  Were you returning to it after completing it and having an issue switching it back to the beginning?

I'll have to see what we can do about the grid lines.  Which theme were you using?  There's the marble theme and it can be changed to a wood theme in the options.

In regards to the points, I'll consider adding a scoring guide to the tutorial.  It's a little convoluted.  1 point for the first node cleared on the converter, 3 points for 2 nodes, 6 points for 3 nodes and 10 points for four nodes, plus a doubling of the points if you clear the final node on the converter.  5 points for the mirrors and then your total points for the turn have the score multiplier power up applied to it if you pick it up.

Level progression to score seemed the most logical to me, the fun was trying to balance how many points were required to level up (the artist spent many a long hour with the game testing the score -> level balance).

Thanks for looking at the game, and for the positive comments.  I'll consider what you've mentioned and try a couple of things.

[Quicksand-S]

I set the tutorial to continue from the page it was left at due to its length.  Were you returning to it after completing it and having an issue switching it back to the beginning?

Yeah. If I go back to it in order to double-check something, it just feels strange to start at the end or the middle. Then again, I'd probably never go back to it if I wasn't testing the game for someone.

I'll have to see what we can do about the grid lines.  Which theme were you using?  There's the marble theme and it can be changed to a wood theme in the options.

I was using the default theme. I really don't like the other theme. I was in Firefox with a maximized window and 1920x1080 resolution.

5 points for the mirrors

This is where it gets strange for me. It's an interesting puzzle game in that it's better to make something crazy and convoluted (even if half the emitters shoot at nothing) than it is to something straightforward. The mirrors, however, take far less skill to use than other things. I can use all of them in pretty much any level, just to make beams go toward walls, so I actually feel like they shouldn't be worth anything.

[Vallar]

I played the game for sometime... it is really a fund game and I enjoyed it but there were few things that made me feel confused while I was playing.

Some of these I can see were addressed in previous comments; not clear what I am supposed to do in a level as the board is empty with 1 emitter only. Not clear how points are calculated. Not clear if how I lose this game. Sometimes I ended up setting my own goals and my own setup to get more points (ignoring whatever on the board, or sometimes when the board with empty).

So far, I haven't really figured out what I need to do, what is my ultimate goal? Is it to get higher levels? If so, it isn't quite clear as not every board gives you a problem... I ended up (in level 1) with multiple empty boards and I didn't really know what to do with them. An example of this is Candy Crush for example, your objective is to get to the next level or higher score if you will. Angry birds, destroying all the pigs. Cut the Rope, feed the little monster.
Always something clear, but sometimes that wasn't clear in the game. Specially when some "Receivers" spawned facing the wall and I was out of powerups to turn them so I had to wait for one to appear.

The tutorial didn't prepare me well for the above problems, though I got the jest of what each element does.

I liked the music in the game, but I feel that prolonged listening to the track would definitely make it boring (I played for about 30 minutes or so). So I'd say have some more tracks embedded.

All in all, I enjoyed the game but the few things that I mentioned (and the previous post mentioned) made me feel lost and not sure of what I do.

Very well done game though and a really cool idea Good luck!

[BilbyCoder]

Vallar, thanks for looking at the game.  The objective of the game is to last as long as you can, and to get as high a score as possible.  Based on your comments, and the comments of Quicksand-S I'm in the process of reviewing point rewards for certain pieces.

I think some of the confusion comes from the lack of pressure applied by our game.  Most "last as long as you can" type puzzle games apply pressure that the player must respond to (classic is Tetris where the blocks are always falling, giving the player limited time to try and place them).  In our case you have to keep the board under control, and not loose track of the patterns you are building.  This lack of pressure was a deliberate choice early in development.

An interesting thing I noticed when I was looking at the analytics of the games played is that all the games were played at a 3 colour 6x6 grid.  The options provide either a 6x6, 8x8 or 10x10 grids, with 3, 4 or 5 colours.

3 colours and 6x6 is the default, but a 6x6 grid is small, limiting placement options.  I included this grid size to render the game playable on small screens such as phones.  3 colours also means that it's fairly easy to completely clear your board, which I note you say you were able to do fairly frequently Vallar.

I'm going to see what changing the default to 8x8 4 colours does when I release my next testing build.  I'm also considering adding a section in the tutorial that points out the options available and how to access them.

The game really is built around the idea of sitting down, creating patterns on the board and trying not to cross the beams.  There isn't a deeper end goal there, nor was there intended to be.  I think the biggest challenge in front of me is messaging, making sure the player understands this, and sets their expectations accordingly.

In regards to the bugs, I hope to have a new build out at the end of this week, fixing the power up spawn bug.  I believe the graphics issues when going full screen are related to the Unity Web Player not switching to an appropriate aspect ratio, and I'll investigate how to fix that.  Going full screen on the desktop builds did not create issues with line width and strength.

Again,  thanks Qucksand-S and Vallar for looking at the game.  It's given me a lot to think about, and a good indication on what to work on as we push towards release.  I hope to have a new testing build up by this coming weekend.

[Vallar]

I am glad my feedback didn't make you angry

That said, since now I have a better understanding... I am looking forward to the next build. Do let us know so I can test it out again if you need

[BilbyCoder]

There wouldn't be much point my posting to this forum if constructive feedback and criticism was going to make me angry.

[BilbyCoder]

New build is up.  We've made a few changes based on the feedback.  The game now defaults to a grid size of 8x8 with 4 colours, rather than the previous 6x6 with 3 colours.

We have updated the tutorial to try and indicate the mood and feel of the game.  To help push the idea of beating your best score, the game over screen now reports on your score, the number of turns you have played and the number of nodes you have cleared, comparing it to your record in each category for that grid size / colour combination.

Just realised scoring hasn't been clarified in the tutorial.

As before it can be found at http://binarysprite.itch.io/nitere.

[BilbyCoder]

Alright, the beta is over.  Nitere is now released.

I have made a general release thread at http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=42521.msg1048626#msg1048626.