Play game
hedateru (隔てる)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| How good was it? | #38 | 2.745 | 3.211 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
The more I played, the less I understood the win condition! But it's a chill puzzle game.
I really like the type of puzzle, though its not totally clear what counts as correct. I like the xbox controller support, but the controls are a bit unintuitive, A probably could be used to allow expanding the selection
Love the music, got to level 13, took me a while to figure it out but I'm not very smart, I have quit the game several times because I tried to reset selection with ESC :D
I liked the music. I enjoyed the puzzles except that I had a hard time understanding the goal and the rules. Sometimes the colors weren’t swapping and I couldn’t get why.
It's simple, yet has depth - and also has good vibes. I like the atmosphere and music. I think the only thing i would change is giving more visual indicators of what the controls are as i was very confused at first. Also the "prefers X" movement can be reworked. Ultimately i can see this as becoming a pretty popular NY times style daily puzzle game that many people would enjoy!
Thank you! I agree, seems like a lot of people had that issue. Animations for the swaps would definitely help.
I did think it would be fun to dynamically load puzzles from a database or something…“Puzzle a day” or something like that. But that’s a much larger project.
I have a finnish keyboard so I had trouble finding the '?' key :0
Other than that, super well designed once I figured out the controls! Love the music, sfx, etc... started to go a bit over my head after lvl 12 or so :D
Also a single button to reset the cursor to one tile would be nice, I kept accidentally pressing R trying to do that lol
Does a finnish keyboard have a question mark? This is the third comment I’ve gotten about the keybinding for showing the help guide lol, maybe it does need to be changed!
Good idea to reset the cursor size. That would be helpful.
EDIT: Oh and glad you got so far! There’s 16 levels in total, so you’re almost there if you want to keep trying.
You have to press shift and the button next to zero, so no dedicated key, and the scancode might be different. I think it's like that on all nordic / scandinavian keyboards?
And alright, I'll probably try to grind the rest then! I think I didn't understand the rules completely yet, so maybe a fresh look would get me through it
Interesting! Ah yeah I didn’t think about scancode differences, that sounds likely. I’m sure a re-mapper would help problems like this.
It seems like people really had issues figuring out the rules, so maybe a small tutorial in the beginning would have been good. I wanted to kinda make the levels themselves tutorials but maybe specific rules didn’t come across right.
Ok, I think it is working for me. I just didn't catch on to how to play it. :)
Very unique puzzle game. It took me some time to get used to the controls. Great entry.
Very interesting concept.
Seems simple at first, but you soon realize the rules are a bit deeper. I think the game would benefit from a few animations or some visual indicators of what would happen if you press enter. For example, some subtle effect on balls that would swap places. Maybe that would communicate 'prefers X direction' and 'polar opposites' rules better than help text.
Nevertheless, I liked it a lot.
I liked the puzzles, the vibe, music and the number of levels. Level 5 confused me as getting things in a row didn't seem to finish like the levels before. I like that you can skip forward or backward. The "?" key is an interesting choice as I have to press shift for it.
hedateru-linux doesn't seem to be working for me. I'm on Linux Mint. The game loads and music plays but hitting enter doesn't do anything.
Hmm that is interesting. I have a laptop with Mint on it and it does work. I would get a web build up but I can’t seem to get it working, unfortunately. You can go to the source code and try to compile it if you’d like and see if there is an error or something. Just use the
build_desktop.shfile in there.I tried it again and I may not be playing it correctly. What is the object of the game?
I found the puzzles and concepts really compelling! My main gripe was just that the game rules sometimes felt inconsistent/weren't communicated effectively. There were a few times I thought we hit the victory condition but we didn't win and the circles would sometimes swap in an unexpected way. Really liked the music too and sounds!
Do you remember what levels you were on where the rules felt inconsistent? My main attempt with this game was to try and teach you the rules through the levels rather than give a tutorial. But maybe a small tutorial in the beginning would be good.
When swapping, if you looked at the help guide, you’ll see it says that “polar opposites swap”. However, “swaps prefer the X axis”. So, if you make a square, it’ll swap on the X axis.
Sure here are some condition I thought would be a 'win'![]()
All the circles are in pairs so I am not sure why this doesn't win.
I see the swaps now. I feel like some more user feedback for it would be helpful (like don't consume a move if a swap were to do nothing). Or some dynamic highlighting based on how the swaps would occur based on the rectangle shape.
Some reason my previous reply did not have the images.
Oops, replied before seeing this.
Okay so that solution to level 15 I think is a bug. From what I’m seeing, that should be valid. There must be a bug in the solution code that sees it as invalid. I might look through the code at some point and see what’s up. There is another way to solve that one though.
Level 14, you’re almost there but not quite. The greens are the problem there.
Could you explain the win condition for me? I thought it was just that each colour just needs to create an 'island'
That idea is close, but with the exception that other colors can’t be in between rows or columns of that color. So in Level 14, the greens on the right are separated vertically by two blues. That is invalid. You’ll need to re-arrange the greens so no other colors are in between them.
This is why, when looking at your solution to Level 15, it should be valid.
As far as the win condition goes, I tried to arrange the levels so you could find that out while you play. Even though the circles are in pairs, you also need to make sure that all colors of their color are next to each other. Level 3-6 are supposed to teach you this.
I wasn’t sure how to handle swapping for even numbered shapes like squares. I thought about putting another control for the user to allow them to swap either way, but the jam was almost up. Highlighting or flashing what squares will move sounds like a good idea though! Didn’t think about that.
Maybe the earlier levels that are meant to teach you this are so obvious that the specific win condition isn't really 'taught'. I think for me it was just the last 3 levels where I had to think about what to do. Maybe you need to do like a 'gotchya' rug pull on the player to have it communicated?
Is the cursor supposed to stay on the edges of the puzzle?
Yep! You’re limited to just the edges. I should probably add a little bump sound for when you try and go out of bounds. The inside has that sound; you aren’t allowed in the inside either.
How do the controls work? I can't press "?" because I have a QWERTZ keyboard :(
I didn’t think about other keyboards, oops. I added the controls to the game’s page.
Overall, it's a fantastic game; however, I found it a bit hard to grasp and believe it could benefit from enhanced accessibility.
Thank you! Did you find the puzzles themselves hard to grasp? Or was it something else?
At first, I was unsure about the controls and gameplay, but as someone who loves puzzles, I found it compelling.