next »

[Bumpkin Brothers]

I thought you may be interested in taking a look at The Machine.  It's a physics based simulation / puzzle game.

Here's the



There is a webplayer demo here

Or you can download the demo here

The full version was made available from Impulse on Monday http://www.impulsedriven.com/themachine and we're keen to get feedback before we work on 'update 1'

[Netsu]

I liked the humour of the video, but when the gameplay kicks in... I must say I'm quite repelled by the bright contrasting colours on the white background.

[tzachs]

Hi, played it and it was definitely a fun and cool idea, well done!
My only problem here was with the difficulty. The first levels were really easy, then there was one level which was incredibly hard and I solved it using unorthodox ways (I think it was one level before introducing the splitter), and after that the levels become easy again...
I know it's very hard to know how easy/hard a level is because people react differently to the puzzles, but to me it was a very weird learning curve.

[RichMakeGame!]

first impression notes:

I got up to: er, I don't know which level.. em, 5 medium red and 10 small blue. had to quit to work on my own stuff

1- I don't like the mouse/keyboard combo- this sort of game I expect to just play with the mouse, I think onscreen cam controls should be present (maybe with a little button to hide them if user wishes to) Ideally if users click-dragged anywhere without a tool active, or in the grey area, it would rotate

2- for some reason to me, the controls work the opposite way than I imagined they would.. I guess it's to do with if you're rotating the object or the camera. I was expecting to rotate the camera

3- when editing or mouse-over the conveyer belt, I can't see which way the arrow is pointing- that's not very helpful! I suggest you apply a scrolling texture to these to add to the sense which way they are moving

**I just noticed the arrow underneath the transparent conveyer belt.. I was looking to see the direction on top of the conveyer item so I never noticed the arrow below (consider flashing the arrow or something?)
**ok, now I see how it's *meant to be controlled- you choose the part and rotate before placing. When I began playing, i placed all the parts then began to edit them. I still think on mouse over the arrow should be readable

4- the additive spray from the colour sprayers is a bit hard to see, I'd consider just using alpha transparency

5- I think its a bit clunky to correct a mistake when you put down the wrong conveyer belt direction- what if right click rotated blocks when in the place mode? then you can instantly correct mistakes like that


those are just my first impressions anyway- I really enjoyed playing it, I think it's satisfying and if I didn't have other stuff to get on with I would have kept playing to the end of the demo. The graphics didn't put me off, but I do think you could work in a little more character to the whole presentation. Simple is nice though!