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[PlayMeTape]

Toys is a game about spatial awareness. It features twelve different toys for you to solve. As you move each toy around and observe it from different angles the parts of it move around. The challenge is to restore all the parts to their original position simuntaneously.

TOYS

This was supposed to be my entry for last months experimental gameplay project. The theme was 'zero buttons' and Toys relies only on mouse input.  It has as a matter of fact been finished for well over a week.

The reason I didn't post it in time is because I made a chiptune track in nanoloop for the game. It's the first track I've ever written so I really wanted to use it.
Only problem was it was made on my shitty gameboy advance and getting a recording without any noise in it was impossible.
So for the past week I've been chasing people to borrow someone's DS. I've finally managed to record it now but unfortunately the quality is far from excellent.
It is listenable (and mutable ) and I am anxious to get some feedback on this project so I went ahead and uploaded it.

Toys was made with Unity3d and is playable in your browser.

I hope you find it interesting!

Browser Version
Windows Version
Mac Version

Any feedback is welcome.

Edit:
Updated September 12th.
Fixes include: faster screenwipe, total highscore, controller support.

[knight]

Defintaily love the colors! The game itself is sometimes difficult and sometimes easy I also find it kind of luck based. But it achieves a really relaxing atmosphere and it is really a pretty fun time waster first time around!

[Sorano]

Very fun and simple concept. Well executed. Great presentation. 

My only small gripe would be that the transition time between puzzle and the main menu seems a bit long.

[RCIX]

I like it! Only thing was, the menu was very confusing at first. I didn't quite figure out how it worked for about half a minute.

[deathtotheweird]

Very cool game, very lovely presentation with the menus and sound effects. Especially loved the main menu design.

I agree with Sorano about the transition time being a bit too long though.

Is the score based on time or how many moves it takes to complete a toy?

[Sorano]

My impression was that the score was based on number of moves.

[Loren Schmidt]

I like the presentation. This has definitely got a lot of appeal.

I found myself solving the earlier puzzles purely through guesswork, rather than by figuring out how they worked. What I ended up doing for most of the early puzzles was fiddling around with one axis until a few pieces clicked into place, then locking that axis and fiddling around with the other axis until I solved the puzzle.

I think I would enjoy the game more if each toy took a little bit of deduction to solve. I think if you just made the solution space a little larger it would do the trick. For instance, the later puzzles sometimes have pieces that fall into goals in multiple positions along their orbit. That works really well.

Nice job, this is a really appealing game and a neat idea. I enjoyed playing it.

[PlayMeTape]

I'm really glad all of you enjoyed it!

I realize that the quality of the puzzles fluctuates a lot. At first I had a lot of trouble with designing them so that they were difficult without being frustrating. I realized pretty early on that symmetrical movement and limiting the number of axises cubes would move on was the best approach to making sure the player felt like he could understand how his movement affected the puzzle.

It was almost as if there was an invisible line you could cross while creating the puzzles which made them near impossible and definitely made them frustrating.

Also I should probably cut the transition time shorter if I update the game. Some of my classmates were telling me to but it was one of those things that just fell through the cracks.

The score is entirely based on movement.

I'm thinking about changing the menu. It would look the same but I want the 'crosshair' to start shrinking when it is above a puzzle and when it gets small enough it initiates them.

Thanks for all the feedback!

[J. R. Hill]

Consciously, I don't understand at all how it works but after I got three of them done I got the rest done in less than 150 points.  It seemed like the third one was hardest for me, but then I replayed it and got 22 lol.

The graphic effects are awesome, but I agree that the screenwipe transition could be faster.

[increpare]

My main problem is that I find a lot of the early levels a bit tedious (especially with the super-slow screen transitions), and I don't have the patience to wait around for the potentially more interesting later ones.

Also, starting the level select screen focused on the instructions every time seems a bit strange to me.

Oh, because of the method of rotation, and because of the way I have dashboard set up in osx (hotspots that do stuff whenever I move my mouse to the corners of my screen), I kept on setting random things off when I was rotating stuff around.

[PlayMeTape]

Yeah there are definitely some things I should fix this weekend. Mainly the transitions as you said but also starting the menu from below/above the latest level you completed (also one of those things that fell through the cracks).

I just tried it on a friends mac and it seems like locking the cursor doesn't take effect. I don't know why but it's very frustrating. On a windows computer it locks the cursor to the center of the screen. Does anyone know if there's some way to fix this issue?

[deathtotheweird]

Were you using Safari?

I remember reading about a bug that prevented locking the cursor (in unity) on macs with the safari browser. I can't find anything about it being fixed or not, so I'm just guessing it may not have been fixed.

[PlayMeTape]

No it wasn't. It was actually in Firefox. Hmmm...

I'm going to fix some of the small issues today then upload a new build, including downloadable versions for Mac and Windows.

[PlayMeTape]

Alright I've updated Toys now. These are the fixes:
Faster screenwipe.
Menu starts below or above the latest puzzle you played.
Total highscore after you've completed all the puzzles (the combined score of all the levels).
Controller support.

There's also downloadable versions for Mac and Windows now. In case you want to play with the resolution of your choice!

Browser Version
Windows Version
Mac Version

I hope some of you find it enjoyable! I would still appreciate feedback if you have any to offer!

[PlayMeTape]

Uploaded the game to Kongregate to participate in their Unity contest. I would love for people to play, rate, comment and mainly ENJOY!

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Nejduvetinte/toys

[RandyO]

cool game. 4 stars.

I love the way it works from a design standpoint, really simple and clever.  I can see how if you have trouble with spatial awareness it's probably pretty confusing.  what I'd like to see, if you ever do a sequel or more levels or something (since I didn't notice this til today), is to make a some multi-sequence puzzles.  Like, it's very luck based in that you have to rotate it to just the right spot and just have to slowly narrow rotation down.

I don't know if this would actually work or not and still be fun or frustrating, but what if you had wide ranges of success for certain axes, and then as you nailed that down, it would lock in place, but that would in turn unlock other ones that hadn't moved before.  perhaps you only have 2 axes to figure out at a time, x+y, then you lock y, but now there's z, and then if you do x, there's a new y.

it's really interesting, perhaps I'm trying too hard to make it puzzley over trial and error.

cool!

[Fyren]

I liked the presentation quite a lot: the use of color, the sound effects, the music, and the menu.  But the game itself seemed really easy, it probably took me less than 15s for each puzzle.

[mollerhoj]

This was amazing. I loved the transitions, but you really should speed em up.

The menu feels well designed, and the overall effects are nice.

The first levels are too easy for my taste.

[Ted]

You made it into the student IGF!!!!

http://igf.com/2011/01/2011_independent_games_festiva_12.html

CONGRATS!!

[iffi]

Congratulations on making it into the IGF student showcase!
I just saw the list posted elsewhere on the forum and then noticed this here a few minutes later. I'll try to get around to playing it soon!