I just finished the game and enjoyed it. Here's some feedback that may have improved my time with the game.
On a gameplay level, I felt that I never really mastered the game. A lot of the levels felt like I was trying things and experimenting until the solution emerge, but I rarely had a plan, often had to restart the level from zero, and I think that if I were to retry some levels, I wouldn't be better at solving them now. There are exceptions to that (some level required careful planning which I enjoyed the most) but that was my general feeling (which is not necessary a bad thing). Pig enemies some times don't do the movement I expected especially when there are several of them which isn't a big issue since I can undo movements, but makes it harder to think about the solution.
I wanted to play with only the mouse but there were a few things that were annoying with that:
- when you change the shapes of the tiles they don't stay at / occupy the same place, which means you can't just click several times at the same place to quickly cycle shapes. Some times it works, some times it does nothing, at worst it does a movement instead of morphing. The same issue is true for the "undo" button.
- I would have liked to be able to remap the change shape button to right click.
- It was weird to me that I needed to click icons in the menus instead of being able to click the whole icon + text rectangle.
- I would have liked to have a "Restart level", and "Rise up again" button next to the undo button since I used those quite a lot (mostly restart, but rise up again also because of the map navigation).
I didn't like the map / overworld.
- It wasn't clear to me what the "cut scenes" showed. Maybe the view should stay on the thing it showed and wait for user input ?
- It was hard to see my progression in the game since you can't have a global view, or even a "big" area around you because of the tile fading out when they go off screen;
- that makes it's harder than necessary to know where there are uncompleted levels;
- The level icons looks (not the preview) weird, I'm not sure what it's supposed to be;
- It's kind of annoying to navigate since you need to change shapes and use game mechanics, and sometimes you enter completed level and need to exit them just after;
- The ground tiles don't look interesting in comparison to the character sprites and other decorations (that's obviously apply in levels too). I understand they need to stay readable in the different shapes but still they look kind of blend.
- I think disappearing tiles on the map (those that disappear after you step on it) should re-spawn after another step or some time on the map.
- The music changing speed with shape changes was annoying to me.
- The UI text morphing and icon morphing (the white in the icons, not only the button shape) make the UI kind of hard to read. I understand the idea of everything needs to morph but in my opinion the "benefit" is less than the inconvenience. I think if the "aspect ratio" of the text was respected (if that's possible) it would be more readable. Same thing with the mirroring of text, which I don't think as a point a all, but you can disable it so that's fine.
- The back icon doesn't look good in any of the shape type.
- Most shape borders look blurry (when using square shape) because they are not lined up on screen pixels. It's not a big issue but I think it really visible.
On a gameplay level, I felt that I never really mastered the game. A lot of the levels felt like I was trying things and experimenting until the solution emerge, but I rarely had a plan, often had to restart the level from zero, and I think that if I were to retry some levels, I wouldn't be better at solving them now. There are exceptions to that (some level required careful planning which I enjoyed the most) but that was my general feeling (which is not necessary a bad thing). Pig enemies some times don't do the movement I expected especially when there are several of them which isn't a big issue since I can undo movements, but makes it harder to think about the solution.
I wanted to play with only the mouse but there were a few things that were annoying with that:
- when you change the shapes of the tiles they don't stay at / occupy the same place, which means you can't just click several times at the same place to quickly cycle shapes. Some times it works, some times it does nothing, at worst it does a movement instead of morphing. The same issue is true for the "undo" button.
- I would have liked to be able to remap the change shape button to right click.
- It was weird to me that I needed to click icons in the menus instead of being able to click the whole icon + text rectangle.
- I would have liked to have a "Restart level", and "Rise up again" button next to the undo button since I used those quite a lot (mostly restart, but rise up again also because of the map navigation).
I didn't like the map / overworld.
- It wasn't clear to me what the "cut scenes" showed. Maybe the view should stay on the thing it showed and wait for user input ?
- It was hard to see my progression in the game since you can't have a global view, or even a "big" area around you because of the tile fading out when they go off screen;
- that makes it's harder than necessary to know where there are uncompleted levels;
- The level icons looks (not the preview) weird, I'm not sure what it's supposed to be;
- It's kind of annoying to navigate since you need to change shapes and use game mechanics, and sometimes you enter completed level and need to exit them just after;
- The ground tiles don't look interesting in comparison to the character sprites and other decorations (that's obviously apply in levels too). I understand they need to stay readable in the different shapes but still they look kind of blend.
- I think disappearing tiles on the map (those that disappear after you step on it) should re-spawn after another step or some time on the map.
- The music changing speed with shape changes was annoying to me.
- The UI text morphing and icon morphing (the white in the icons, not only the button shape) make the UI kind of hard to read. I understand the idea of everything needs to morph but in my opinion the "benefit" is less than the inconvenience. I think if the "aspect ratio" of the text was respected (if that's possible) it would be more readable. Same thing with the mirroring of text, which I don't think as a point a all, but you can disable it so that's fine.
- The back icon doesn't look good in any of the shape type.
- Most shape borders look blurry (when using square shape) because they are not lined up on screen pixels. It's not a big issue but I think it really visible.
Edited by Simon Anciaux
on
Reason: Initial post
Hi,
for starters, I want to deeply thank you for playing the game with such care, attention and awareness. The fact that you were willing to put in the time to provide such a detailed feedback means a lot to me. Thank you.
As a general answer, most of your points are already known to me and often they are a consequence of me absolutely wanting something else in the game no matter the cost. Some of them annoys me too, but I am stuck with them nonetheless. With that in mind, I'll talk about the ones of which I have something meaningful to say.
This is a good one I haven't thought about. I'll try to patch the game soon enough to include this.
These two could be a little hacky to implement, but I'll see what I can do.
There actually is one specific place in the game where you can have a global view of the map, which is also the reason why you can't have it at all times.
In the first part of the game, just switching to hexagons is enough to walk the entire map without entering any level. Later on, you can still traverse the map without entering any unwanted level but navigation becomes a puzzle in itself. There are also shortcuts to skip large areas of the second world, as a mitigating factor. The assumed hypothesis is that the player realizes on her own all the these facts and she acts accordingly. In most cases, included yours, it didn't happen. It is a failure on my part, but I'll try to do better next time.
You mean aspect ratio of the single letters or in terms of the spacing between them?
You can disable anti-aliasing to fix that. But then you get unevenly spaced and sized squares which are uglier, in my opinion. If there is a way to get the best of both options, I haven't figured it out yet.
for starters, I want to deeply thank you for playing the game with such care, attention and awareness. The fact that you were willing to put in the time to provide such a detailed feedback means a lot to me. Thank you.
As a general answer, most of your points are already known to me and often they are a consequence of me absolutely wanting something else in the game no matter the cost. Some of them annoys me too, but I am stuck with them nonetheless. With that in mind, I'll talk about the ones of which I have something meaningful to say.
mrmixer
- I would have liked to be able to remap the change shape button to right click.
This is a good one I haven't thought about. I'll try to patch the game soon enough to include this.
mrmixer
- It was weird to me that I needed to click icons in the menus instead of being able to click the whole icon + text rectangle.
mrmixer
- It wasn't clear to me what the "cut scenes" showed. Maybe the view should stay on the thing it showed and wait for user input ?
These two could be a little hacky to implement, but I'll see what I can do.
mrmixer
- It was hard to see my progression in the game since you can't have a global view, or even a "big" area around you because of the tile fading out when they go off screen;
- that makes it's harder than necessary to know where there are uncompleted levels;
There actually is one specific place in the game where you can have a global view of the map, which is also the reason why you can't have it at all times.
mrmixer
- It's kind of annoying to navigate since you need to change shapes and use game mechanics, and sometimes you enter completed level and need to exit them just after;
In the first part of the game, just switching to hexagons is enough to walk the entire map without entering any level. Later on, you can still traverse the map without entering any unwanted level but navigation becomes a puzzle in itself. There are also shortcuts to skip large areas of the second world, as a mitigating factor. The assumed hypothesis is that the player realizes on her own all the these facts and she acts accordingly. In most cases, included yours, it didn't happen. It is a failure on my part, but I'll try to do better next time.
mrmixer
- The UI text morphing and icon morphing (the white in the icons, not only the button shape) make the UI kind of hard to read. I understand the idea of everything needs to morph but in my opinion the "benefit" is less than the inconvenience. I think if the "aspect ratio" of the text was respected (if that's possible) it would be more readable.
You mean aspect ratio of the single letters or in terms of the spacing between them?
mrmixer
- Most shape borders look blurry (when using square shape) because they are not lined up on screen pixels. It's not a big issue but I think it really visible.
You can disable anti-aliasing to fix that. But then you get unevenly spaced and sized squares which are uglier, in my opinion. If there is a way to get the best of both options, I haven't figured it out yet.
Capro
There actually is one specific place in the game where you can have a global view of the map, which is also the reason why you can't have it at all times.
Could you spoil that for me ? Is it the ladder at the top of the map ? I couldn't access that tile. I finished the "One step away from the doors" levels but couldn't figure out a way to get to the ladder so I moved on to the mirror levels expecting to come back there, but I can't go back there since now I can only play the ending levels. If it's not that, is there a way to get to that ladder (is the ladder the way to the end levels ?, since I accessed those with the ladder in the mirror world) ? EDIT: I may have figure the ladder tile but the game is crashing, see below.
Capro
There are also shortcuts to skip large areas of the second world
Assuming you're speaking about the mirror levels, I went there only twice: when I "unlocked" it, and I did only 1 level than came back, and then after doing all level on the other world, and so I did the levels as they "unlocked" and didn't have to move a lot. So once again could you tell me what the shortcuts are (as I don't want to replay a big part of the game to be able to try and find out) ?
Capro
You mean aspect ratio of the single letters or in terms of the spacing between them?
The aspect ratio of single letters. It's mostly the triangle shapes that I find hard to read because they are too tall and more deformed than the hexagons.
EDIT: Oops, I just noticed that I can go back to the "world map".
EDIT 2: The game is now crashing every time I try to go to the last levels "world" with the horse character in the mirror world.
Edited by Simon Anciaux
on
Reason: Crash note
mrmixer
EDIT 2: The game is now crashing every time I try to go to the last levels "world" with the horse character in the mirror world.
Oh my. This is awful. And it never came up during testing either :(
Please send me everything you have in the "save" directory and the files called "SzgLog.log_szg" and "SzgConfig.cfg_szg" in the "data" directory to this address: syzygy "dot" contact "at" capro "dot" space.
mrmixer
Could you spoil that for me ? Is it the ladder at the top of the map ?
When you walk through the mirror you can see the entire map and check if there are incomplete levels. It's an animation so you can't stare at it for long, but it's slow enough to check where the incomplete levels are.
mrmixer
So once again could you tell me what the shortcuts are (as I don't want to replay a big part of the game to be able to try and find out) ?
There are two optional levels that allow you to create a bridge towards the center block of the mirror map. One to the right and one at the top of the center block. When revisiting the mirror world they make the traversal much shorter.