Control the winds of the mystic islands to collide with other islands reforming the land itself. Your powers over the islands only last for a short time, and you are confined to a limited area, so move wisely. Each turn of the sea’s wind depletes your strength.

WASD Controls and Enter to Confirm

There is no restart button. Good Luck~

Moving adjacent to an island type with your mystic island will cause those islands to move with the winds.

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  • SpritePainter
    Lv. 21

    The art was really nice, with a strong choice of colors. Apart from a way to restart the level, or undo a move, I think it would help to have a few levels at the start to show the player how the mechanics work. Experimenting can be fun, but without any guidance puzzles can become frustrating. It may have helped to have some visual elements to show how and when different islands are going to react to your movements.

  • Fachewachewa
    Patron

    I'm going to repeat what Happy said: undo and smoother progression!!! The 2nd level already feel insurmountable, and since there's no undo, there's really no way to experiment. Plus, it's worse than in sokobans, because here if you make one wrong move and stick to the wrong island, it's over!
    That's an interesting indea though, and I'm curious to see where it could lead, but yeah it needs more easy levels just so that we can figure out how everything works. For me it'd be: first, no archipellagos, just individual islands, then, still individual islands but you need to know what shape to make to push other islands around, then mix in a few archipellagos, and only then after a few levels, add multiple "main" islands.
    Here I'm getting to level 2, there's islands everywhere, I can't figure out a way to cover each spot, and I constantly stick to other islands accidentally 😭

    • OoTrillionoO
      Lv. 2
      OoTrillionoO Developer of Advancing of the Archipellagos

      2yrs ago

      Yeah, an undo probably would've gone a mile to make this feel better, and in future turn-based puzzlers, it'll be one of the first things I look to implement.

      Mm, making islands that don't stick and archipellagos that do is an interesting idea. I think the most difficult thing about that would be clearly visually differentiating the two.

      But for level difficulty, I had just kinda hoped to get interesting levels out before our time was up, especially since I was working with weird (and unnecessary) level progression math. Still, simpler levels will be something I try to better implement in future jams.

      Thanks for the feedback~

  • Tydecon Games
    Patron

    I wish there was a restart button because this was a very interesting, chill puzzle game, it's fun and unique but it just so so so much needs a restart button! Great job though, definitely not something I've seen too often before and executed very well! :)

    • OoTrillionoO
      Lv. 2
      OoTrillionoO Developer of Advancing of the Archipellagos

      2yrs ago

      Thanks!

      Yeah, a restart button was something that I kinda forgot to implement. Originally I'd planned to set it up so that you'd be able to rewind each move, but that got really daunting so I put it off. After looking into it after the jam, I was both pleasantly surprised and disappointed to find that it would've taken less than a minute to implement.

      Thanks for the feedback~

  • _J_BALLA
    Lv. 3

    Awesome game! The music is chill!! I got stuck on the 2nd level xD

  • dreamcastgh0st
    Lv. 2

    Cool unique idea, and pretty intuitive. Has a lot of room for interesting scenarios to arise from the mechanics, which is important for a puzzler.

    On the other hand, it's so easy to accidentally stick yourself to an island-- especially on stages where you have multiple player islands on the screen. Sometimes, the player gets themselves into a situation where they can't win-- the game needs a restart button to deal with that. Without it, the game feels like a minefield sometimes.

    With a few fixes, though, could definitely be a standout example of a unique sokoban-like. I hope to see where it ends up going!

    • OoTrillionoO
      Lv. 2
      OoTrillionoO Developer of Advancing of the Archipellagos

      2yrs ago

      Thanks!

      Yeah, the idea really lends itself to a turn-rewind mechanic, which will probably be the next thing I try to implement with this idea.

      I don't have a tonne of motivation to further this right now, but in the future I'll probably come back to this and expand on it.

      Thanks for the feedback~

  • Ethan Wake
    Lv. 10

    Pretty unique puzzler with a concept I haven't seen before. Took me a bit of toying around to figure out how everything works, but it started making sense after playing a few levels. I kinda wish there were a way to "release" islands you've connected with, as there were several times I mistakenly bonded with the wrong island and ruined any chance of completing the puzzle. Overall though, it's a solid casual puzzle game!

    • OoTrillionoO
      Lv. 2
      OoTrillionoO Developer of Advancing of the Archipellagos

      2yrs ago

      Thanks! In this iteration, part of our idea that we had was for islands to be stuck to you for the level (in this version there are unintended ways to break that by pushing an attached island off screen), and as a result sticking to an island was a commitment. But I think that this really lent itself to an undo or restart mechanic. Still, I can certainly see where that comes from.

      Though while working on it, I definitely thought about adding objects that would collide with those islands (like a stationary rock in the ocean) to unstick them and I think there was a lot of room to work that sort of thing into puzzles but I just didn't have enough time and had spent a long time on getting collision down already.

      Thanks for the feedback~

  • whatthesamuel
    Lv. 4

    Nice job! Though a bit of how-to-play or a tutorial might have helped. Might revisit later!

    • OoTrillionoO
      Lv. 2
      OoTrillionoO Developer of Advancing of the Archipellagos

      2yrs ago

      Thanks! If we have more time, I'd definitely look to implementing a more smooth intro early after working in something like a turn rewind mechanic.

      Thanks for the feedback~

  • scottgoldsmith
    Lv. 10

    Really enjoyed the puzzle aspect. I had originally hoped to do some kind of tetris island game but I think you expected this far better than I could. Well done!

  • Happysquared
    Lv. 15

    Think the idea for this one isn't bad. Seems a cool style that can be expanded on.

    I think my biggest feedback is to have a restart button. There was a load game button, and an exit button. However, I think a restart button would have greatly improved the player experience because I often found myself having made a mistake in a puzzle and needing to restart the game to keep going. If you look at some sokoban styled puzzles where you need to drag boxes and it is possible to softlock yourself in them, they often have an undo key to revert the last move. I think that's also something you could look into if you are planning on expanding the game.

    That being said, it is a game jam with a really limited amount of time so nice job getting some level design in and a concept you can work with!

    Level design wise, I think you could start off a little easier. Rather than think of every level as something to really challenge the player, I think the first level is good to just teach the player the concept. Even having the first level be one where the player needs to move one space to push an island into the right square would be a really good explanation on how it works. And start introducing the other island colours afterwards.

    Also small feedback on the visuals, but I think it'd be nicer if the island colours were a little bit more different than they are right now.

    Nice foundation to keep going on! And a nice take on the island theme. Your description had flavour that I enjoyed.

    • OoTrillionoO
      Lv. 2
      OoTrillionoO Developer of Advancing of the Archipellagos

      2yrs ago

      Thanks thanks, I was a lil concerned it'd seem a bit unoriginal when compared to other movement-focused puzzle games, but its nice to hear that it wasn't too similar.

      A Turn back-tracking option was something that initially when conceiving the idea for the game I was like "This is a must-have, I'll do this as soon as the movement is done", then when I looked into options for implementing something like that, storing the player's moves, and the amount of time that would take, that idea seemed really daunting to me in such short time and so I just tossed it.

      In hindsight, a level restart option instead would take like 5 minutes to implement knowing what I know now about gamemaker rooms, and if there was anything that I could have 5 more minutes to work on, it'd be that.

      Yeah for sure, though I do think that restarting options or back-tracking options would make the puzzles feel less daunting/punishing than they do now. There are only three levels that I had time to show, so I was just hoping to show how the game could be interesting, less-so than slowly introducing the mechanics. And the fact that there were only three levels was something that I need to improve upon, it was the result of me doing weird math tied to hidden objects that when aligning to certain amounts would change the rooms, and pretty late I had a bug on the third level that you could arrange the islands such that it would take you back to the 2nd level. I'd hoped to put in more levels, but my own weird level transition system got in my way.

      Yeahhh, originally the islands were just going to be wholly identical (maybe excluding the controllable island) and the plan was to have islands stick together to create a larger land mass, but while implementing the islands, and kinda stumbling into islands moving in tandem of similar types, I just quickly recolored the beaches so they'd be distinguishable, and ran with that because of how it seemed to make more interesting puzzle options and interactions that would have larger impacts. I remember on the last day thinking to myself "I'll definitely change the red islands to be volcano islands so that they're unique", and then just didn't.

      Thanks for the feedback~ I'll probably clean it up, and maybe hold onto it if I feel like fiddling with level creation in the future, but its not a project that I feel like I have a lot of motivation to build upon by myself. I appreciate the critique. \o/

  • 2102
    Patron

    Cool idea, but kinda confusing execution with what moves when. And islands "fell" off the screen a lot for me, but it was good, all in all.

    • OoTrillionoO
      Lv. 2
      OoTrillionoO Developer of Advancing of the Archipellagos

      2yrs ago

      Yeah, I really got stumped with some of the movement and collision interactions while programming, and hit a point where I'd spent so much time bug fixing it that I just kinda decided "That's it, moving stuff on the edge of the screen is a feature now". There's some bugs that probably impact how clear it is whether islands types move or not, and I certainly could've put more work into making the islands more distinct.

      Thanks for the feedback~

  • Chris
    Patron

    Cool puzzle game, I don't think I've seen anything like it before