Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#51

Post by oftenwrong » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:20 PM UTC

I only played a few levels so far, but I really enjoyed it. Excellent concept. I would probably buy it if it was available on Play.

Some feedback from my experience playing the HTML5 version on a computer with a mouse (Firefox 19) and on an android smartphone (Chrome 18):

- On both platforms the "LOADING" message does not go away after hitting "close" on the little instruction cloud, and the level does not load. Only after hitting the reset button (with the circular-arrow symbol) does the level load.

- On my smartphone, my finger tracing can easily outpace the tile coloring, and this leads to some tiles being skipped. The animation is also choppy. Probably not an issue on the native version.

- I think you should prevent diagonal tile markings since they do not work to connect the star tiles anyway.

- If there was a way to stop accidental over-writing other colors due to clumsy mouse usage, that would be nice. This seems like less of a problem on a touch screen.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#52

Post by dylanz » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

It looks very nice! Here is some initial feedback:

- Even though it's bouncing, I didn't see the "play now" arrow, and went directly for the video button. You might also want a "Play now" button in the main button list.

- In the video, I had to watch quite a bit of it to even know what the game was actually about. I would have liked if you showed me actual gameplay earlier in the video.

Keep it up!

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#53

Post by astalwick » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

Nice work. The playable website is fantastic.

FWIW, I would have paid $0.99 up front. I bought the level pack, but it's pretty rare that a game will hook me to the point that I make it through the free levels. I probably wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't seen this post - if I'd just stumbled across the game somewhere.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#54

Post by seanalltogether » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:22 PM UTC

prawks wrote: post #31

Question: how essential do you think it was for you to quit your job to create this game? How much longer would it have taken you had you developed it on the side/weekends? I'm in no way trying to argue your decision, I'm genuinely curious how much work it was to create a game like this. Also, how much of the conceptual work for this game had you done prior to leaving your job?

I would say pretty essential, but that's really because of my personality. I've started and stopped more projects then I can count over the past ten years while holding a steady job. Without saving up money and leaving my job, I'd probably have a half finished game sitting in my projects folder right now.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#55

Post by enraged_camel » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:24 PM UTC

Nothing happens when I click on the arrow that says "play now."

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#56

Post by seivan » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:24 PM UTC

Looks incredibly amazing! Quality work. This is what I say is missing from most iOS games out there.

You did good. I hope it sells. I am gonna pay for it now.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#57

Post by clebio » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:25 PM UTC

seanalltogether wrote: post #46

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #26

Not to detract from the fun of the game, but I get a strong feeling that this is probably a very studied problem in topology - and that thought keeps on nagging me to write a solver script :)

Yes in fact I've spent the past 6 months thinking about whether i could build a level generator that can verify and solve the levels too. The way I see it, with a simple 5x5x5 cube with 5 colors on it, the number of possible combinations to check is 75^5, which might take awhile to brute force, so there needs to be a intelligent way to map lines.

The general case might be something like that, but you only need any given configuration that fits those parameters (that is, you're not trying to solve complete, abstract topological problems). Maybe if you arbitrarily fix the first path, thereby artificially reducing the solution space? Just thinking out loud. Very cool puzzle!

EDIT: or even take a lower-level solution and inject another path into. So every prior level is a seed to future levels. Rotation of the three faces, even cycling the colors, would probably make it hard to recognize the older level within the new one (at least, for casual use).

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#58

Post by t_hozumi » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:25 PM UTC

Are there correct answers more than one? I could complete the Level8 without filling all spaces. I prefer only single possible answer, which fills all spaces.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#59

Post by scottchin » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:26 PM UTC

Looks great! Congrats on the release!

Did you work on this game by yourself or with other people?

Did you use any existing game frameworks like Cocos2D or Unity?

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#60

Post by quickpost » Wed, Mar 06, 2013, 6:28 PM UTC

Just FYI, google thinks your dev blog is / has spam:

http://i.imgur.com/za2UXWh.png

One a separate note - awesome game! I plan to buy it. On the web version, one thing I'd like would be able to toggle a miss clicked space back to "neutral" with a click. I'd also make the levels slightly harder before getting to level 5 - they all seemed too easy up to that point.