Thanks for the detailed feedback Mike: much appreciated.
You asked about disabling n and p keys over there. I think that depends on your intent. If you were trying to create a more contemplative atmosphere, then I'd say yes. Forcing the player to backtrack gives them downtime that allows them to ponder what you wanted to communicate with the game. You should also keep in mind that I can be absolutely inept at times on my keyboard, so I may be the only person who did accidentally cheated throughout the game.
I'm thinking I should probably disable those. I definitely didn't intend them for normal use, but had some people complaining about getting stuck irreversibly (in walls and such), which is why I added those. I think I've fixed those issues though...
I'll give my feedback on the rest of the game anyway (bearing in mind that my experience is colored by not having to really backtrack at all). I really like the style of presentation. It reminded me of small worlds like Paul already said. What strikes me as similar between the two is in atmosphere- this tone of mystery. That's exactly what kept me going through the game, but it's also why I felt a tiny bit let down in the end. I loved how restoring/interacting with the color changed the world and you definitely made me invested in the world you created, but I was hoping for something at the end that brought it all together a bit more for me. I felt like there were these really interesting fragments of storytelling that I wanted to piece together, but couldn't quite get there. It's also entirely possible that I just missed the point here. I'd love to hear what you were going for. Leaving things open ended is wonderful when trying to instill meaning into something, but I just needed a tiny push to get there. It's hard for me to give an example of what a tiny push would be without knowing what you wanted me to take away from the story. It felt like the colors were revealing some future apocalypse. IF (and I'm sure this is a big if) that is what you intended, maybe when the credits rolled you could have shown a tiny cut-scene giving a hint about any of the whats, whys, whens, hows, etc. of the apocalypse.
First, thanks for the compliments. As far as the ending goes, I do think it is quite weak, and would like to rectify it. The basic idea of the game is that by bringing color into these different worlds, you essentially destroy them. So in terms of story/theme, I was going for a variety of stuff, most of it revolving around the basic themes of Pandora's box, but I tried to give things a bit of a twist, because I don't particularly care for things that are obvious, or designed to be interpreted in one particular way. People tend to think of color as a good thing, so part of my idea here was to use Pandora's box, but mess with expectations, and see what happened. So apocalypse is somewhere in there, as well as causality, and motivation, and will to continue. I wanted to explore the idea of complicity--see if people would keep going and feel guilty about it after they saw what they were doing, even if the results of their actions went contrary to their initial expectations--but that didn't end up working so well, because most people don't really seem to see what's going on, or it's not that affective, if they do...
Anyway, I'm rambling here, but the game is definitely designed to be open ended when it comes to interpretation, rather than allegorical or something (I tend to dislike allegory because of its forced nature).
Your comments, as well as others, basically bring home the fact that the game could have been presented in a much stronger way, and had a much stronger conclusion.
Like I mentioned to Paul, I would really like to make a follow-up project based on this some day, with a proper development cycle. I essentially made this in 48 hours for LD, and though I intended to go back and improve it, it ended up being too much of a mess to really do much more with, in its current form, which is why I eventually just released it.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
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