[Prototype] A game about giving up your triangles

edited in Projects
Hey guys,

This game about triangles is a puzzle platformer (I know many might shoot me for saying this), and it involves you playing as a big triangle in a world made up of triangles. You, the big triangle, are made up of smaller triangles of different colours but you have to give up bits of yourself to move in a space and get from one place to the other. Your triangle can pop round circles with its pointy edges and you can fit into the triangles in the world. If you fit the triangle into the same colour triangle platforms in the world, your triangle will be destroyed and you will also destroy the triangles you have collided with when perfectly slotted in.

It's in very early stages of prototyping and needs lot of tweaking but if there are comments and advice, please please post, I'd absolutely appreciate it. I've just started making video games recently, any extra tips would be great:).

This is what the game looks like thus far, this is one of the levels. There are 3 levels so far, building up on difficulty and new mechanics being introduced.

To play the prototype, download at- https://www.dropbox.com/s/w8sdmdwklf8ydv5/Let_it_go_Mac.app.zip?dl=0 (Mac) and https://www.dropbox.com/s/7i02avppiyezsac/Let_it_go_Windows.zip?dl=0 (Windows)

Thanks,
Huang-you :)

P.S. I'm a Wits Game Design student and this was for one of my submissions. Now its submitted so I wanted to get some more feedback and improve on it :)

!!!!!! P.S. The game has to be played at 1024 by 768 screen resolution or else it cuts off.

image

Comments

  • Hey!
    Looks interesting I will check it out tomorrow. Do you have a video I can watch ? You might also find that more people give feedback if you post a video.
  • edited
    I don't have a video as I am not sure how to make one yet. Can you give me some tips?

    Thanks Kobusvdwalt9

    P.S. the link I sent earlier has changed because the previous one had a few problems, apologies.
  • I use fraps *cough*checkpiratebay*cough* for recording my games that are made in unity. Another option might be OBS which is free. You can also just search the web for free recording software.
    Thanked by 1Lisa_Chen
  • Hi Lisa
    I gave your game a play.
    At first I felt uncertain... The dialogue was informative but the words were vague. This made it interesting as I felt like there was a hint... a puzzle and I had to apply some intuition to figure it out.

    I'll post the rest of my feedback in private so as not to give spoilers away.
  • edited
    I apologies about the resolution problem earlier. I fixed but the game has to be run at 1024 by 768 screen resolution. Thanks :)
  • I'm incredibly intrigued by this!

    What an awesome description and concept. I'm looking forward to playing it tonight :)
    Thanked by 2dammit Lisa_Chen
  • Gave it a go, it's a really good design wrapped in a good premise - the "letting bits of yourself go" thing is obviously really thought-provoking and a great existential metaphor, and adds very nicely to the mechanics :)

    Feedback:
    1. The first bits of text ran by too quickly, I didn't catch half of it. Maybe let it travel on click or something? And bigger would probably help too. I played on maximum resolution on my machine (1280x800)
    2. The movement worked fine, I was expecting gridded movement, but the drifty movement worked well enough.
    3. The rotation was a bit difficult to understand. A bit of in-between frames would do wonders for that. Oh and when you lost bits, the rotation felt a bit unintuitive. Again, in-between frames would help fix that.
    4. The play button/arrow thing on the first level wasn't immediately obvious. I clicked on it many times before realising having to walk in into it.
    5. I think there's something weird about the colliders between your object and the goal object, sometimes I couldn't walk into it like there was an invisible barrier between them. I had to walk around.
    6. It was really easy to accidentally complete a shape unintentionally while spinning. I think it's as a result of the really tight level design - while I understand the tightness makes the puzzle harder to figure out (instead of just solving the obvious "chokepoints"), it feels like the levels could be designed to be bit more open to avoid accidental completion too often.
    7. As much as I like the design right now, losing triangles to complete... Trapezoid shapes feels less satisfying than if I was say, completing triangles, or a more "symbolic" shape, seeing as you're making triangles a theme. I don't know how to solve this but it would be really cool if you could tie the shape theme up closer. In my opinion :)
    8. When you "lose yourself" completely... Is the intention to just start over? Maybe give that some kind of twist? That feels interesting to my brain.
    9. Is level 4 (counting the intro as one) solvable????

    Good job :)
  • Tuism-

    :)

    The idea behind the game, as you have pointed out with the letting bits of yourself go part, is suppose to be about a player starting off as a baby (that's why one starts off as four triangles). As you progress through the levels you should get bigger and bigger showing that you learn new things in life but you also have to give up more things in order to gain something in return. The tight beginning was suppose to resemble the entering of one into the world from a small space. But as you enter the world, you enter a bigger space with challenges and many small paths to choose from.

    Yes the fourth level is solvable.

    Thanks for the tips

    :)
  • I played it, and it's a wonderful concept and I look forward to see what interesting puzzles you com up with.

    I agree with Tuism that accidental completion is problematic. My instinct was that it was the movement that did not give enough control, rather than the levels being too tight, but I suppose they are related.

    (And I am very happy to see a triangle game. They are quite hard to make, and not many people do. Well done!)
  • :) thanks hermantulleken
  • Really enjoyed the concept, I think it's always nice to see games motivated by ideas and messages. If you have further aspirations for this project, then I hope you're considering something small and tightly polished. You could make a gaming experience that takes about half an hour to play through, say, and leaves players feeling enriched in that fuzzy life-lesson sorta way.

    I'd like to know how you feel about making some tutorial information a little more blatant while you're in the early prototype phase. I need help understanding level 4's new game piece and can't give you feedback past that point. ;)
    Thanked by 1Lisa_Chen
  • I finally got round to playing this... and <3 it.
    it has a really great feeling going on, the message and melancholy of giving of yourself to progress is just so incredibly resonating.

    A couple of feedback thing get in the way of understanding what's going on:

    In the intro level I didn't read the goal as a goal, I spent myself twice before figuring out how to interact with that. It felt like it was part of a goal because it was labeled, but I clicked on it and tried "do I strategically break the wall to free it?" before actually understanding to colour match it. It probably doesn't help that the collision is a bit iffy and I had more success by rotating into it.

    I think breaking down those learnings into individual puzzles is worthwhile; 1 give up a triangle to fit down a passage to a goal then, 2, give up correct triangle to reach a colour specific goal.

    level 4's bubble keys are a bit confusing, but it's more about the collision interaction than the puzzle. when I first encountered the purple and blue bubble I obviously tried to touch them to see what happened, and the feed back I got felt like a set up. I touch the purple one with one of my outer points and get the "nu-uh" feedback, then I head over to the pale blue one and my pale blue point passes through it, so my take away is that they serve as a sort of angle gate, you can pass through the bubbles if the bit passing through is the right colour. Obviously this turned out to not be true and thinking it was derailed my progress.

    on the whole, I love this game's premise, please add more.
    Thanked by 2dammit Lisa_Chen
  • Nandrew :)

    Thanks for your feedback and yes I am intending to take the game further. I would like to create more complex puzzles but I can see that the tutorial part of the game has to be more clear. I shall work on that. I was thinking around the lines of the tutorial you see in TwoDots. I really like the simple explanation and simple look if TwoDots but the play experience that it gave me.

    Level 4: The small circles need to be poked by the triangles of the same colour as itself but the circles do not destroy the triangle. When a small circle is poked and destroyed, it will destroy a triangle that forms part of the game space. The objective is to create a path for you to go but finding a way to destroy the circles before you destroy the triangles required to destroy the circles.

    :)
  • Damousey :)

    Thanks for your feedback. Indeed the introduction requires clear interface. I am also working around conveying new mechanics throughout the game but not breaking the simple appeal of the game. Thanks for playing and more is to come.

    :)
    Thanked by 1damousey
  • I think it might help to make the edges distinct from the meat of the puzzle space
    image
    I made this to try and explore how I would make things a bit clearer, visually, I separated the puzzle from the edge by colour, the player from the puzzle by adding a sort of outline and tried a different aesthetic on the end goal that imagine might make it easier ( if the end goal is a space of triangles rather than a triangle-on-round edge collision is might make it easier, instead of bumbing into a thing, pass through the hole) And you could build a juicier lever transition by zooming through the layer to the next one below it this way.

    I tried to find an interesting and harmonious colour palette for this, but I don't like how violent this set of colours actually turned out. That doesn't feel right for the considered melancholy that the game has right now.
  • :D:D:D

    Damousey

    I am speechless.... it looks amazing!!!! I don't even know what to say. I really like the different sized triangles that sort of guide your eye and also create an aesthetically awesome appeal. And the game looks like its glowing. Did you perhaps put a light in the center or is it just the colour palette from the triangles that's giving that effect?

    And I really like the circle at the end. The circle at the end plays quite a vital role in the game so I'll look at that a little more.

    I'm so mind blown... thank you so much, INSPIRATION AND ALL!

    :D
    Thanked by 1damousey
  • Yay!

    All the little visual extras you mention( the different sizes, the bloom/glow, the tiny triangles where there are no triangles) came for free with the tool I was working in. I used Hexels from http://hexraystudios.com/ which I only used because I knew it had quick way to constrain the canvas to triangles. Drawing or placing them individually would be pretty arduous for a mockup.
    Thanked by 1Lisa_Chen
  • What an awesome little puzzle game, @lisa_chen. A bunch of these cool people have all separately told me to try this puzzle game and I'm happy I did. Love the idea, the concept of the meaning behind the puzzle :)

    And, look, damousey is making pretty things for you. Always an epic sign.

    Welcome to the forums ;)
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