Controls were very fluid and responsive, even on my laptop that normally lags like crazy with flash games. At first I thought the game was too easy to take seriously, but after finishing the levels and finding out that you need to get through them... differently... I thought more highly of it. Graphics were nice enough -- pixel art is fine for a fast paced game, and the sparkle effects and switching the direction of the (pipe? golf club?) between swings were a nice touch. Music, I realize might be appreciated by some people since retro is popular now, but personally I thought it got annoying fairly quickly. IMO it's a 4-5 star game, and I agree with nibor7301, something funny is going on with the score 'cause this isn't a 2.3 game at all.
Ugh, it became extremely laggy after a few levels, both on Chrome and Firefox. So I tried refreshing the page to see if that got rid of the lag, and I found out that it doesn't save your progress :/ It was a nice puzzler for the levels where it was playable, but it really needs to either have the lag issue resolved or save progress so people can at least refresh if it gets laggy (or ideally both: have no lag and save progress).
I wish I could attach a screenshot to my comment, but I don't think I can on Kongregate and their commenting system is f*ed because it won't preserve enter/linefeeds. So I'll have to agree with other people on level 34 requiring guessing and just describe what I see. -- There's a (group seeing 3) and a (group seeing 1) that partially overlap. You can safely click on a cell viewed by (group seeing 1) to reveal more cells, and you get a (group seeing 2) and a (singlet seeing 1). At this point there are two possibilities: A) there's one bomb among the 2x2 grid of cells that's seen by all of the groups, in which case it's not safe to click one of those cells, or B) there are at least two bombs with none seen by all three groups, one seen by only the group seeing 2, and one seen by both the group seeing 3 and the group seeing 1. In either case, there are no safe cells to click. Hope that helps, because this game is still a 5/5 for me.
I keep getting horribad lag D: Happens when I walk into a new area, and when I walk within an area such that new tiles are shown. Not lagging at all if no new tiles are uncovered when I walk. Using Google Chrome 52.0.2743.116 on Windows 10 with Flash 22.0.0.209.
I like it, but this installment had way less puzzle-solving challenge than the others and was more a matter of watching a script unfold. Plz don't go too far in that direction; games need to still be games and not just movies.
I haven't encountered the bug with blocks disappearing, using Chrome v 51.0.2704.103 on Windows. But I do have laggy movement of the blocks when I try to drag them around, and the music got irritating after a little while so I turned it off. The puzzles weren't very difficult; I got 120 stars pretty quickly.
Overall, this is a good game for a game jam. The time-warping mechanics and the puzzles associated with it are obviously the focus of the game and were done well, but the platforming could stand to be improved. Right now, it feels like the character moves too slow and the controls overall are "floaty" in a way that's difficult for me to describe, but other platformer game developers would probably know what I'm talking about and be able to tell you what sort of physics settings cause it and how to adjust them to make it less floaty. Other than that, it would be nice to see the idea expanded further with more complex puzzles if you feel up to it.
I like the concept of a detective game to add more of a challenge over regular point-and-click adventures. If you think you've got it in you to make more games like this with new clues each time, then keep 'em coming. ***Spoiler: do not read any more if you haven't finished the game yet*** My only critique would be that I thought the culprit's motive and overall situation would be inconsistent with the content of the note.
Part 2 of 2: Also include a pre-loader screen showing how much % the game is loaded so people won't look at a blank screen for two minutes and vote 1 because they think it's not working. I'm getting substantial lag at some points, especially while closing the screens when the battle resolves if there's a large (60+ soldier) army. If that's a programming issue then see if it can be reduced, if it depends on what browser you play in then have a message on the pre-loader saying which browsers work well and which don't. The horizontal slider when you select which unit to take damage often gets "stuck" and keeps moving after I release the mouse button. The background music isn't looping for me.
Hey Epoch, thanks for the tons of advice. I didnt realize until after i put the game online that it has to be downloaded completely before the first screen is shown. With some internet connections that can be a really bad thing. I have removed some resources from the file to make it smaller but its still 30 MB (mostly because of the music) I am reading some on how to implement the preloader and will do that a.s.a.p. after some testing.
i will also look into the other issues tomorrow.
Thanks for taking the time to write it all down for me!
Part 1 of 2: It's fundamentally a good game but there are some things that could be improved. Like Asharai said, explain the game's mechanics, particularly how to make ranged units just fire instead of moving a whole army. Have popups explaining what the icons mean (heart, two swords, sword+shield, etc, and things like the archers firing vs moving the whole army) if you mouse hover. On the screens like general selection and map mastery, you could put the text saying things like "the choice of general determines which troops you can recruit" in some of the free space on that page instead of making people click the i button (which people may overlook)... the easier you make it for the player to figure out the basic mechanics, the better.
Wow, this is one of the toughest logic games I've played in a while, while still being fun. 5/5 just for that. My only suggestion would be that I'd like a way to mark a piece as "locked" if I've logically figured out that it must fall on a specific tile, please. Alternatively, being able to move pieces to a side area "off the board" like chmurray suggested would be another way of achieving the effect I'm looking for.
I really like this game considering that it was made in a few days in a gamejam. Anyone who's played a few runthroughs and feels like they're stuck should map out the area, and pay attention to what's not there.
Thanks for the tip on handling the formulas IV rounding issue, spacedock. And checkout the latest high score on primes nomod... game not beaten yet. (Although I admit I sorta cheated a little with how I made that algo.)
I think I'm running into a bug with Formulas IV. For the first 250 random numbers it gives, if you get a negative input it expects the output to be the negative number below (more negative than) the product, like if the product were -3531.7346 it would expect -3532. But in the test cases from 250-500 when I hit the first negative input -7019, if you calculate its product you get -22050.8388 so by the first cases you would expect it to want -22051 (which is what my program is producing as output), but now ciggbitcembly expects -22050 as the correct output.
Spacedock apparently got a non-mod solution to it, but idk how unless something changed since he did.
5/5 and favorited... even though I personally think MOD is evil and refuse to use it. Unfortunately Kongregate is the home of idle/clicker games where people come if even the thought of thinking scares them, so it won't get rated as well here as it deserves. Two small bugs: the question mark button by the code window makes text appear along the left side (nine lines with Z, X, SPACE, TAB, ...) with the game hanging afterward and requiring a restart, and does that in either Chrome or Firefox. More importantly, high scores aren't updating so I can't gloat about getting the high score on Primes (assuming someone else hasn't already beaten my score and is also not getting it updated).
Haha, yes MOD is evil, but it's fun to use in puzzle games. Thankfully there's a leaderboard for you, the NoMOD category. Yes, it seems like people don't like to be challenged on Kongregate. The question mark is a known bug and will be fixed in the next update. High scores can be forced to update by switching your category back and forth, I personally don't see you on Primes so the connection between you and the Kong API probably failed. I can't do anything in that case. Thanks for the kind words, be on the lookout for my next update which will include the ability to make user-made levels.
I just get a big black screen with a link at the bottom (after scrolling down) to unity3d.com. I won't rate it for now, so you have a chance to see if you can figure out what's going on and get it working.
It looks like a very good game so far. The only thing I would suggest: in games like this I like to take corners by rotating and strafing simultaneously - like if I'm coming up to a right-hand turn I'll approach it while rotating right and strafing left. But that's impossible to do if you have a key that toggles between rotating and strafing. So I would like it if there were "strafe left" and "strafe right" keys that I could press while also rotating.
This was a very nice puzzle game. Unfortunately that means It'll get horrible ratings on Kongregate where people play idle games so they don't have to think. But please keep making games like this anyway.
The support calls seem really OP. Without them, I had a hard time making it past the danger level 10 or 11 planets. I reset the game and got support calls as soon as they became available, and got multiple support calls that I can use once on each of the waves of fighters and three times on the boss, I've made it up to danger levels in the 30s so far without even upgrading any of my other stuff beyond level 3 or 4 (aside from shields and the alien weapon pickups).
I'd also recommend more detailed descriptions of how the units operate. Something like Axe: Moves 0-2 squares horizontally/vertically or 1 diagonally, attacks 3 adjacent squares. Spear: Must jump 2 squares horizontally/vertically or 1 diagonally, may kill enemies by landing on them, strikes two squares in a row. Wizard: Moves 0-2 squares horizontally/vertically or 1 diagonally, strikes squares in an X pattern after moving 0-1 squares horizontally/vertically or strikes one square after moving 2 squares horizontally/vertically or 1 square diagonally. Transporter: Swaps units at opposite locations on the field, kills enemies if two enemies are swapped, gives allies that have already acted a second turn if they are swapped. Hammer: Gives adjacent allies that have already acted a second turn (except transporter), attacks one adjacent square. Similar explanations for enemies.
 "Zak"){kind=icon}
 "Block master"){kind=icon}
 "Mine of Sight"){kind=icon}
 "Fear S∮ciety"){kind=icon}
 "Medieval Cop V - The Secrets of Lucifer's Wings"){kind=icon}
 "Fillz"){kind=icon}
 "Mr.Timan"){kind=icon}
 "Detective Sir Biscuit"){kind=icon}
 "Digitwars"){kind=icon}
 "Hexallin"){kind=icon}
 "Legend of Dad - Quest for Milk"){kind=icon}
 "CiggbitCembly"){kind=icon}
 "Space-Time Meltdown"){kind=icon}
 "LAB"){kind=icon}
 "Lightmare"){kind=icon}
 "Galaxy Siege 3"){kind=icon}
 "Militia"){kind=icon}
Thanks for that! I've just changed that level, it was unsolvable, my bad :/ Thanks for playing that far!