The teleporter puzzle was rather long and tedious for my taste, considering it's all trial and error. Perhaps if the last-used teleporters were marked or something. A more serious problem is the southern switch: there are no statues within sight of that island, so I couldn't tell if I accidentally hit the switch more than once, or not at all. I'm playing without audio, and there are no visual clues at all for the trigger.
I never understood the puzzle with the red and blue fires, very near the end. I managed it, but if there was something more than trial and error, I never caught on.
I know your text system is a pain, but if it's possible, I'd recommend a "dead time" on Space after revealing a full text box. I was using the double-tap to avoid the scrolling, and found it very easy to accidentally skip right through text with an accidental extra key press. Some of the screens revealed without scrolling, so my instinctive double-tap always skipped those. Does anybody actually prefer the scrolling reveal, I wonder?
I like the cute graphics, and the timer and hard-to-predict powerup gives it an arcade feel. I don't like how after level 10, the timer speeds up so rapidly that one hard-to-find match means Game Over. My high scores are due to luck more than skill, which kills the replay.
Nice game. The last two levels were very laggy for me, making it almost impossible to finish level 40. It's sometimes hard to tell where you're missing the last couple of percentage points as well; maybe have some way to highlight the uncovered slivers?
The level designs and mechanics are great (except the velocity maintained across screens), but limited lives is a retro idea that doesn't deserve a revival. A pause map and teleport-to-checkpoint option, instead of forced trips back to the main menu, would greatly increase the playing-to-waiting ratio. The unpolished web port doesn't help either. Where's the Kickstarter for the modernized remake?
Gets extremely challenging; is Level 15 even possible? Needs a level select screen, so one can take a break and continue later. Also needs character graphics that aren't a ripoff of a popular movie.
The play value beyond the first two minutes comes from replaying for score through time and achievements. But, there's no "replay" button except at the end, there's no "achievements" button anywhere to see what will give you a good score, and there's no time "score" displayed until the end. There IS an onscreen timer, but it counts up instead of down, with no clear relationship to the score you get. There's also no way to skip the slow score animations. This slows down the pace of replaying, and the hidden achievements make scoring nearly random (I only reached the top 20 by deliberately playing the aqua level badly), so aiming for score is frustrating and awkward. Playing to unlock all achievements would be fun, but there's no way to measure progress on that. The core game is terrific, but the UI issues kill the replay value.
Wow, this series went from a satire of simple games saddled with pretentious stories, to an actual genuine Pretentious Game That Makes You Feel. :) And a variety of fun little levels in each one. Good job!
I found myself wanting more levels, which is the mark of a good puzzle game. There's a surprising variety of mechanics; most are physics puzzle standbys (only the timed switch stands out as original) but you seldom see them all in one game. A couple levels are duds, but the next one will be different, and I found the final level to be a satisfying challenge. The art is rather a hodgepodge, and the UI could use keyboard shortcuts and better information, but the core gameplay is solid enough to support plenty of good level designs.
The physics puzzler seems to have crystallized into a genre, so your observation of established elements is accurate. The challenge and fun in the making of this game is mainly in level design. Thanks for appreciating that, I see that as the game's value as well.
The platforming was too difficult and stressful for me to enjoy the puzzles; I was left wanting an 'easy mode' with more generous timing. I had to check the walkthrough twice, including the last level. On that level, the timing is so finicky I'd have abandoned the correct solution even if I'd thought of it: it took me 10+ tries even knowing exactly what to do. The news crawl was a neat way to introduce atmosphere, but the GIANT TICKING CLOCK discouraged actually soaking in that atmosphere.
I gave up at level 3. The health tiles aren't worth the time to match them, so they (and their associated gems) just get in the way. I kept running out of keys, even after exhausting my supply of yellow gems, so I found myself having to randomly make matches just hoping to get the right tiles. I understand what you're going for with the free-movement thing, but so many times I pushed a tile out of position while mousing the third one into place. I was so pressed for time I couldn't even glance at the chest rewards, which I didn't realize until a comment mentioned them (too much info dumped at once in the tutorial).
Wow, the physics and level design went together perfectly, without randomness or finicky timing. There was no disconnect between solving the puzzle in my head, and carrying it out; it feels easy because it mostly cuts out the trial-and-error executions of many similar games. The animations were excellent too. Brilliant execution, in a genre so crowded it's hard to stand out.
To me, this a "meh" game that could be much greater. The low-contrast foreground and number of gameplay-irrelevant particles make it hard to tell what's going on and where I need to land. Despite the effort in backgrounds and atmosphere, my attention is focused primarily on simple squares (main obstacles and bonus-point dots), which makes it feel too cluttered and too simple at the same time. Slowdown isn't a very interesting power: since it changes nothing but the reaction time, you switch between way-too-hard and rather-too-easy difficulties. The only reason to ever let go of Space is for score, but the game doesn't make score-chasing easy: the level select doesn't show individual level scores, and there's no quick way to retry a level for better score/time. The gameplay is solid, but it's only got half a story and half a score system. Pick one or the other and focus everything else around that, and you'd have a terrific game.
Sliding blocks to a goal was made famous with Sokoban (1981), and blocks sliding until they hit a wall dates back at least to Pengo (1982). Chip's Challenge (1989) even has the equivalent of Orbox's angled bounce blocks. The Orbox games are fun, and you should be proud of that, but you shouldn't be proud of your ignorance in 1996 of an established concept.
First of all I mentioned that I m not the only one came up with this idea. Second is that I had no internet up to 2001 or even 2002, not sure. And finally, all the games you mentioned are different types than Orbox. There was often a mention about pockemon game ice caves, and that is correct compare. But I haven't played it and even did not know what pockemons are(I m from Russia). There was some games that really have same or very similar concept(I discovered those later than came up with Orbox), but it is not the ones you mentioned. So I keep proud I m original author of this concept(because it's really so).
Level 27 is so laggy for me it's completely unplayable. I liked the first 26 levels, and was looking forward to the rest... really hope you can get this fixed.
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 "Search Papoy"){kind=icon}
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 "Token Hero"){kind=icon}
 "Rolling Ghosts"){kind=icon}
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 "Color Joy"){kind=icon}
The physics puzzler seems to have crystallized into a genre, so your observation of established elements is accurate. The challenge and fun in the making of this game is mainly in level design. Thanks for appreciating that, I see that as the game's value as well.