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The Hidden Rune's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity | #17 | 3.964 | 3.964 |
| Art | #49 | 3.643 | 3.643 |
| Overall | #56 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Audio | #59 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
| Enjoyment | #127 | 2.750 | 2.750 |
| Theme | #134 | 2.750 | 2.750 |
Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Cool concept. It was fun doodling.
I finished the game but to be honest I had no clue what I was doing, I just spammed paintings towards the end to get more hints. I guess I was supposed to copy the green, and then add a single thing, see how the effectiveness changed, and then highlight that pixel? Not sure.
Thanks for the feedback. Glad you liked it. And yeah, that's pretty much what the hints are for in this version. Original plan was to judge it by the design itself instead of by the grid cells that are covered, like if you draw a vertical line, it wouldn't matter where it was drawn on the grid. I feel like that might make the experimentation and puzzle-solving parts easier. But that was wildly out of jam scope. I might add it back later to remove the whole grid-based judging mechanic.
Pretty interesting concept! Love the art and music, and there's so much possibility for this game! Good job!
The concept of your game is very different from the games that have been here, I got lost at the beginning but then I decided to watch your video to understand, but overall your game turned out very good, the puzzle mechanics, congratulations!
Glad you liked it. Thanks for the review!
Really creative concept! I can tell this must have been quite complex to implement. I really enjoyed the audio, it sets a nice mood.
Personally, I had a bit of a hard time figuring out the mechanics from the tutorial (might be my fault for not reading it thoroughly, but I had to watch a video to understand what to do). I managed to complete 3 pages, but then I felt a bit lost regarding what to draw or how to set a goal for myself. Also, I wasn't entirely sure about the scoring mechanic and the hints on the pages.
Overall, this is a very ambitious project, and it's impressive to see this kind of puzzle/sandbox mechanic in a jam game. Well done!
Thanks so much! I know I need to work on my tutorials and explanations. Working on a different project at the moment but I'll add more of an interactive tutorial after the jam instead of the text wall. For scoring, every cell has a fixed percentage and time duration decided at loading time.
Man I can see myself falling into this.
Thank you!
The drawing mechanics and the merging took sometime to get used to for me. I guess puzzle games are not so much my genre haha. I really enjoyed the effectiveness calculation that different runes produced. Cool game overall, I liked the art and story. I guess you could balance the gold earned a little bit because I ended up with a lot of gold even though my runes weren't very effective, maybe that part was intentional lol.
Thanks for trying the game! And yeah, I didn't have time to balance the difficulty so I just made it easier to keep experimenting for the jam version. That will have to be fixed if I work on this game further.
Took a while to understand what I needed to do, but after that it became pretty engaging. I kind of wish there was a bit more UX/UI feedback but honestly a pretty engaging experience. Definitely a fun stand out, I really enjoyed this one.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll add more of that after the jam. Glad you liked it.
Very creative! Bit of a learning curve at the beginning but I got the hang of it. It would be cool if some of the tools like the scanner had sound effects.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Wow that is really creative ! The game mechanics seem to be very deep, a bit hard to understand but discovery is part of the fun. The chill atmosphere was really nice as well. It's refreshing to play a game without violence once in a while ! You did a really good job, congrats :)
Thank you so much. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I knew most entries would be combat based, and most of my ideas were combat based. I was scared a cozy puzzle game might be out of place here. It's amazing to see people enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed making it.
I like it! It's an unusual game that takes some getting used to.
Thank you for trying it!
super in-depth stuff for a jam, great job!
Thankyou :)
One of the most unique entries of this jam, I really enjoyed it. It is hard to understand at first, but once you get it it is really rewarding, great job !
Thank you so much!! I'm trying to get better at explaining and tutorials. I know that's a hurdle with all the mechanics I put in the game. I'd love to know if there's anything you think should be part of the tutorial/intro part that I left out?
It is the hardest part in jams, because you struggle to make your gameplay loop to work, and then you have to think about how the player is gonna perceive it. I am no professionnal in user experience design, but you could firstmake a linear loop: the player only has one gem, he must replicate a pattern you give them, then you point out the scanner and testing features. And finally when they got throught it all you let them experiment freely to find this mysterious symbol ? You can check how mobile games explains their mechanics: it is usually a derivative of this pattern. But like I said, I don't know much, it is just how I would do it !
The system was not clear at first even if you tried your best to explaining it to the player. But after playing around it was nice just doing some drawing and seeing how much it value.
I wish I understood how the hint part work and what is the goal of this? Is there a secret drawing to find that value a lot?
Yeah. There's a 100% value drawings that the hints start to unlock. The goal is to find the rune that gets you 100% invincibility. Each cell has fixed value. I didn't want drawings to be valued randomly. The hints unlock which grid cells have how much value. You don't have to use them. I just didn't have time to test or balance difficulty so they're an optional feature to prevent the puzzle being too hard.
Thanks for the review! I'm glad you liked the game.
Oh really cool I will give it another try then! Thanks for the explanation :)
the art is great.
Very relaxing.
I liked it. The art and music are nice.
The Notes helped me understand how to play and I made some good gems.
Good luck in the Jam
Thanks for trying my game. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
The art style is really cool
Thank you!
The art style is really cool
Very cool take on the theme. the art and the music were perfect.
Thanks so much!
I love the music and I love to watch my beautifull runes
So glad you enjoyed it!
Nice and relaxing, even if it took some time wrapping my head around some of the mechanics.
Thank you. I know I didn't do the the best job explaining everything. I'm glad you liked it still!