Suggestion: When you add or remove parts of the queue that have already passed in the current loop, the character should continue doing whatever part of the loop they've been doing unchanged. (Currently, it shifts the actions byh 1, presumably because you're just storing the index of the current action and not adjusting it for these shifts.)
Pressing backspace on the plan name textbox seems to backspace in the queue instead. This is kind of annoying.
Great game, I've always wished looping games were more visual and I love how much you did with a simple map. Can't wait to see the rest!
A couple suggestions that might make things more smooth: 1. A little more easy to use path editor. the scroll bar is a little wonky, but you could probably have it expand to multiple rows. 2. It would be nice to save parts of paths in the path editor (like a first room path, plus a second room path) 3. It's a little hard to tell where the path disconnects, would be nice to have a better idea of that in the path editor (maybe by highlighting where you're editing with a yellow path?) 4. It would be nice to have a little more juice for the speed up. Like a lot or unlimited 2x and recharging 3+x.
Enjoyed my time with it! Got the demo ending and unlocked focus (though I'm not sure what that does!)
Most fiddly part by far is editing the queue. Trying to add just a small detour at the start of a longer path gets very confusing very quickly because all the later instructions still appear on the map and jump around even though they don't make any sense (going through walls and such). I mostly ended up just having to delete everything and remake it.
I think it would be a lot more intuitive and easier to use if the game left the parts after an edit in place (on the map) as a kinda broken end and "demanded" that the player made sure their edits reconnected to the start of that section for it to be useable.
Hmm I'll have to try out a few ideas, maybe just visually highlighting the broken path red will work out. I might be too used to the genre and it was obvious that if I want to edit smth I've to remake the same path in both directions to fix it again, if I allow disconnecting paths that would limit the ability to edit in real time - edits would always have to happen during pause. Im not completely against that but its a con for sure, unless... I'll give it a shot! Anyway, I feel like for now it wont be that annoying given I've managed to make separate queues per map, cleareable and saveable as routes, so in the future a player will have to rebuild queue for a map he wants, rather than 1 flat whole queue.
I'm not sure how it all works behind the scenes, or maybe my suggestion wasn't super clear as I can easily imagine editing still working as the loop is running: If the PC is already beyond the edit point, it simply continues following the path as normal - it would only encounter an issue next loop. (This would theoretically work better than the current design, because if I try to edit my early path while the PC is running a later section of it, e.g. by adding a left then right movement, it breaks at the moment.) If it's before the edit point, it can pause when reaching the broken end like it does now at the end of the whole set (if you don't have autoloop enabled).
I imagine you'd have to do something like have each instruction essentially remember which tile it was originally placed on (or maybe the PC's tile when the action was invoked for interactions). There are *perhaps* some niche situations where you might want to shift the entire latter portion of the instruction queue in some direction, but especially with the current map design consisting mostly of 1-wide width corridors and very few open spaces, it's hard to see that making more sense most of the time.
Yeah I misunderstood your suggestion, my bad. Actually, that was the earlier version of queue essentialy, however when it doesnt recompute the further actions it was really hard to see which actions are actually orphaned and which are not, hence I made this version. Hmm maybe if I went with coloring the orphaned queue red it might work out, cause you're right that even tho we lose the ability to edit further route, it IS a niche use and its more important to make queue more user-friendly. Added it to known issues to try it out, but it'll take a while before next 0.3 patch, want to add more content
its good, optimizing my path felt puzzley which i like. i didn't try to figure out the edit queue stuff much but it seemed pretty unintuitive. and idk what the point of the clear queue button is if it just restarts you whole run, it should just clear the queue. also i would increase the game speed, its just too much watching.
That was pretty fun, I'll be looking forward to more! The largest pain point was editing a run, so I usually pressed undo a lot or cleared. Keep up the good work o7
another time loop game like cavernous has been something ive wanted for years! this is a really good game, but feels a little too slow in terms of actual progress. and its a shame the echos dont do anything. i still havent figured out how to leave the house. but ive been just about everywhere. and discovered as much of the map as i can find. this game really would be so fun once its a full game. the gameplay loop is really enjoyable.
a few more information would also be nice. it wasnt clear to me what focus did. since i felt its effects werent worth using. the cooldown underneath the mana made me think that the focus lasted that long, and i was upset when i upgraded it and it reduced how long it lasted. but of course that was the cooldown instead.
still not entirely sure how to use focus though. it seeminly only gives you a small boost in speed when interacting with things.
while its really cool to add lots of things in the game when its not finished yet. played it can be quite frustrating when some things dont do anything. i would delay adding the echos until theyre actually usable. just saying "purpose unclear" is really unsatisfying, after spending time to find a path to them.
really cool game though!" cant wait to see what you do with it!
Umm... Thanks for playing! Better late than never is what they say ^^'
Added, will be in next patch, that will be tomorrow unfortunately, cause its a big shake-up so will take a little longer, instability rework that is done, and I still need to do familiarity system to get some more sense of progress! I hope I'll be able to build smth great in a year or so, all with a goal to make this type of games more popular in order to have more to play myself lol
I have no idea how to progress further. I've looted all containers I could find, beat most monsters at least once (spider included), read books, mastered mana crystals, passed one of Focus trials (2nd seemes too hard at my level), I even used The Useless Key and went out to touch the trees! But there's no sign of the third key to open remaining locked doors, no way through trees, no interaction on spider's green booty looty. Sad.
Well, I beat the game, and this indeed took "a while". The skills progression is too slow, that's for sure, also I'm not sure how Focus works and what it does, as well as all these spheres. But the concept is promising, would really enjoy more content.
Appreciated! Yeah, there will be more progress axis in the future, entertaining a Codex idea and/or Stuck in Time kinda style familiarity per tile, so you can level each tile/object you walk/fight/interact with as well. It'll feel better with more content tho thats for sure! Spheres will be unlocked only in second map, even tho I got the system ready.
I simply don't understand how this works. It will yank me out of the loop even though I have mana left. UI/UX is a bit atrocious. Why won't you let me speed up the long loop for free? Why must I suffer and watch the horribly slow walk to get a couple rooms over? C'mon man.
the balance was the smallest improvement, but seriously. I don't want to run this for hours, because currently I can't get to trial or the next key (and return). I hoped that the green gem... could be interacted or something to get a small improvement, but sadly not. I really don't want to grind to grind several hours to level 20 to see if that starts to unlock anything to give me a small edge.
Hmm I feel like I should've set an artificial lvl cap in the early demo cause ppl misunderstand. Its supposed to be: get around lvl 10-12, have Crystal Attunement I and first Trial of Fucus (Pressure I) done, and then leave the house -> you're done with the demo. Its not supposed to be grindable to level 20, not to mention higher, there will be better xp on next maps. Currently its a 5h early demo to test if the gameplay loop itself is fun.
I am loving the progress and idea at least. People need to make more of these. But yes, it definitely does seem that either levels need to be stronger, or experience quicker to make people look forward to progress/grind.
Yeah you're right, with different axis of progress in and some balancing it'll feel much better. And also remade instability, cause now it just feels bad.
still far too buggy for playtesting, candle lost visibility bonus after first run, undoing loop commands borks everything up, and randomly mid loop charting you stop being able to move or interat correctly.
its also far too heavily a copy of "stuck in time"
With the 0.23 update it broke some interactions, like breaking the doors (the one at the beginning, that takes forever, the one next to the rat), and I think you can't use the green orb, not sure since I couldn't get there in 0.22, but I got there in 0.23, and there was no interaction. Also you can 'move' to places you can't move, you can click move there, and it breaks movement, but you can't actually move, undoing tends to clear it, but doing that sometimes breaks the path when you cycle.
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Suggestion: When you add or remove parts of the queue that have already passed in the current loop, the character should continue doing whatever part of the loop they've been doing unchanged. (Currently, it shifts the actions byh 1, presumably because you're just storing the index of the current action and not adjusting it for these shifts.)
Pressing backspace on the plan name textbox seems to backspace in the queue instead. This is kind of annoying.
Kind of annoying to right click left click 5 times to hit each pot, if there's nothing else needed in the dropdown it should just be one click
Good idea, added to known issues, thanks
Nice concept! Looking forward to the new content
Great game, I've always wished looping games were more visual and I love how much you did with a simple map. Can't wait to see the rest!
A couple suggestions that might make things more smooth:
1. A little more easy to use path editor. the scroll bar is a little wonky, but you could probably have it expand to multiple rows.
2. It would be nice to save parts of paths in the path editor (like a first room path, plus a second room path)
3. It's a little hard to tell where the path disconnects, would be nice to have a better idea of that in the path editor (maybe by highlighting where you're editing with a yellow path?)
4. It would be nice to have a little more juice for the speed up. Like a lot or unlimited 2x and recharging 3+x.
Good idea to make x2 perma available, thanks for the feedback!
Enjoyed my time with it! Got the demo ending and unlocked focus (though I'm not sure what that does!)
Most fiddly part by far is editing the queue. Trying to add just a small detour at the start of a longer path gets very confusing very quickly because all the later instructions still appear on the map and jump around even though they don't make any sense (going through walls and such). I mostly ended up just having to delete everything and remake it.
I think it would be a lot more intuitive and easier to use if the game left the parts after an edit in place (on the map) as a kinda broken end and "demanded" that the player made sure their edits reconnected to the start of that section for it to be useable.
Hmm I'll have to try out a few ideas, maybe just visually highlighting the broken path red will work out. I might be too used to the genre and it was obvious that if I want to edit smth I've to remake the same path in both directions to fix it again, if I allow disconnecting paths that would limit the ability to edit in real time - edits would always have to happen during pause. Im not completely against that but its a con for sure, unless... I'll give it a shot! Anyway, I feel like for now it wont be that annoying given I've managed to make separate queues per map, cleareable and saveable as routes, so in the future a player will have to rebuild queue for a map he wants, rather than 1 flat whole queue.
I appreciate the feedback!
I'm not sure how it all works behind the scenes, or maybe my suggestion wasn't super clear as I can easily imagine editing still working as the loop is running: If the PC is already beyond the edit point, it simply continues following the path as normal - it would only encounter an issue next loop. (This would theoretically work better than the current design, because if I try to edit my early path while the PC is running a later section of it, e.g. by adding a left then right movement, it breaks at the moment.) If it's before the edit point, it can pause when reaching the broken end like it does now at the end of the whole set (if you don't have autoloop enabled).
I imagine you'd have to do something like have each instruction essentially remember which tile it was originally placed on (or maybe the PC's tile when the action was invoked for interactions). There are *perhaps* some niche situations where you might want to shift the entire latter portion of the instruction queue in some direction, but especially with the current map design consisting mostly of 1-wide width corridors and very few open spaces, it's hard to see that making more sense most of the time.
Yeah I misunderstood your suggestion, my bad. Actually, that was the earlier version of queue essentialy, however when it doesnt recompute the further actions it was really hard to see which actions are actually orphaned and which are not, hence I made this version. Hmm maybe if I went with coloring the orphaned queue red it might work out, cause you're right that even tho we lose the ability to edit further route, it IS a niche use and its more important to make queue more user-friendly. Added it to known issues to try it out, but it'll take a while before next 0.3 patch, want to add more content
Ended up adding a hotfix, couldn't help myself ^^
its good, optimizing my path felt puzzley which i like. i didn't try to figure out the edit queue stuff much but it seemed pretty unintuitive. and idk what the point of the clear queue button is if it just restarts you whole run, it should just clear the queue. also i would increase the game speed, its just too much watching.
That was pretty fun, I'll be looking forward to more! The largest pain point was editing a run, so I usually pressed undo a lot or cleared. Keep up the good work o7
another time loop game like cavernous has been something ive wanted for years! this is a really good game, but feels a little too slow in terms of actual progress. and its a shame the echos dont do anything. i still havent figured out how to leave the house. but ive been just about everywhere. and discovered as much of the map as i can find. this game really would be so fun once its a full game. the gameplay loop is really enjoyable.
a few more information would also be nice. it wasnt clear to me what focus did. since i felt its effects werent worth using. the cooldown underneath the mana made me think that the focus lasted that long, and i was upset when i upgraded it and it reduced how long it lasted. but of course that was the cooldown instead.
still not entirely sure how to use focus though. it seeminly only gives you a small boost in speed when interacting with things.
while its really cool to add lots of things in the game when its not finished yet. played it can be quite frustrating when some things dont do anything. i would delay adding the echos until theyre actually usable. just saying "purpose unclear" is really unsatisfying, after spending time to find a path to them.
really cool game though!" cant wait to see what you do with it!
ah i finally got outside, a bit underwhelming to be honest. maybe add a "thanks for playing"?
Umm... Thanks for playing! Better late than never is what they say ^^'
Added, will be in next patch, that will be tomorrow unfortunately, cause its a big shake-up so will take a little longer, instability rework that is done, and I still need to do familiarity system to get some more sense of progress! I hope I'll be able to build smth great in a year or so, all with a goal to make this type of games more popular in order to have more to play myself lol
Thanks for feedback!
I have no idea how to progress further.
I've looted all containers I could find, beat most monsters at least once (spider included), read books, mastered mana crystals, passed one of Focus trials (2nd seemes too hard at my level), I even used The Useless Key and went out to touch the trees!
But there's no sign of the third key to open remaining locked doors, no way through trees, no interaction on spider's green booty looty.
Sad.
That means you've beaten the early demo, thanks for playing!
Well, I beat the game, and this indeed took "a while". The skills progression is too slow, that's for sure, also I'm not sure how Focus works and what it does, as well as all these spheres. But the concept is promising, would really enjoy more content.
Appreciated! Yeah, there will be more progress axis in the future, entertaining a Codex idea and/or Stuck in Time kinda style familiarity per tile, so you can level each tile/object you walk/fight/interact with as well. It'll feel better with more content tho thats for sure! Spheres will be unlocked only in second map, even tho I got the system ready.
Familiarity would allow some progress on repeated loops, definitely.
HOW DO I START AFTER THE FIRST LOOP
If you mean when the map gets gray and you get a msg "Continuation requires intent": press play button at the top. Or space.
I simply don't understand how this works. It will yank me out of the loop even though I have mana left. UI/UX is a bit atrocious. Why won't you let me speed up the long loop for free? Why must I suffer and watch the horribly slow walk to get a couple rooms over? C'mon man.
overjoyed to see a loop game and it's a pretty interesting story. Does need to have skills level up much faster. Minimal multiplier and low exp gain.
the balance was the smallest improvement, but seriously. I don't want to run this for hours, because currently I can't get to trial or the next key (and return). I hoped that the green gem... could be interacted or something to get a small improvement, but sadly not. I really don't want to grind to grind several hours to level 20 to see if that starts to unlock anything to give me a small edge.
Hmm I feel like I should've set an artificial lvl cap in the early demo cause ppl misunderstand. Its supposed to be: get around lvl 10-12, have Crystal Attunement I and first Trial of Fucus (Pressure I) done, and then leave the house -> you're done with the demo. Its not supposed to be grindable to level 20, not to mention higher, there will be better xp on next maps. Currently its a 5h early demo to test if the gameplay loop itself is fun.
I am loving the progress and idea at least. People need to make more of these. But yes, it definitely does seem that either levels need to be stronger, or experience quicker to make people look forward to progress/grind.
Yeah you're right, with different axis of progress in and some balancing it'll feel much better. And also remade instability, cause now it just feels bad.
do to lack of way to scroll the screen i cant get past the slime at the top of the screen
game froze when i picked up the candle in 2nd run
still far too buggy for playtesting, candle lost visibility bonus after first run, undoing loop commands borks everything up, and randomly mid loop charting you stop being able to move or interat correctly.
its also far too heavily a copy of "stuck in time"
With the 0.23 update it broke some interactions, like breaking the doors (the one at the beginning, that takes forever, the one next to the rat), and I think you can't use the green orb, not sure since I couldn't get there in 0.22, but I got there in 0.23, and there was no interaction. Also you can 'move' to places you can't move, you can click move there, and it breaks movement, but you can't actually move, undoing tends to clear it, but doing that sometimes breaks the path when you cycle.
Echoes not being interactable in the ealy demo first map is intended.
Hmm maybe undo is being finnicky with queue edit.
Thx for feedback!