This game had 100k plays since FEBRUARY, and a rating 3.40. Why on Earth was it badged? It's not popular, it's not well-rated, and it's not good. Between this game and escapex40, are you that hard-pressed to find non-MMO games to badge these days?
The way you handle mouse input to both translate and rotate pieces in a way that feels natural is perfect. Allow clicking on a joint to toggle locked/loose so one can make pieces move together with less frustration and the game will be perfect.
Alright, this is definitely a step in the right direction: Away from tedious, repetitive burger flipping and more toward design. Don't get me wrong, the forging and assembling parts are still repetitive and boring, but there is a *hint* of something with the different parts one can use. Now if only this aspect was emphasized so the player could go from weaponsmith to weapon designer, you would finally have something great. But that would mean offering the option to DELEGATE MENIAL TASKS at some point, which you still haven't understood. Oh well, maybe next time.
Problem with the new update: 117 is enough to get a perfect step score on level 9, but then the level 9 box is not good enough to get a perfect step score on level 16. This contradicts the last point you made in the update text so it qualifies as a bug. PM for the details of how to reproduce.
In the end, you may have to do what PleasingFungus did with Manufactoria: two ratings for each level, one for parts and one for steps.
Turned out pretty fun in the end, I'm glad I stuck with it. Got max ratings for the first 19 levels, so I'll be waiting for you to come up with new levels. 5'd and favorited.
Very reminiscent of Manufactoria, which is a good thing. It seems like an improvement at first, with its ability to choose the direction of output, and the capability to store and reuse boxes made in early levels. Unfortunately, instead of providing a better and better toolbox to make really fancy and complex later levels, the game goes the other way: Increasing difficulty by crippling the player's ability to use formerly common tools. When level 15 rolled around and the whole confusing business with the square and round boxes started, I understood why the game's rating is so low.
Note that level 15's swap is difficult to do without the new tools introduced. Also, these levels (15 - 18) introducing the new concepts of box type and recursion are supposed to introduce useful concepts for later when you build your own boxes, but in the current version you don't yet have a sandbox to build your own boxes. Believe me, if you're trying to write mergesort (an algorithm to arrange a list of comma-separated numbers in sorted order) you're going to want both these features.
"No plants, no trees [...] remain on Earth." Oh what's that near the right edge of the playing field? TREES! Looks like your story got tacked on after the game was finished because you thought you needed one. Bleh.
Level 6 is different with the balloon: the first wheel is further left, which makes it almost impossible to get from one wheel to the next without dying. If it wasn't moved, the level would be perfectly doable. Lame.
I tried to restart the current level (no option for that, thank you!) and tried 'new game'. Without warning all my research was erased, and I had to restart from the first planet. Not my idea of fun.
The controls are terrible. Left-right does the same thing as up-down, near as I can tell, and the movement is sluggish. This boy has the acceleration of a dump truck at the bottom of the ocean. Unplayable.
I'm not so sure it's unplayable. Plenty of people seem to enjoy playing it. We'll see what we can do about the controls though. Thanks for the feedback. :)
The size of the circle should reflect the size stat. Otherwise, fun, but selection tools are too limited (allow sorting, discarding) and the game is way too short. For a GitD though, it's awesome!
I had originally intended to do that. The thing that stopped me was because I was worried about making the circles get too small because they'd be a pain to grab. Granted, that was back when I had intended the little creatures to wander around on their own.
New bug! I got a family member killed, and the game stopped responding. It's nobody's turn, time isn't flowing, and I can't do anything. This game wasn't ready for prime time, it needs beta testers, not players.
Untargetable enemy bug here too. First fight, no less. Should I hold my rating until the final version mentioned in the top post? What is this game even doing out if it has not been properly beta tested yet anyway?
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It is possible but unlikely you are right. PM me more details if you can including your solution to level 9 and 16.