26th June 2018

Each release brings a wave of thoughts and comments.
Let's have a peek at RSKGame's thoughts on this week's puzzle game.

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@RSKGames

A very relaxing puzzle game with right mixture of difficulty with 225 levels.

Crikey. He's only gone and completed the entire game!!

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Gameplay: Very well developed game mechanics of enabling/disabling and drawing the links. After completing many levels I figured out accidentally (This info is given already in the game blog which I missed) that drawn links can be erased, which acts like a good undo mechanism.

This was a VERY last minute addition. Once I started to actually play the game, I realised that having a complete restart-level button wasn't quite enough. I struggled with the idea of having to code a full "undo" function, before realising I could just turn off the lines.
It made everything a LOT easier, code-wise!!

Some of the levels were challenging and completing them felt good (Still feel the frustration from ''Roland eats a stale biscuit'').

Roland was FAR too hard!!
This game doesn't quite ramp up to the difficulties I'd've liked, but I think for really hard levels they're going to have to be hand designed.
.. Or at least, I can't think of a good way to generate them, anyway!!

A good thing about this puzzle game is that at the end of the level you can see how a level can be completed visually minus the info on the order in which it is done.

Yeah, there aren't many puzzles where the order is important, but it does crop up from time to time. It makes things all that much tougher, having to figure out the best way around the maze.

Graphics: Very simple and clean graphics style for the blocks and links. Liked the robot animation.

Lazy and cheap animation FTW!
Draw sprite, cut+paste a bunch of times to wiggle the legs, job done!

I would love to see these features
- Level numbering and feature to like a level. Felt the need when I wanted to share some very challenging levels but there is no level number.

Yeah, it uses numbers internally, but they're kinda all over the place. The menu is built up in a spiral, with the center being level 1, and the very last corner being #225. I probably should've displayed those, somewhere. Oops!
Also, little randomly generated titles for all the levels might've been fun, too.
I'll have to keep that in mind, for future games.

- Completed levels should retain the level complete state for taking screenshot or seeing how the level was completed. Feature to clear the level to its init state.

That would require space. Thinking mostly of the 3DS edition, I'm struggling to fit things into it, as it is!
Of course, each and every piece of level data includes the solution within. I could've made the game draw THAT as an icon, but then it'd probably slow down quite a bit on the 3DS. It would also not be "your" solution that shows up.

Hmmm..

I do need to plan for "level icons" for the future, though, so I'll probably fiddle about and try to figure out the best way to achieve those. I don't think it's going to be an easy task, though.

In the menu I noticed that number of completed levels does not appear when playing the game offline.

Indeed.
Which means the 3DS edition is missing it, entirely. (The 3DS games don't "do" online stuff, due to complications in the gameplay, making the 3DS versions their own thing.)

One of JNK's best puzzle games. Overall a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle game which is fully beatable in 1 or 2 sessions.

I can't believe you played through the entire thing that quickly!!
.. But, yes, compared to Biscuit, it's a much more enjoyable game.
Glad you enjoyed it.

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