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Chapter 2: Smoke and Iron's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Controls | #26 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Originality | #33 | 3.294 | 3.294 |
| Theme | #33 | 3.647 | 3.647 |
| Graphics | #37 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Overall | #41 | 2.874 | 2.874 |
| Fun | #47 | 2.529 | 2.529 |
| Accessibility | #48 | 2.412 | 2.412 |
| Audio | #51 | 2.235 | 2.235 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Character art looks really cool and good interpretation of the theme and wildcards!
Great work on the track laying and dialog system.
Thanks glad you liked them, tracks took way longer than I thought it would
Very unique gameplay! I really liked the art. Especially the train and character portraits. The rail building mechanic was really well done too!
Thanks glad you enjoyed it, both sets of art should be credited their owners see credits on gamepage. Tracks laying was me and glad my efforts paid off.
This is a good base for some larger, more involved puzzle game with a world map and story lines. I agree with some of the other comments about chopping the trees being too slow. Having to find the axe but then loop back is a bit unintuitive but not horrible. I think if there was a level before that introduced laying the track and going to an exit before doing anything else it would flow a lot better. I was really confused by the axe and the trees in the way with the track on the other side. So I think the idea works it just needs mechanics introduced.
The controls of laying the track were nicely done and felt good. It angled when I wanted it to and followed the path I expected. Good work on that.
I can picture this expanding into a larger type game where each puzzle is chunk of a large game world/map. With its own puzzle and navigation. As you move around you see areas of the map, sometimes you won't be able to get there until you progress through the game and unlock things like the axe, or mining tools or whatever other mechanics.
This has potential. I wonder where you are going with the whole chapters of a larger story though.
Thanks for playing and the lenthly comments, really appreciate the feedback. Agree on the wood cutting: I will decrease time.
Orignal plan was open world... then quickly realized impossibility of that in a jam time frame, I like the idea of introduction level maybe could work that in. As mentioned to others next Chapters are at the will of the themes/wildcards, but hope to improve this and Chapter 1 a little before next GWJ.
Thanks again
This is the start of a really fun puzzle game I feel like. The track placing system works great and I like the dialog. My main issue is that the train moves slow and the axe chops slow, so most of the time I am just waiting for the game to catch up. I think if you were to speed things up then it would be a great game
Thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed some aspects, i completely agree about the tree cutting - there is no reason to make the user wait lack of play testing, the train part i am not sure I agree with as it also keeps up with the track building, glad I didn't release my first version where it moved half the speed to start.
Regarding making this a longer game... originally I wanted to but now want to focus on next Chapters maybe can get back and expand a little
Interesting, very challenging to get started, I had to refer to the conversations here to make any progress, the controls and mechanisms could be a little more intuitive. Nicely put together though, the track building is particularly nice.
thanks for playing, wanted to make introduction/help page that show how to place tracks but time was not my friend, glad you were able to get past that first hurdle
Sadly I could not play this (neither firefox nor chrome). After the dialogues, there was the level screen, but I could not do anything there. I tried WASD, arrow keys, clicking on the axe/train/trees/rails. Maybe I missed something? Any idea?
You should click and drag on the end of the tracks (the yellow blocker). If you cannot get this to work I can post a video, sorry hope this helps could be strange bug
Ah, thank you. This is one of the things I did not try, so yes, this helped. Might be good to clarify this in the game or the description. The train-/wood mechanic worked very well, and I also liked that you build a whole story around it. I'm curious how this will continue in the next jam :)
glad to see you got it to work. Regarding continuing of the story, I am purposefully letting the themes drive the next chapter just like Chapter 1 was, 3 could be different character (in some of the dialog i refer to the other characters). I have a rough story in my head but this is at the mercy of the theme/wildcard voting process
Great fun. I liked the dialogue.
Thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed the dialog - I would say check out the first one if you haven't played it but it is textless (per wildcard) and it is platformer so totally differentskyle, so you not like it
The dialogs were pretty slow, and I don't normally like reading them. It would have been nice with a TL:DR; objective description if I aborted the dialog! Very good looking dialogs though!
Also the sound that was played for each letter felt a bit too frequent compared with how it usually is implemented. Maybe one per word and have the letters come out much faster?
Cutting the trees felt a bit slow and tedious. Would have needed some more umph in it, particles spraying, more sound, tree swaying etc. Otherwise it just looks very stiff and you just have to wait until you can click next tree :)
I couldn't find the coal, sadly. I think doing the basic stuff in the game, like cutting trees, need to feel more fun for the game to be fun to play actually. Also it would have helped if you could reconnect to old rail, because I blocked myself a few times and had to restart. Good thing you had the R to restart!
One thing, maybe an icon for Better Coal could have been shown in the dialog, so you know what to look for out there!
Thanks for playing and the suggestions - really like the idea of limiting the sound in the dialogs almost removed it completely but felt too quiet, this would be a good compromise. You can complete each text by clicking the mouse or pressing a key on the keyboard which lets you view it much faster. The Coal is very visible just need to explore the south east quarter of the map.
I agree with the axe being sluggish should have just let you bring as many as you want and wanted to add more graphics but time limited me there.
Lastly, I was planning on letting you connect the tracks and make loops (had the tiles for it and spent significant time even setting it up but ran out of time... who knew making a game with such limited movement takes more time than free flowing...
Again thanks really appreciate the feedback
Not intuitive.
Take the axe, go back, “hey I found an axe” dialog kicks in, level restarts, take the axe again, now you can chop trees.
Not very intuitive.
Thanks for playing, sorry cannot tell if there was a bug or if you did not read the dialog. The knight needs to be trained to use the axe, thus the returning to town. But you should only pick it up off the ground once (unless you eat it)
Did you pick up the axe twice?
I may be remembering picking up axe twice wrong, sorry.
Your game felt grand at first. Until the gameplay began, not a huge fan.
The dialogues are pretty though.