Really fun game! I kept worrying the numbered balls would spill out of the tubes. Had a great time playing. And some SFX would make it even better.
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Math Factory: not an educational game's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Innovation | #40 | 3.464 | 3.464 |
| Gameplay | #57 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Theme | #161 | 3.179 | 3.179 |
| Overall | #199 | 2.879 | 2.879 |
| Graphics | #276 | 2.643 | 2.643 |
| Audio | #432 | 1.607 | 1.607 |
Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
143 days ago(+1)
indeed you found one of the best uses of the 2nd source.
the level pass thresholds are low by mistake but it means that you can see all levels kind of like a sandbox mode. once the jam is over I'll tune it better.
One thing the game definitely doesn't have is careful tuning. Submitted 10 minutes before the deadline and I didn't realize I wouldn't be able to make changes afterwards of course the alternative would be not submitting at all oh well. I think the rotator is potentially useful in the situation where there's so many adders and multipliers there's no hope of snaking a path through all of them in which case you would have two paths or more and then they use the rotator to combine the various inputs. This would happen right at the end. However due to the previous comment I have not had a chance to play test whether or not the cost of the rotator outweighs the benefit here. Certainly it might depend on the stage which actually is a sign of good design I think. If it doesn't ever, then bad design. ha!
I've already fixed a number of bugs, But I'm resisting really getting in there too deeply while it's still in frozen mode for the jam so that I can integrate useful comments like yours holistically rather than being pulled one direction than the other as different points are brought up. Such as: some people don't like the mechanic where you have fewer and fewer pipes to build with later on.
I thought having less pipes and having to boot-strap to buying stuff was interesting, but on reflection, I'm not completely sure the game is better for it, as it just takes time away from doing what you actually want to be doing on a level. On the other hand, having a little scarcity is probably good, I did like being rewarded with a feeling of "now I can build absolutely anything" once I got my income stream built up, whereas on the first levels I sometimes ran into a "oh, I don't quite have enough pipes to build what I'm trying to build, and have no money" situation, and the scarcity forced me (in later levels) to find a workaround for that problem... so, maybe I've argued myself back into thinking it's a good thing, hah! Anyway, just some more vague feedback to (not?) help you decide what to do =).
I think the scarcity probably works better if you have more time to work with it. Thus it would make a lot more sense to give you more time on the later levels. As it is it's a challenge to be able to build up enough money quickly enough to be able to do interesting things with it later on in a level that's super scarce . One thing that didn't really come through here very clearly is that it's meant to have a fast and frenetic build phrase followed by a three times more important automated phase where the game runs with whatever layout you have. That's also probably the secret as to why the rotator is useful. As is I think the automated phase is actually super brief .
149 days ago(+1)
Ironically the design is actually opposite with fewer and fewer free pipes per level. Ie it starts out being like pipe dream, and ends being like factorio.
As for the difficulty curve that was a submission mistake . I put the first version up 10 minutes before the deadline and didn't realize wouldn't be able to submit more tweaks to get the challenge right. I'm glad I left something that is playable though the other alternative might have been to have a difficulty challenge so high you can never get past the 1st level.
A lot of people have mentioned that. That's what the rotator is for. You can't truly merge but you can automatically switch back and forth which is roughly the same thing. And clearly that needs to be explained better . Probably the ideal thing would be to have one of the levels featuring one and then you would just see that it could potentially be useful. In any case thanks for pointing that out as the common complaints about it helps me think more carefully about it's importance in the next version .
149 days ago(+1)
Yes, it was supposed to have such a curve but that last 10 minutes before launch I was still tuning and missed the window. At least this way the zero difficulty default means people can play it as a sandbox, which I intend to keep as an option.
I didn’t understand at all why there would be multiple sources, when there’s only one destination, and no way to merge streams. Unless there is a way to merge them, that I missed?
Played thru level 12. I got to say, this could bear some rebalancing…
Granted, this level was a crazy outlier, but most of them I was finishing with 10-20x the quota.
Had fun playing it, and I love the concept. But really, the only challenge to it is the scarcity of initial pipes as you get to higher levels. And I feel like that would soon just hit a ceiling where it becomes impossible.
YES, and NO. First off thank you for giving me some actual feedback that's very helpful. Second off there is a mechanism for combining its the rotator . 3rd I mistakenly launched it with trivial goals and couldn't replace it because the deadline had passed. So I pivoted to saying this is "sandbox" mode. In the end I'll probably offer both sandbox and realistic thresholds. In order to make the later levels playable I'll almost certainly have to give the players more design time, too.
In any case, impressive score, and thanks for sharing, it give me some idea of what the threshold should be.
I have done a whole bunch of polish, including making it so that hopefully the progression doesn't run into any roadblocks if you're interested in giving it another try I think you will find that it is quite a lot improved over what I had before. Even though the jam is over I'd love to hear your feedback . Sad to say now that the jam is over traffic has come to a complete stop so there's no one to tell me if I've actually made things better or not :-(
Ha, yeah it kind of sucks how we only get players during the time when we can’t make changes. A fundamental design flaw of the universe :D
It’s looking really good now. The previous version isn’t fresh in memory anymore but I do recall it needed audio, and that’s definitely not a problem anymore, sounds great!
The score balancing felt a lot more natural this time. Bearing in mind I already knew what to do, and am a math nerd to boot, so it might actually be too strict now. Or maybe spot on.
1: 311/150
2: 608/300
3: 1602/1111
4: (478/1400) (882/1400) 1616/1400
5: (2654/3000)
But a problem! On level 5, I tried using a rotator tile for the first time and it crashed. Found this in the log:
[sound] music started (xfade): dstechnician-psykick-112469~xf5~ls0~fi2~fo4.webm xf=5s ls=0s fi=2s fo=4s ctx=running t=897937.6ms
mathfactory.min.js:1 [spawn] STRAND reassign id=1 v=1 dist=80.0 xy=418,448
mathfactory.min.js:1 [spawn] STRAND reassign id=3 v=1 dist=93.3 xy=370,448
mathfactory.min.js:1 [input] Bought pipe FLIPS for (6,3) cost=150
mathfactory.min.js:1 [UNCAUGHT ERROR] Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'dx') (https://html-classic.itch.zone/html/17802223/mathfactory.min.js:1:34947)
(anonymous) @ mathfactory.min.js:1Understand this error
mathfactory.min.js:1 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'dx')
at s (mathfactory.min.js:1:34947)
at r (mathfactory.min.js:1:35841)
at window.updateNumbers (mathfactory.min.js:1:40821)
at t (mathfactory.min.js:1:85091)
Fixed it! Thank goodness I forgot to remove logging from the project before upload.
your progression sounds about right. No idea how hard to pitch it, but starting to have to think by level 4 is pretty much my goal . So at least I'm doing what I wanted. Very much appreciate your response, score tallies, and bug report! If you are feeling generous, a review on the game's page would surely help it go from 0 views a day to... 0.25?
Thank you. I absolutely agree on all of your points and if I'd had more than 10 minutes to spare I might have tried to implement at least one of them, probably to disastrous effect . I'm actually amazed that I managed to get decently balanced for the deadline . Whew. in any case as soon as the freeze is over I plan to add all of those things.
151 days ago(+1)
good suggestion! I submitted it 10-ish minutes before the deadline, I'm lucky it's fun, let alone polished ;-)
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