Advancing of the Archipellagos

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~

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~

Thanks!

The music is all on LegendHero for composing, and I think they did pretty good too~

Thanks for the feedback!

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~

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~

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~

Nice, thanks! Glad you enjoyed!

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/

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~

Thanks!