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[FreelancePolice]

http://www.yoyogames.com/games/119814-m%C9%AA%CA%80%CA%80%D0%A4%D1%8F%D1%8F%C9%AAm



Playthrough Part 1:




Playthrough Part 2:




Narcissus lost his soul to the mirrors.
What will they do to you?

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In puzzle-platformer MɪʀʀФяяɪM (Mirrorrim), the player controls protagonist George, who, in the dark woods, has discovered an ancient temple of great power. But, alas, the floor gives out beneath him, trapping him in the cavernous depths below.
Now, with the trusty Staff of Mirrorrim, which imbues George with the power to create mystical mirrors that can rearrange the world around him, George must attempt to escape this ancient house of darkness.

But who, or what, exactly is Mirrorrim? And who are the strange voices that seem to be talking to George through writing on the walls?
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The game zip includes a text-only Read Me file.

Please download the full (23 MB) PDF manual at: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=RYRIZVD0

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MɪʀʀФяяɪM was created by Less Than Royal Games for UC Santa Cruz's Winter 2010 CMPS 80K Intro to Game Design class.  Judges from EA and Gaijin Games ranked it third out of over a hundred entries.

Although MɪʀʀФяяɪM is completed, any feedback here or reviews on YoYo Games would be appreciated.  Please feel free link friends to MɪʀʀФяяɪM, post about it on Facebook, etc.  We'd love the publicity!


Update 3/26/10: Release 1.01 uploaded to YoYo Games, hopefully fixing a lot of the compatibility issues people have mentioned.  The full changelog can be found here.

[J. R. Hill]

It doesn't seem to read my joystick correctly, it reads my right analog stick's up and down (z rotation) correctly but it reads the same stick's left and right (z axis) as the button that places mirrors.  Basically the mirror stays pointing left and I can only tilt it up or down, so I can't even get out of the first room.

I don't see any way to change controls either...

[FreelancePolice]

Erg, I'm sorry. The joystick controls have only been tested for the 360 controller.  If your joystick isn't functioning, the game will also accept keyboard-only (using the numpad) or keyboard and mouse controls.  You will have to unplug the joystick in order for it to start taking mouse input, though.

Edit: Rereading your post, yeah, the issue is definitely that it was built specifically for the 360 controller because it's such a popular input device, but the 360 controller has really messed-up axes.  Z-axis is actually controlled by the triggers, I believe, hence your issue where moving the stick left and right is read as a trigger input.

[Sean A.]

Wow really nice game, the concept reminds me of braid a lot. I thought the graphics were nice, I didn't really like the music that much and the jumping physics could have been improved a bit but good job!

[Sam]

My poor brain

I like it!  I only got to the room with the first enemies before having to take a break.  I also didn't bother to check the manual or readme before playing.

It took me a while to understand that I cannot dispel/create a new reflection unless the position I'm in is open in the "real world".  I often didn't really have a good idea of what my position in the real world was.  The overlay showing the real world could perhaps be more obvious?  My suggestion would be glowing outlines of real world stuff, rather than just increasing the alpha of the overlay.

That'd also make it clear which side of the mirror was the real world and which the mirror world.  At first I didn't understand there was a difference; I thought of it as being more like a portal or Increpare's Mirror Stage where both sides are "real".

I felt that the lighting effect of basically having a transparent radial gradient following the player around made it harder to see what was going on than needed.

Specific stuff with the platforming physics: Jumping up a wall whilst running into it seems to slow you down - I'd expect to slide smoothly up the wall and reach the same height as if I'd jumped in open air.  Sometimes when creating an upwards facing mirror the character would float in the air until I wiggled him a bit when he should have just fallen straight down; I think that only happened whilst standing next to a wall too.

I played it with an XBox 360 controller on Windows 7 64-bit and had no technical difficulties.

All in all a really neat idea and I'll definitely be returning to the game when I'm more fresh.

[FreelancePolice]

Thanks for the great feedback, Salt.  I'd love to hear what you think of the rest of the rest of the game. Hope you like it!

[Hatsu]

Nice game.  I've only played the first few levels so far, but enjoyed it.  I would have to agree with above that at first I struggled to tell the difference between the real world and the mirrored world. I hope you odn't mind, but I featured it on the release section of my site.

[Xecutor]

Quite mind bending puzzle
I have serious problem when playing with keyboard+mouse.
I have secondary monitor (plasma tv) connected in 'extend desktop' mode.
When I move mouse to the left (it's where desktop is extended)
and click - game loses focus.
While I can understand where 'jump' to continue come from,
I suggest to allow to press enter to continue/skip.

Nice game and very promising mechanics!

[BinaryMind]

Mine ran way too slow on my computer. I have a gig of RAM, so I guess that's not enough. You should post specific specs for the game.

[FreelancePolice]

Thank you for linking to us, Hatsu. More people playing our game is never a bad thing.

Xecutor, thanks for the suggestion. Jump to continue makes a lot more sense on the controller, and for some reason we never considered using enter. That will probably make it into the next update. 
The multiple monitor issue seems to be inherent to GameMaker games, though, and I doubt there is anything we can do about it. To my knowledge, GM lacks any functions to directly reposition that mouse position, and so we are unable to prevent it from occasionally drifting onto a secondary monitor occasionally.  If you are unable to use a controller or numpad controls instead, I would recommend disconnecting the secondary monitor while playing.

BinaryMind, would you mind posting the rest of your system specs?  It will help us a lot in determining what the minimum system requirements are, as we have so far had access to a very limited selection of testing hardware.

[Hatsu]

No worries.  In reference to above it is definately not a RAM issue as I played it fine on an old laptop with 256mb.

[Xecutor]

GM lacks any functions to directly reposition that mouse position, and so we are unable to prevent it from occasionally drifting onto a secondary monitor occasionally. 

May be add an option to display mouse cursor?
If I can see it I wont move it away from the screen

[BinaryMind]

Well I'm running on a Vista 32-Bit Home Edition laptop with 1.86GHz processor and I do have DirectX9.

[Frostblade]

Like BinaryMind, the game ran pretty slowly for me. I'm running Windows Vista on a 2 GHz dual-core processor with around 3 GB of RAM. It's worth noting that my computer tends to have problems running games in general, for whatever reason. As a benchmark, I was fine running Assassin Blue, but Spelunky (at 3x scale) was occasionally quite laggy.

You might want to consider opening up a "low-fi" small windowed option before you release the game. It wouldn't damage quality too much (since the gameplay seems to be the focus), the small size means it'd cause a minimal filesize increase, and you'd be able to draw in those audience members with slower computers.

Then again, GM's structure means that implementing a second set of graphics would be pretty difficult. I'd look into whether the "view in scaled mode" option causes any significant decrease in CPU usage.

[chardish]

A very interesting concept. Game ran fine for me, 3 GB of RAM on an Phenom X2 2.9 GHz triple-core machine, though :D

I found the game's controls to get in the way of the puzzling most of the time. In my mind, a puzzle platformer should be three parts puzzle, one part platformer: in other words, once you figure out the solution, the execution shouldn't get in the way. A good example of where I ran into problems with this was the room where you have to use mirrors to clear away the spikes - I quickly figured out what I needed to do, but died about fifteen times trying to make the jumps. Usually I would land on the corner of the spikes, or walk sideways into a spike and die. The collision detection here is very sensitive!

I also think you need to work on your level design. There's one jump you have to make before you get the staff that is needlessly difficult (again, why is this a test of your platforming skills?) In addition, being forced to restart in the very first room you get the staff is frustrating; can you design the room such that you do not need to restart? I understand that your game mechanic necessitates the possibility of being required to restart, however, in room #1 (while I'm still trying to figure out the game mechanics) is really rough.

All in all, though, a really interesting idea and I look forward to seeing where you go with this!

[Lokon]

I really, really enjoyed your game!  The mechanic was entirely unique and very fun to play with, I also thought you did a great job mixing the platform and puzzle aspects.  Your graphics are clean and really nice to look at.  One 'bug' and one suggestion.
Bug: In the room with the three switches and the door in the middle, sometimes I would get stuck midjump on a switch.  Not a big thing though...
Suggestion: Maybe the first two rooms after the character recieves the staff you could put an outline where the mirror line is supposed to be generated?  I think that might make the learning curve a little less steep.
In any event it was a great game and I think you really have something here!   
 
-Lokon

[teh_r0b]

Hello! I am the other guy who worked on MirrorriM with FreelancePolice.

@BinaryMind, Frostblade: What video cards are you guys using? This might help us pinpoint the problem.

@chardish: I totally agree about the "three parts puzzle, one part platformer" idea. I did most of the level design for the game, and that mostly what I was going for. Hence, for the spikes level that you were referring to, there are two solutions: one that requires extremely precise platforming skills, and another that does not. Also, on the first level with mirrors, we tried various forms of the level with testers, and we found that the geometry of the level needed to be large enough for the player to be able to best visualize what the mirrors were doing to the geometry of the level. However, larger levels are easier to get stuck in, hence why the walls of the level are scalable when reflected upside-down.

@Lokon: For the bug, did this have to do with dispelling? Or was this just from touching a switch mid-jump? And I do like that suggestion,

[William Broom]

For me, the game crashes as soon as it starts up, with the message 'Unexpected error when running game.' It's a pity because I was really looking forward to playing this game.

[FreelancePolice]

I think we've seen that issue once before, trying to run it on a netbook.  What kind of system specs were you trying to run it on, Broom?

[William Broom]

I have 1gb RAM, 3ghz CPU, and 256mb graphics card. My resolution is 1024 x 768 if that helps - I did notice that it seemed to set the resolution higher just before it crashed.