The game is very cool. It reminds me of a old (1980s) computer games. It was interesting. I did free the guy. I got the inventory. I see what you are going for and I admire the vision. I do have one small complaint. Have you seen No Pun Included's review of Unreliable Wizard? I feel, and I could be wrong, the game gave me choices, but they were never particularly fun choices. I did the best I could with what I was given and that is it. I could not see how one run could be different from another. I feel like if Olexa and ManlyBadassHero played this game they would play it the same way. I feel like there is only one way to play this game. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I didn't spend enough time with the game. That is the impression you gave me. I got the slimy domino said F that and quit half way through the run. This is a really interesting game with a lot of potential and atmosphere let down overly deterministic game play.

Hey, I tried your game—it’s awesome that it’s a web-based build! I really loved the dark, retro vibe, and the sound effects are pretty cool! I think it has a lot of potential. I didn't get very far because I don't think I'm the right audience for this kind of game, but I played for a few minutes anyway. I had trouble merging the dominoes, but maybe I misunderstood that you had to take the ones from your hand and merge them with the ones on your arm! 

Did it take you a long time to develop? 

Great job anyway, and good luck with what’s next :)

I have tested your game and really enjoyed it. I have recorded it, while speaking out loud, and I am working on a Skill for Claude to analyze my session transcripts and have attached that below. 

I would be really grateful if you could test the mechanics of my game as well, you can find the game here: /t/6273292/if-you-test-mine-i-will-test-yours-rabbit-rocket-racin...

Here is the video of me playing your game:

Dominot playtest, my notes

I gave Dominot a 12-minute solo run and recorded my thoughts as I played. Once the loop clicked I genuinely wanted to keep solving boards.

What I liked

• The puzzle loop itself is satisfying once you understand it. From around the 8-minute mark I was narrating moves like "this one needs a three and a one," which is the moment a game stops being instructions and starts being play.
• Strong genre fit. I like board games and puzzle games and Dominot scratches the same part of my brain.
• The progression goal (get to 15, advance) reads cleanly once it's visible. By the end of the session I had figured out the loop and was happy to chase the next level.
• The game let me recover from a bad state. Around 5 minutes in I thought I had broken something, restarted, and worked out on the second try that I needed to update all the pieces before resolving. The retry path was forgiving.
• It held my attention well past my usual stop point. That's not nothing for a prototype.

Where I got stuck

• The intro lost me. In the first minute I was narrating things like "I'm not really sure what that is" and "lost, we are doomed," and at 1:09 I said outright "that intro was a little bit confusing." This felt like a learning problem, not a difficulty problem. The game hadn't told me what I was doing yet.
• I couldn't tell when "resolve" was available. Between roughly 3 and 4:30 I asked "why can I not resolve" three times in a row and never got an answer from the UI. Definitely a learning problem.
• Even when resolve fired correctly, I couldn't tell why. Around 6:30 I said "I don't know why they've resolved, all of a sudden it came up." The mechanic was working but I couldn't connect cause to effect, which is a feedback gap.
• There's a blue indicator I never figured out. At 7:49 I asked "what's that blue one, now I don't know what that means," and at the end of the session it was still unresolved.
• I forgot what wax did and couldn't look it up. Around 10:45 I said "I forgot what wax was," and a minute later "I can't remember what it was, something about replacing something." Once a tooltip is gone, I couldn't get it back. Pure learning friction.

Suggestions

• Replace the opening with a guided first move. Teach the basic loop with one piece on the board before introducing flavor or world setup. The intro felt like flavor first, gameplay second, and I needed it the other way around.
• Make the resolve button tell me why it isn't available. A greyed-out button with a tooltip ("update all matching pieces first" or whatever the rule actually is) would have saved me the entire 3 to 5 minute confusion stretch.
• When a resolve triggers, briefly highlight which pieces caused it. That single bit of feedback would have closed the loop on the 6:30 moment where I succeeded but didn't understand why.
• Add a hover or click-to-inspect on every UI element, especially the blue indicator. If it's important enough to be on screen, it's important enough to label.
• Make mechanic descriptions (wax, etc.) re-readable. A glossary, a hover on the affected piece, anything. Forgetting what a piece does halfway through a level shouldn't end the run.
• A sound volume slider would be nice. Pretty minor, but I noticed it.

Overall

I had a good time, which is the most important thing. The core game is genuinely fun once you're in it, the design is working. The whole experience is essentially gated behind one problem though: I couldn't tell when or why "resolve" worked, which is the central verb of the loop. If you fix that one thing first, I think most of my other complaints will quietly go away with it. Excited to see where this goes.

Thanks for letting me test it.

Hello Synaut. The game has a fantastic aesthetic that I don't often see; that alone makes it very striking, and it has many great visual and sound design choices that fit perfectly.

The introduction is good. Just when I felt it was dragging on a bit, the game started. I placed all the tiles, but I couldn't find any way to progress. I started a second playthrough, but during that animation sequence, I died and the screen just went blank. On my third attempt, I placed the tiles hoping something would happen, but nothing did. I realized the only alternative was to click "New Game" (which feels weird to start a "new game" when you haven't even really played yet, plus it warns you that you'll lose your progress).

When I finally clicked "New Game," the tutorial started, and that helped a lot—I was able to understand the mechanics pretty well.

In the part where you choose the stone, I think players need to know what they are choosing. Even using the "investigate" action gives no information about it. I thought the idea was to keep it a mystery, but the game explains what the stone does as soon as the match starts. As a player, I don't see any benefit in making blind choices like that.

Later, I struggled to understand what to do when it told me to "close session" (or something similar). I think it would be better if it closed automatically or if it were indicated more clearly.

It would be nice to be able to remove a tile you just placed in an empty space.

During the second choice, I thought having the "identify" ability would let me see what I was picking, but no. It felt worse than the first time because it's still a blind choice. The same thing happens with the instruments you pick up.

Regarding the tools, I had to experiment to figure out how they worked, which leads to consequences like accidentally losing a tile, for example.

Then some orange circles appear, and there isn't any clear information on how they will affect you. The same goes for the bombs.

It's also hard to understand at first what the blue and purple colors on your indicator mean. Only after drawing do you get a rough idea of what they represent.

In the end, I lost because I couldn't understand how the abilities used to "attack" me actually worked.

In summary, the game is good. I understand that old-school games often don't explain things and expect you to learn by trial and error—if that's your intention, keep it as is. But if it's not the intention, I think the game could really use some more explanations, because it ended up being frustrating not understanding why I lost.

I love the new tutorial. I could be biased because I have played before. I got the slippery block and it didn't bother me nearly as much this time. Still a great game. I will come back when I have the chance and find out what is up with the maze.

Hey! Just checked it out, I'll leave a few pointers in what caught my attention:

• Onboarding felt very immersive. It didn't feel like too much info at once or that it was hard to process, so the gameplay loop felt smooth and predictable. However, I find it a bit counter-intuitive that smaller tiles could damage bigger tiles while matching tiles didn't cause damage, but I want to think that there are lore reasons behind this design choice, and it's easy to play with it in mind.
• Continuing with design, the atmosphere was quite captivating, with the disturbing hints and the limited understanding of what's going on. It feels like I really stumbled upon something I shouldn't have discovered but kept playing anyway.
• Regarding gameplay, for the time being, I tested wax and iron as materials, but the wax graphic seemed like a gold ingot first and I was quite surprised to find it wasn't. When I tried iron, which is said to cause +1 damage, it wasn't clear whether the damage was towards the player or towards the domino tiles, since visual feedback was provided but at the same time I didn't notice any changes from playing with wax or normal domino tiles.

I played for around ten minutes before I got stuck in the "Proceed" screen after the second challenge, after which I couldn't continue playing. I tried starting over to see if that was a reproducible issue, but I ran into another bug when the domino tiles got stuck. Luckily I could solve it by clicking on "Resolve", but now I have a tile I can't choose and which stops me from playing with a full roster. 

I hope my comments have been of help!

I really like this. Awesome idea, direction and execution. very nice aesthetics. wishlisted on steam :)