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Oh, and I made that comment because I actually really like the game. If I didn't, I wouldn't care all this much. It's a good game.
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Crowd-sourcing is fun. But it seems a bit... unpleasant that user-created content is practically not free to play. Yes, you can get coins by voting or creating, but 1) not everyone is a pixel-artist 2) by making voting practically compulsory if someone wants to play user-content without paying, you will probably get very biased votes.
So all in all, this just gives me the vibe that you are trying to generate revenue from user content that you get for free. This is probably all fine legally, and it may not at all be what you want it to be; but that's what it looks like and some people may find it uncool.
Since the first release in 2009 we have had a very strong community form around Picma. In order to play you contribute by either creating images, adding content for everyone, voting, which helps moderate said content, or by purchasing Coins/Subscriptions, which helps pay for the servers that host it and the thousands of man-hours our team of two has spent (and keeps spending) developing the game. If none of those options seems appealing, there's still more free content available than most (all?) other similar games have. We believe it's a fair deal for everyone.
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That art on the female character is truly horrifying. I mean, like on a Lovecraft-ian scale. Apart from that, the thing I loved most about the older games was that it was a very minimalist style, where I could just kinda play the game while I do other shit. Now everything's too clunky. And puzzle coins? Well, I give up. Maybe if you called the game a "demo," I'd be fine, but this microtransaction shit is crazy nowadays.
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I would keep the row and column numbers (for the selected tile) the same size, no matter how zoomed in or out the game is
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Tutorial in Picma Plus needs a lot of work. I have no idea what I'm doing. So, I have two "1" and a "3" and I'm supposed to fill cells. How? I click on a cell it fill, the "1" whitens. Then I fill another and it darkens again. Click, click click and going nowhere. Instead of letting the users wander around aimlessly trying different combinations, how about a demo.
Also, the first puzzle, "5x5" in "Apprentice" in Picma Plus is more difficult than it should be. It's likely the first game people will play and you throw that at them? It should have a more gradual progression in difficulty
Tutorials aren't one size fits all and it's fairly easy to make them either too easy and "hand holding" or too hard. We're going to an event soon which will allow us to watch people playing for the first time and hopefully we'll be able find any existing rough edges and fix them. The first puzzle however, assuming you understood the Tutorial, is completely straightforward. You simply fill in the 5, then the 2.2 crossing the empty square between them, allowing you to do the vertical 4 and the two vertical 3's.
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Loading a puzzle and completing it doesn't count for some reason. When I'm brought back to the list screen, it still registers as incomplete and since it was a 30x30, I have to redo everything!
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hey, can to make it possible to save an incomplete puzzle? because I assumed that's what save and exit ment but apparently it doesn't and I lost my puzzle.
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There is an error on one of the picma-plus puzzles (number eight in the journeyman section). It says there should only be three white cells, but in reality there must be four. I was stuck for ages, then finally clicked "hint" to have it solved for me, and it filled in four cells instead of only three, proving that the number listed on the side is wrong.
Sorry, but that puzzle doesn't have any 4-cell white blocks, neither horizontal nor vertical. It's possible some sort of graphical glitch occurred. When something weird like that happens please send us a screenshot.
There's a fullscreen mode on our website but as a Flash game we can't enable it on Kongregate. The next best thing is the "Cinematic Mode", the button above the game (top left).
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Thanks a lot for another answer.
Could you, however, please consider an option of switching out the greying-out unused colours in "linked" puzzles? I've got pretty bad eyesight and that makes it really hard for me to see clearly what is going on (I mostly figure things out contextually).
Actually, based on some previous feedback we were already considering adding that option. You can expect do see it on the next update. ;) EDIT: We added a variation of this. If you click on an empty area of the grid it will light up any numbers not yet connected, regardless of colour.
We actually implemented a fullscreen mode but it seems that as a Flash game we can't enable it on Kongregate. The next best thing is the "Cinematic Mode", the button above the game (top left).
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I didn't think you could have made the other game more complicated...and then you implemented colors, this will take me a while to fully develop in my head. 5/5. I don't even care if it has paid content, these puzzles don't just come up from nothing.
Please implement a multiplayer puzzle sharing service of some sort. :)
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Too pay2play tbh. I think anybody in their right mind would instead buy a game on steam than pay for a 2 day subscription on a flash game.
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Well first the game window is tiny and i had to zoom in 125% to read the writing. Second, after you get your daily 4 coin voting you have to create puzzles to get more. Aint nobody got time for dat!
The game window is pretty much as large as Kongregate allows. You can make it larger using the Cinematic Mode (button above the game, top left). I guess you'll be surprised to find that there's actually thousands of puzzle creators.
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I want to like this game, but the lack of real keyboard controls make it painful for me to play. It would be nice to have an alternative, like letting arrow keys navigate and a key for filling in a square. Like Pixelo, for example.
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I'd also like to point out that there's no reason to darken the color you're not currectly using on Linking puzzle. It just makes the unconnected connections harder to see clearly. :/
On both Squared and Links focusing on a single colour at a time allows most colour-blind players to play like everyone else and avoid having to activate the colour-blind setting (which is usually necessary only for Plus). If you reach a point where you have trouble finding incomplete links try using the "Show Incomplete" button on the top right corner.
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@moonberrystudios, in your reaction to @Ace_blue these kinds of logic puzzles should have unique solutions, no matter if you want to force it. At conceptis they have the same puzzles and call it link-a-pix, there is always one unique solution without too much trouble of "forcing" which actually should be done automatically. I do like the way you handle the three different kinds of puzzles in one game :)
I might not have explained the issue properly. As far as the puzzle itself goes Link-a-pix works in the same way as Picma Links. Particularly large numbers can usually be "snaked around" in multiple ways but they always end up occupying the same cells. There should always be a single unique solution to every puzzle and if you find an example of multiple solutions we urge you to send us screenshots to support@moonberry-studios.com so we can fix whatever bug is causing it!
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Thanks for the answer about pressing Z to cycle, it helped a lot! :) I'm still hoping you'll implement ability to go back and forth, though!
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Is there a tool to find which area(s) are not yet finished, like in the previous Picma Squared? It's kind of hard with different colors and larger puzzles in Linked and Squared.
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Picma links, Apprentice, Street lamp puzzle has two solutions (the purple 11 can be done in two different ways.) That's bad design, checking for unique solutions automatically isn't THAT hard.
In Links what matters is the area you "paint" as you connect the numbers, the exact path you take is irrelevant. Large numbers like 11 or 12 often require multiple turns and we can't/shouldn't force you to do those turns in a particular way. The area painted however will always have the same shape/size, regardless of how you connect each individual number.
If you still believe this to be a bug please send a couple of screenshots to support@moonberry-studios.com so we can fix it.
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I love the feel of it, have you guys considered porting it to Android and Apple? I'm sure ya'll can make some money back from those. It's a kind of puzzle game that could have unlimited add ons.
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This is a joke.
It's an online game with nothing "online", Doesn't looks like you can play with others. It's like that kind of shity DRM, where you have to be conected to play. You have to wait for the game to connect to server to do who knows what to play every puzzle. Its kind of stupid to wait 5-10 seconds to play a puzzle for 10-15 seconds.
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I found it somewhat annoying that there's no easy keybind to go through colours quickly. Numbers need time to get used to, and spacebar is really unwieldy. Could you please add buttons to easily scroll through the colors? like a&d to go up/down through the list?
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awesome game! but there are enough of them out there for free so i would never ever pay.. however, the free content rocks
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You guys lost my support long ago with your original site. Paying to play a puzzle didn't "unlock" it for my account, I had to pay each time I wanted to play that puzzle! Worse, I submitted tons of puzzles and never anything happen. Now you have this, your entire site compressed into one, and feathers seemed to have vanished and there isn't a way to use my site login.
You should have poked us at our support email. We try to fix all the bugs we find but have to rely on our players to tell us about the bugs we haven't yet found! The Kongregate version has an exclusive and separate login system, but your old account should still work on our website.
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If I understand correctly, based upon description and other comments: this is a game where players HAVE TO PAY to access some content (puzzles) which have been produced FOR FREE by other players. I hope you have very good lawyers, because in my country I am pretty sure you are violating a lot of intellectual property laws with that business model.
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Recent changes coming to light, I suppose I could reward 100+ free puzzles with a 4/5. You'd have a 5 if there was a way to unlock all puzzles at once with a single payment, rather than this coin complex.