This game is amazing, it's such a simple concept but very enjoyable... i am amazed at how you manage to make all this puzzle,, i really used my brain to solve all the puzzle and sometime it's frustrating but it's not a puzzle game if you don't use your brain to solve it right...
Also i enjoy the music and design of the game, it's verry chill and fit the setting, making me enjoy every moment...
Tho im/ma say the ending is kinda underwhelming... i mean right after i burnt my brain cells to collect all those rainbow animals, all i got was just some words from the unicorn... tbh i expected something more, but hey it's just me...
Still it's such an amazing game to play,,,
I look forward to more games from you in the future ^^
This game is perfect. It is really brilliant that some puzzles need to be solved from different directions, possibly with abilities you don't have before, and result in different difficulties. I don't really like puzzle games, except Adventures of Lolo and I miss it. But this game makes me think of Lolo and has successfully attracted me to spend an hour to complete it.
I saw comments about some of the Owl puzzles being too easy, and I see you have updated to make them difficult. They have really killed some of my brain cells and I love it.
A query: is it possible to actually be unable to backtrack? Like I'm in column 1, row 4 and was able to move south through pushing and rolling, etc. but when I went down to 1,5 I felt a bit stymied so figured I'd backtrack...but it looks like, without certain abilities, one can't go back that way.
Actually, sorry. It was possible to get stuck in that space, if you don't have the bear yet. It's been fixed. You should be able to reload your game and get the new version of the level where you can backtrack.
Oh, no worries, I just started a new game and, have to admit, used a YouTube video for two of the last puzzles. XP Thank you for looking into it though!
Finally got the end with your fixing on last puzzles, not sure if it was intentional but the last puzzle was really easy compared with the previous ones.
I'm really surprised on how your mind works, taking a "simple" mechanic (walk and push) and making a beautiful and difficult game (a lot times i thought... this have any solution actually? xD).
My best congratulations and thank you so much for this awesome jewel.
I really appreciate feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yes, that last puzzle is a bit easier than the previous two, it was intentional but perhaps not ideal. I plan to swap those last two puzzles with a future update to give a bit of 'break' between the harder puzzles.
Hi! I'm really stuck on this level, and watching the walkthrough another player did didn't help at all because it was different for some reason- But anyway, if anybody have some vague advice or ominous hints that would be much appreciated, I'm way too close to the end to give up now! all i know is i have to get one of the blocks, probably the log since its the easiest to move of my four options over to the right side of the screen to fill that hole so I can get to the other side of the river, but that's a given.
It took me a few tries but I've managed to solve it! (You've also probably solved it by now but hey, maybe not and this will help you, I hope ^^) Here's how you want to proceed: - push the first stone ball in the water immediately to the left of it; - push the first white block 2 to the left and then in the water, exactly where the path with the pebbles is; - jump the gap and push the log into the water; - push it to the right, then carefully jump in the tiny corner of water between the white block and the log, so that you can push the log 1 space down; - push the log up against the submerged stone ball so that it can rise to the ground; - now push it upwards so that it fills the gap between you and the next stone ball; - push the stone ball in the tall grass; you want it to be aligned with the lower stone ruin; - push it and destroy the stone ruin, then push the stone ball in the water; - push the log down towards the submerged stone ball and when it rises push it to the left till it's aligned with the gap; - push it downwards and jump to the end of the puzzle!
(Now that this game has been fully released, I want to make a proper review using my original critique as the baseline)
First off, I can't stress how excited and surprised I am by the final release; there are tons of different gamejam games that I've played and that have never been completed, fixed, done anything with, etc. that I was expecting this game to go down a similar path. The fact that this game got to see a full revamped release is honestly something really commendable that I wish more game devs would do.
Now, onto the old critiques I had and how they stack: 1. (Block physics) So with the new textures on the blocks and the background layer of the game, you can clearly tell how each block will react to their environment and which way the columns are facing. They all have set movements they can make whether they are on grass or plain floor, so this gets a pass with flying colors 2. (Puzzle scaling) Strangely enough, each area to get a new animal feels as though they aren't connected to previous ones in terms of difficulty; for example, when going to get the deer, the difficulty for the puzzles seem to have no correlation to any previous puzzles. This isn't a bad thing as the opening of the game gives you a set trail to follow, so while the difficulty gets easy between animals, you never feel as though it completely falls off and get more of a feeling as though you're passing through game levels 3. (The fox) The fox is the most overpowered animal in the game, and even though it's the first and easiest animal to get, you can bypass getting it until the end (but why would you want to not have all that power??) 4. (The audio) What I found really interesting about the audio is that, while there are a couple of tracks that play on loop, there are pockets of just white noise; in other games, this would seem like an oversight, but with the atmosphere of the game (you're in a sick forest doing puzzles to save spirit animals), each pocket of white noise feels somehow refreshing as it finds a way to reset your mental clock doing the tough puzzles 5. (The otter) The otter received a few massive updates in this build: A. You can push certain blocks in the water and move them around, adding an extra layer to each of the puzzles that utilize them B. Even though you have the otter, you can't just bypass puzzles altogether; puzzles now have less ways to cheese, and later ones outright require the more OP animals (swimming, column breaking, tree climbing) to be able to progress 6. (Progression) While the game feels really open-ended with exploration, you'll quickly find that there is an order for collecting the animals; the only animal that is optional is the fox, but to get to new animal areas (or to even do some of the puzzles) you have to grab them in a specific order. Luckily, there are no soft-locks that I could find in the game through two playthroughs 7. (My only gripe) The second to last puzzle in the game was the hardest puzzle to do; I have no idea if I cheesed the whole owl sequence or this was intended to make the player lose their mind with how 3 of the 4 owl puzzles were extremely easy, but if this was intended, it's both brilliant and malicious
All in all, this final release was a nice breath of fresh air and on the mark for what I was hoping would come out of it. Nice puzzles, atmosphere, and exploration allow for this tiny indie game to really pop out in terms of playability and fun!
Here's my playthrough (this playthrough was of the original full release; some of the puzzles have been updated after this video was made):
Glad you enjoyed the new version and thank you for posting your gameplay video & review! You did find a couple unintentional ways to skip those last few puzzles, which I've since fixed!
This is very well put together and greatly improved in terms of quality over the initial release.
And undo button would go far as a QoL improvement. Resetting the level all the way back to the beginning to have to re-attempt a puzzle gets a little tedious.
I'm currently stuck trying to reach the bear. Hopefully someone will have a wallkthrough before too long.
Thanks for the feedback! Your comment prompted me to look into how easy it would be to add undo. Turns out I had 90% of the code in place for undo, a few bug fixes and I was able to get it working now.
Even though this game is basically in Alpha, I wanted to do a playthrough of it in hopes that it'll help with the development!
While the premise, mechanics, and visuals are on point, there's a few things that I noticed that could be improved on:
1. There's a few block physics that don't make sense; some blocks can be moved in certain directions while the exact same blocks can't be moved in the same direction (a column might be able to be pushed right on one screen but not on another, even if it's the same type of floor underneath both) *2. The puzzles don't scale to the abilities you get, so if you get the right abilities early on, the game's difficult just breaks to being too easy (even though I struggled a bit in my playthrough, watching it back made me realize you can take certain routes to get the better abilities before anything else) *3. The fox has no implementation yet *4. The audio 5. The otter can definitely do with a small tweak where instead of being able to swim over all types of water, make there be shallow/deep water so that it doesn't break the difficulty 6. The puzzles can be rearranged or designed in a way that leads you to having to get the animals in a certain order (this would help with difficulty increasing progressively and not giving players an OP ability early on)
All in all (and knowing that this is a really early build), I can definitely see this game being a really fun and challenging puzzle game; I won't be adding an official rating to this game, but I do help that this early-review helps in some way
*Note: I know that the game dev mentioned that the game is going to add these features, but still felt mentioning them incase someone plays this early build
I like this so far! I got a little stuck on the screen with the rolling log, though: it looked like the stone/gravel ground tiles were walls, so I didn't think I could get the log onto them. I'm not sure how practical this would be if you're working to a time limit for the jam, but it might be worth reconsidering the look/layout of that one: it's pretty as-is, but I feel as though it's not particularly "readable" to have two different styles of tile with exactly the same behaviour, given that identifying how the log behaves on different types of ground is key to getting it into the right place to progress.
Taking another look at the level as a whole, I feel as though simply adjusting the colours slightly might help. Currently, there's a lot of green that's passable and a lot of grey that's impassable which I think is what threw me. The solution involves rolling the log onto certain grey tiles, where virtually everything else grey (water, rock walls) is a barrier.
Thanks for the feedback! I updated the game and things should hopefully be a bit more readable. The paths are dirt instead of stone tiles. Added a lot more areas too!
Oh, wow! That's a huge amount of progress - I think I've managed to find all the creatures, though might have done it in an unintended order. I got the bear's column-pushing ability last, so although I can push columns there's nothing left that it would help me reach.
Obviously at this point I know what I'm looking for anyway, but the current version does strike me as being more readable. I'm still having trouble telling the difference between stone and water in the area where the unicorn is lying, but that doesn't seem to cause any knock-on problems.
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Can anyone help?
After HOURS of playing i'm finaly done..
This game is amazing, it's such a simple concept but very enjoyable... i am amazed at how you manage to make all this puzzle,, i really used my brain to solve all the puzzle and sometime it's frustrating but it's not a puzzle game if you don't use your brain to solve it right...
Also i enjoy the music and design of the game, it's verry chill and fit the setting, making me enjoy every moment...
Tho im/ma say the ending is kinda underwhelming... i mean right after i burnt my brain cells to collect all those rainbow animals, all i got was just some words from the unicorn... tbh i expected something more, but hey it's just me...
Still it's such an amazing game to play,,,
I look forward to more games from you in the future ^^
found it via html5 + touch friendly games, had a lot of fun. cleverly designed, thank you :)
This is an awesome game! Fun abilities, good puzzles! If this was brought to a larger scale, it would be amazing!
Just beat the game! Very cool, loved the puzzles! Congratulations!
Amazing game! Ive noticed the mobile controls, so I'm wondering, will there be a mobile build? That would be amazing
Glad you enjoyed it. Yes I am planning mobile builds.
How do you get the bear?
I'm stuck
Stuck on this level with only the bear, rabbit, and fox. Can anyone help?
should be good
* excuse me my 'paint' skills
tysm, thought I was going crazy over here
I'm having a hard time getting to the owl
This game is perfect. It is really brilliant that some puzzles need to be solved from different directions, possibly with abilities you don't have before, and result in different difficulties. I don't really like puzzle games, except Adventures of Lolo and I miss it. But this game makes me think of Lolo and has successfully attracted me to spend an hour to complete it.
I saw comments about some of the Owl puzzles being too easy, and I see you have updated to make them difficult. They have really killed some of my brain cells and I love it.
10/10
A query: is it possible to actually be unable to backtrack? Like I'm in column 1, row 4 and was able to move south through pushing and rolling, etc. but when I went down to 1,5 I felt a bit stymied so figured I'd backtrack...but it looks like, without certain abilities, one can't go back that way.
It's not always possible to backtrack, but you shouldn't need any other abilities to proceed.
Okay, thank you. Very cool game, by the way. Frustrating but in the best way. :-P And the aesthetic is lovely
Actually, sorry. It was possible to get stuck in that space, if you don't have the bear yet. It's been fixed. You should be able to reload your game and get the new version of the level where you can backtrack.
Oh, no worries, I just started a new game and, have to admit, used a YouTube video for two of the last puzzles. XP Thank you for looking into it though!
only played for a little bit, but those touch screen controls are nice! Let me play in bed
Finally got the end with your fixing on last puzzles, not sure if it was intentional but the last puzzle was really easy compared with the previous ones.
I'm really surprised on how your mind works, taking a "simple" mechanic (walk and push) and making a beautiful and difficult game (a lot times i thought... this have any solution actually? xD).
My best congratulations and thank you so much for this awesome jewel.
I really appreciate feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yes, that last puzzle is a bit easier than the previous two, it was intentional but perhaps not ideal. I plan to swap those last two puzzles with a future update to give a bit of 'break' between the harder puzzles.
Hi! I'm really stuck on this level, and watching the walkthrough another player did didn't help at all because it was different for some reason- But anyway, if anybody have some vague advice or ominous hints that would be much appreciated, I'm way too close to the end to give up now! all i know is i have to get one of the blocks, probably the log since its the easiest to move of my four options over to the right side of the screen to fill that hole so I can get to the other side of the river, but that's a given.
It took me a few tries but I've managed to solve it! (You've also probably solved it by now but hey, maybe not and this will help you, I hope ^^)
Here's how you want to proceed:
- push the first stone ball in the water immediately to the left of it;
- push the first white block 2 to the left and then in the water, exactly where the path with the pebbles is;
- jump the gap and push the log into the water;
- push it to the right, then carefully jump in the tiny corner of water between the white block and the log, so that you can push the log 1 space down;
- push the log up against the submerged stone ball so that it can rise to the ground;
- now push it upwards so that it fills the gap between you and the next stone ball;
- push the stone ball in the tall grass; you want it to be aligned with the lower stone ruin;
- push it and destroy the stone ruin, then push the stone ball in the water;
- push the log down towards the submerged stone ball and when it rises push it to the left till it's aligned with the gap;
- push it downwards and jump to the end of the puzzle!
(Now that this game has been fully released, I want to make a proper review using my original critique as the baseline)
First off, I can't stress how excited and surprised I am by the final release; there are tons of different gamejam games that I've played and that have never been completed, fixed, done anything with, etc. that I was expecting this game to go down a similar path. The fact that this game got to see a full revamped release is honestly something really commendable that I wish more game devs would do.
Now, onto the old critiques I had and how they stack:
1. (Block physics) So with the new textures on the blocks and the background layer of the game, you can clearly tell how each block will react to their environment and which way the columns are facing. They all have set movements they can make whether they are on grass or plain floor, so this gets a pass with flying colors
2. (Puzzle scaling) Strangely enough, each area to get a new animal feels as though they aren't connected to previous ones in terms of difficulty; for example, when going to get the deer, the difficulty for the puzzles seem to have no correlation to any previous puzzles. This isn't a bad thing as the opening of the game gives you a set trail to follow, so while the difficulty gets easy between animals, you never feel as though it completely falls off and get more of a feeling as though you're passing through game levels
3. (The fox) The fox is the most overpowered animal in the game, and even though it's the first and easiest animal to get, you can bypass getting it until the end (but why would you want to not have all that power??)
4. (The audio) What I found really interesting about the audio is that, while there are a couple of tracks that play on loop, there are pockets of just white noise; in other games, this would seem like an oversight, but with the atmosphere of the game (you're in a sick forest doing puzzles to save spirit animals), each pocket of white noise feels somehow refreshing as it finds a way to reset your mental clock doing the tough puzzles
5. (The otter) The otter received a few massive updates in this build:
A. You can push certain blocks in the water and move them around, adding an extra layer to each of the puzzles that utilize them
B. Even though you have the otter, you can't just bypass puzzles altogether; puzzles now have less ways to cheese, and later ones outright require the more OP animals (swimming, column breaking, tree climbing) to be able to progress
6. (Progression) While the game feels really open-ended with exploration, you'll quickly find that there is an order for collecting the animals; the only animal that is optional is the fox, but to get to new animal areas (or to even do some of the puzzles) you have to grab them in a specific order. Luckily, there are no soft-locks that I could find in the game through two playthroughs
7. (My only gripe) The second to last puzzle in the game was the hardest puzzle to do; I have no idea if I cheesed the whole owl sequence or this was intended to make the player lose their mind with how 3 of the 4 owl puzzles were extremely easy, but if this was intended, it's both brilliant and malicious
All in all, this final release was a nice breath of fresh air and on the mark for what I was hoping would come out of it. Nice puzzles, atmosphere, and exploration allow for this tiny indie game to really pop out in terms of playability and fun!
Here's my playthrough (this playthrough was of the original full release; some of the puzzles have been updated after this video was made):
Glad you enjoyed the new version and thank you for posting your gameplay video & review! You did find a couple unintentional ways to skip those last few puzzles, which I've since fixed!
Whoops, but I'm also glad that I could be of help finding the cheese 😅
This is very well put together and greatly improved in terms of quality over the initial release.
And undo button would go far as a QoL improvement. Resetting the level all the way back to the beginning to have to re-attempt a puzzle gets a little tedious.
I'm currently stuck trying to reach the bear. Hopefully someone will have a wallkthrough before too long.
Great stuff!
Thanks for the feedback! Your comment prompted me to look into how easy it would be to add undo. Turns out I had 90% of the code in place for undo, a few bug fixes and I was able to get it working now.
Oh wow! That makes everything a lot more forgiving! Thanks so much!
I'm still stuck with the bear...I always seem to be missing one block or column piece. I've gotten the fox and squirrel... the bear is next, correct?
I have no idea what I'm missing. I think it may have something to do with bubble type tiles having the ability to push columns pieces on them?
you’re close! it’s a matter of sequencing
My brain is melting :D But I will try some more!
Even though this game is basically in Alpha, I wanted to do a playthrough of it in hopes that it'll help with the development!
While the premise, mechanics, and visuals are on point, there's a few things that I noticed that could be improved on:
1. There's a few block physics that don't make sense; some blocks can be moved in certain directions while the exact same blocks can't be moved in the same direction (a column might be able to be pushed right on one screen but not on another, even if it's the same type of floor underneath both)
*2. The puzzles don't scale to the abilities you get, so if you get the right abilities early on, the game's difficult just breaks to being too easy (even though I struggled a bit in my playthrough, watching it back made me realize you can take certain routes to get the better abilities before anything else)
*3. The fox has no implementation yet
*4. The audio
5. The otter can definitely do with a small tweak where instead of being able to swim over all types of water, make there be shallow/deep water so that it doesn't break the difficulty
6. The puzzles can be rearranged or designed in a way that leads you to having to get the animals in a certain order (this would help with difficulty increasing progressively and not giving players an OP ability early on)
All in all (and knowing that this is a really early build), I can definitely see this game being a really fun and challenging puzzle game; I won't be adding an official rating to this game, but I do help that this early-review helps in some way
*Note: I know that the game dev mentioned that the game is going to add these features, but still felt mentioning them incase someone plays this early build
Here's my playthrough:
Thanks for all the great and detailed feedback! I'll definitely incorporate this as I build out more levels and improve the game.
No problem, and I'm excited to see the direction this game goes!
Really solid little puzzle game. Short and sweet.
Fun and simple. Sweet graphics. Would really be awesome with some background audio and maybe pushing and walking across grass sfx.
Thoroughly enjoyable! Some nicely tricky puzzles and great power-up progression!
Really amazing! Beautiful art. Just a great mood, even without music or anything it's just like... weirdly enchanting. Great stuff!
I like this so far! I got a little stuck on the screen with the rolling log, though: it looked like the stone/gravel ground tiles were walls, so I didn't think I could get the log onto them. I'm not sure how practical this would be if you're working to a time limit for the jam, but it might be worth reconsidering the look/layout of that one: it's pretty as-is, but I feel as though it's not particularly "readable" to have two different styles of tile with exactly the same behaviour, given that identifying how the log behaves on different types of ground is key to getting it into the right place to progress.
Taking another look at the level as a whole, I feel as though simply adjusting the colours slightly might help. Currently, there's a lot of green that's passable and a lot of grey that's impassable which I think is what threw me. The solution involves rolling the log onto certain grey tiles, where virtually everything else grey (water, rock walls) is a barrier.
Thanks for the feedback! I updated the game and things should hopefully be a bit more readable. The paths are dirt instead of stone tiles. Added a lot more areas too!
Oh, wow! That's a huge amount of progress - I think I've managed to find all the creatures, though might have done it in an unintended order. I got the bear's column-pushing ability last, so although I can push columns there's nothing left that it would help me reach.
Obviously at this point I know what I'm looking for anyway, but the current version does strike me as being more readable. I'm still having trouble telling the difference between stone and water in the area where the unicorn is lying, but that doesn't seem to cause any knock-on problems.