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Ah, hahahaha! Thank you for that video, I get it now. The win message happens when you get to the next room, but I must not have added a check to make sure that it was the player who entered the room... it looks like you triggered it just by holding the orb and putting the orb through the door, triggering the next room's trigger collider. I must have forgotten the if statement in that room's code.

I just tried and can easily reproduce it now, so yeah, it's a simple bug in my own code that will take seconds to fix. Thank you again.

Interesting indeed, that is VERY helpful feedback. I assumed it was working the same for everyone. I cannot reproduce the bug so it may be a browser and/or OS difference. Would you mind sharing what browser you were using? Also, did you try different combinations for those first 2 frame-entries in that room, or did you always try the same one (and if yes, do you remember what the combination was)?

If it is a browser difference issue, this may explain why I get fewer ratings than I expect at most game jams. If I use different browsers the lighting looks different in each but the core game mechanics all work the same in my builds where I've tested my projects, even on mobile phone browsers, so this is a very helpful moment to find someone with a setup that it works different on, so I do really appreciate whatever bug report info you can provide.

Speaking of which, I did not encounter anything glitching through the floor on yours like you described, but I encountered different issues, so just in case it's helpful to you I'll do the same: I was using Google Chrome on Windows to use yours, and the bugs were almost entirely with the green/cyan key which would show up on the floor sometimes next to the sliding shelf object it was in, but even after it was away from that shelf if I slid the shelf around the key would move around too wherever it was, and it would even slide right through walls while doing so. Also, sometimes (or was it every time?) after getting that key if I put it on top of a container then flicked the lights off/on it would teleport the key to the middle of the floor in that room, though that happened consistently enough that I'm guessing that might have been intentional on your part to reset the key.

Thank you much for the feedback.

Here is what my second room does for me on Google Chrome: 

This is so cute, and I love it when games can include real concepts that we can learn from. I'm a fan of putting games in real-world settings so we can be learning organically as we have fun.

If you have time, could you rate mine as well? I'm only 3 ratings away from my goal.

I don't mean to be overbearing, but if you might not continue this game then comments on development in general might be even more useful to you since you say you're about to learn a new topic...

If NPCs and their AI is up next on your list of things to learn about, then just make sure that you are aware of the things that could discourage you so that you don't quit prematurely. NPC and AI interactions can be overwhelming, and they can make a game worse if they don't feel right, so a big part of success early on in learning about them is to keep it small and work with what you know so far. If you're not careful, how you include them can require you to include other systems which take a lot of effort as well.

For one example: having NPCs with movement means you need some kind of pathfinding, and there are a lot of different ways to do pathfinding. Some pathfinding methods and their implementations can be very CPU-heavy while others are not. The first time I did dynamic pathfinding so that NPCs could dynamically figure out optimal movement patterns, I thought my code was buggy and that my game crashed when I ran it but really it was just that brute-force solving a shortest path problem using an inefficient algorithm every game frame update is a bad idea, especially on large complex maps. But there are other ways to do it, like I did in my GMTK jam entry where I set up waypoints and gave enemies specific paths to follow where they just go from waypoint to waypoint - the enemies actually can leave their path, at which point it gets a little more complicated, but most of the time they are just walking to the next waypoint. Or an example that would be closer to your office game's requirements would be Stardew Valley, if you've ever played that you may have noticed that the NPCs all follow paths with specific waypoints, and even if you get in their way then they will just stop and wait a moment until they get impatient and push through you with an angry emote. Or in lots of retro games the NPCs would just take a random step every few seconds, and they would have a bounding box that they could not walk outside of.

Another consideration is interacting with them, your menu systems need have more options, allow for dynamic changing of dialogue, possibly inputs depending on the game. All very doable, but my point is just to be aware that NPCs and AI often require major overhauls to other systems or even to have entirely new systems added to support them.

I see it says you used Unity to make your game. I've heard that Unity has some decent tools to help make some of these things easier, such as a pathfinding tool on the Unity Asset store (some of them might be free even though they're in the store) that does some of the heavy lifting for you by letting you set some parameters and then calculating optimal paths between various map areas at edit-time. I've been meaning to try one of those but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Whatever you do, if these topics feel overwhelming when you get into them (and they are huge topics), just know that you can always back away from one dark overwhelming corner of these topics and try another, because there are lots of different ways to do them and some are better or worse, or easier or harder, than others. For example, if you're struggling with getting your NPC movement to not look weird, and at the same time you're making a big new NPC dialogue and menu system, then I would not recommend learning how to implement an A* pathfinding algorithm with all the optimizations at the same time unless you're someone who is used to implementing complex algorithms for fun, and maybe not even a simpler waypoint-path system until after you're happy with your other additions. Even some famous AAA titles don't bother to move their NPCs around because it's so much easier that way.

I guess the overall moral of my essay-like rambling is to take it one step at a time because all of these topics have a lot to them but can be very rewarding even when biting off just a little at a time. Sorry I keep giving you so much text. I hope you do well and enjoy your development endeavors. I need to go get back to mine now, as I plan to release an update to my GMTK submission once we can update them since mine is so unfinished that it has long bouts of boring which I need to fix.

Found your game from your link on the reddit post. Neat idea. I realize now that the good strategy is to go high initially then keep trying to do well but stop short of the previous score. That makes it require more thought.

Congrats on making your first jam entry! Don't get discouraged, as even simple platformer movement and jumping is not easy to get working properly - there are probably a hundred other people that tried to do what you did and didn't bother to submit because they didn't get it done, so well done on that milestone you've cleared. Even among those that do get jumping working, their jump mechanics often don't feel right because gamers expect a certain jump feeling that they've gotten used to over the years, but you seemed to get the jumping physics well and you don't have the common "jumping in mid-air" bug either.

Good job on the start of your development career!

Would you mind trying mine out and leaving a rating for me too? I'm trying to get past a dozen ratings.

Even though it's buggy it was still funny, and I liked the special effects you did with the wonky moving camera and platforms. Good job on what you got done!

If we don't get enough ratings, the system automatically penalizes our score. I'm rating other people who don't have many ratings hoping they'll return the favor (please).

This was hilarious! And in its simplicity it captured some of the development struggles, especially when your time is almost out and you need to focus but your stamina is too low and you need to sleep but you can't because you need to focus and you thrash back and forth between them!

If we don't get enough ratings, the system automatically penalizes our final score. So I'm rating some of the other games like yours that don't have enough ratings and hoping they'll return the favor.

I rarely see balancing games like this, that works towards your creativity. I was able to get the animal to the goal more than once, but I dropped it more than half the times, so your game mechanic was "well balanced".

If your total number of ratings you get is too low, the system automatically applies a penalty to your final standings score, so I'm rating a bunch of the other games with few ratings like yours and I'm hoping people return the favor so we can all do better. With where the rating-count-median is at, right now I think you need roughly 5 to 7 more ratings to avoid a penalty to your final score. I still need a few more too, so I'd appreciate the help too.

Good job on your submission.

So unique, how could anyone not rate it 5? I think you should be a top contender for the "creativity" category. Just keep in mind that with so many jam entries most people won't have seen your game, so the sheer randomness of what submissions get seen by what people means you might not get placed as high as you think you deserve. But even if you get something like 100th place that still means you're in the top 1%.

You should try to get more ratings if you can. If your entry does not get enough ratings, then the system automatically penalizes your final score by how far below the median number of ratings you got, so you don't get the placement you deserve. The number of ratings to get in order to not have your score penalized is currently estimated to be roughly 12-14ish (though we won't know for sure until the jam ends), so you would need about 6 to 8 more people to give you a rating to meet that cutoff and avoid the score penalty.

I'm currently trying to rate a bunch of the other games that don't have many ratings and hoping they'll return the favor so we can avoid the penalty. Here's to hoping you win creativity.

I see another person commented about a space-cat. Is the character supposed to be a space-cat, or is that something you find along the way that I didn't get to? I tried twice. The first time I fell through a hole in the floor and fell out of the world. The second time I made it through several rooms and eventually I thought I was exiting to the next room but it ended up being just a 2-tile high hole in the wall I guess that was not connected to a next room so when I went through it I again fell out of the world into the void.

When I restarted, I was surprised to find that it was different on the next play-through. I was not expecting that. Good job.

Again, is the space-cat Septarap mentioned, is that your character or something you find? If you can find a cat in it, I'll try again just to look for it.

Can you please try my game out and rate it? Last game jam I entered I got my score penalized from having few ratings, and I'm hoping to avoid that this time so I'm rating other games that don't have many and hoping they'll return the favor.

If you do continue with it and want opinions or ideas...

The vision I had when I said it could make a good comedy office full game was more of a fast paced setting where you are continually given more tasks throughout the day. Some of the tasks could even be in conflict with each other ("Sally says the printer jams when overfilled so make sure you fill it with exactly 2 reams of paper" and "Bob says the printer keeps being empty to soon so fill it with 3 reams of paper") and maybe some obviously impossible tasks ("A manager has insisted that our department must file ten million reports today, and everyone has delegated that to you"). Maybe phone calls to answer that keep interrupting the other tasks, but if you don't answer the phones then they complain about that too. If there's plenty of office humor, and if ridiculous demands keep being made throughout the day, then it could be a hilarious and replayable game loop. Another thing that could make it both easier to deal with overwhelming tasks and be funny is if you could complete tasks in unexpected ways, such as leaving the rubbish in the enclosed cupboard, or if there is more than 1 whiteboard and your task is to clean the whiteboard in the meeting room then you could swap it with the clean one in the hallway, or a task says "Bob wants a donut left on his desk for when he arrives later" but Sally's desk next to his has her own donut with a bite taken out of it and you simply move hers over instead of going all the way to the break room to get a whole one.

If you have tasks being added through the day, they could be acquired by the phone calls, or by interacting with office objects such as "The manager wants you to go to his computer and send the email he left typed up on it" but after you send the email maybe you immediately get a response email with another task. Or when you start the projector in the meeting room sometimes it could project a message like "I spilled coffee on the rug in here but had to attend another meeting. Make sure you clean it up."

Of course, you could still be the only person there. That would keep it easier to work on if you don't need person models. To that end, if you included answering phones then some of the calls could be people calling in sick.

It might be funny if a win condition was something where you get someone else terminated either by not reporting their sick-day-call-ins or not handling tasks that are theirs that they try to delegate to you (or both), or like the Donut example above if Bob things Sally bit the donut that was left for him or if Sally things Bob stole his donut, and if you then get promoted to their position after they are terminated. This one might be more annoying than funny though to anyone who has been sabotaged at work, so maybe not, it's just a random idea.

Basically think of something like the fast-paced "order based" games, like the restaurant cooking ones where you have customers that come in and demand certain orders and you need to juggle completing them as they come in. I was thinking of something like that, except in the 3D environment and mechanics that you set up and with your theme and with plenty of office humor.

For the room with the colored orbs, the sounds repeat in a pattern, which at first is 6 sounds then a long silence that's the same amount of time that the sequence of 6 sounds took. When you bring the colored orbs to the frames on the wall, it changes the area in the frame to match the orb that you brought to it. The sounds are supposed to represent fire, water, air, and earth (fire crackling, water rushing, air whooshing, and rocks banging). After you light up 1 or more frames with the orbs, then the period of sound silence starts to play the sounds that go with the frame-element choices you've made (from left to right). When you've input the correct sequence of frame elements, and therefore made your controlled audio sequence match the original audio sequence, then that room's door opens and lets you into the next room.

Long story short: it plays a target sound sequence, then it plays the sound sequence you're creating in the room, and when the two are the same then the door opens.

If you got it without even being sure why, then maybe it's bugged and opened to the wrong sequence. I thought I checked multiple incorrect sequences and verified that only the correct sequence opened it, but I'll check again. Maybe you just got very lucky and accidentally entered the entire sequence correctly without realizing it, which is impressive since there are a little over 4000 possible combinations.

I wanted to provide better hints in that room in case it was too difficult to figure out, and I have ideas to make it make sense, but these jams are always a battle against time. Also, as I mentioned in my devlogs, my time on this One Game a Week jam got cut short because 1) I also participated in the GMTK jam and I prioritized that one while it was active for 4 days in the middle of this one, and 2) after I finished the GMTK jam I got sick and didn't continue the escape room game, instead I just fixed a couple bugs the morning it was due and submitted it. So I only actually worked on the Escape Room game for 2 days. :( It deserved much more than that, so I will update it with a few improvements at some point, though I'm not sure if I'll fully complete it if I have to do so by myself.

It might be difficult to tell from the lighting or if you didn't look around the start-room much, but the room you enter to get the win condition is the same as the start room. You basically have exited the escape room area and made it back home, which is why he says he'll just take a sick day and stay home.

I got the same thing that Wyloo describes. After it loads, it's just a black screen and nothing happens. I tried pressing various keys and clicking but still nothing happened.

I finally figured out what my problem was. The cyan (or is it green?) key that glitches its way out of its container sometime, I got confused because that happened to me early on, so I thought I had done something to trigger it appearing. So I kept trying to re-create the conditions that I thought caused it, when really I was supposed to get that key later.

I think I've basically completed it now though, as I've gotten to the part where you jump over the low orange cubes to get through a bunch of empty rooms, and in one spot I jumped over there was no room on the other side so I fell away from the world into blackness and assumed that was either the end or that the end was close.

As for my preferences, both are good. It depends on how you use them. You made some good use of physics interactions here, especially later on with the water pool and in the room after that with the sliding springy thing. When it comes to pressing a button to use something like clicking or pressing E, I think that works too but more for switchable interactions, like what you did for the light switches. In my game it's more of that type, where you just click on something to use it or pick-up/drop. Mine also had click on lights to turn them on/off and click on the TV to turn it on/off, and on the objects that create the sounds necessary to solve puzzles. A combination of the two might feel more complete and natural. Mine uses a little bit of physics, but not for solving the puzzles - in mine things like the ball rolling around don't actually help anything. I probably should have included a physics-based puzzle, but I ran out of time.

As for the yellow key, my instinct told me it was for the door. When that wasn't it, I thought maybe I need to save it for later. I didn't even think for a long time to use it on the thing it was meant for because I didn't realize they might be more than just furniture since I don't see any seams in the cubes, but that's probably just my lack of ideas. After I got that first container open the rest went mostly smoothly from there and took a few minutes of exploration and probing to figure out each room... except for the water room, that one took maybe 10 or 20 minutes but eventually got it.

As for the very first glass door, actually because it's so clear I didn't even realize it was a glass door the first few times I went through. I didn't notice it, and it just pushes open as you walk through, so I didn't even realize it was a glass door until after I had passed through it a couple times.

Good job. After I got over my confusion and stopped trying to lead myself to do things in the wrong order, then it was much more fun. I think that if you have enough creative puzzle ideas to make a very long string of puzzle rooms that you could make a nice long-form game of this.

I also did a 3D, first-person view, multiple small puzzle rooms to progress through type of game (though I only got 2 puzzle rooms done), so I feel like there's some overlap here. Mine was supposed to have a narrative of a guy that leaves his house but on this day his front door magically leads to a mystical series of escape rooms (I was going to have him chase after his cat that runs out into the escape room, but I wasn't going to try to add and animate a cat when I was already time-starved). I tried for a dark mysterious feel, but I feel like my lighting got more of a horror vibe than a dark fantasy mystery vibe, and I didn't get in all the fantasy props I wanted to help sell the setting. I also had intended for a clever use of the glass door mechanic where you can see through doors exiting the escape rooms and have to try to decide which door to continue through based on what you see, but again, time.

I'm on the fence about whether to continue working on mine, and the artist that made the few models I had doesn't want to continue working on it. If you can either do the graphics or find them online or get a 3D artist on board, and if you'd be interested in my setting and narrative I described, then if you're interested and have lots of puzzle ideas maybe we could combine our ideas. I had not thought to use physics puzzles in mine, and I think that would help round out the puzzle diversity, but I don't want to just steal the idea. Though I probably won't continue mine if I don't find a decent artist interested in the setting.

Very creative. I still do not understand all the mechanics, but I understand just enough that I was able to complete some levels. I might come back and try get a better feel for it later, but even what I've done so far was neat. Good job again on the creativity.

Creative mechanics, and the mirror effect was neat. I never did figure out how to handle the red enemy things, but I just kept trying over and over and avoided the areas where they had been in the previous try. I did finish it. Again, well done on the creativity of the idea and the 2D mirror effect.

This was one of the most creative entries I've seen. Good idea.

I'm waiting to rate this so you can point out what I'm missing, I'm probably just missing something simple...
I'm having difficulty getting past the second door and key. The second door just won't open for me, and I can't find anything to use the second key on. I'm not even sure what I did to make the second key appear - it wasn't there... and then it was, though when I move the big colored box that cyan key also moves so maybe you have it parented or jointed to it. The smaller colored box in that room won't move. I've tried messing with the lights, moving the larger colored box repeatedly, shoving the keys through the window to the next room. I can't fit through that window myself. I just don't know, could you please provide a hint about how to open the second door? I'll come back to this and rate it later if I can get further.

That was fun. I would recommend though that when you gain the ability to shoot that the enemies either have more health or that you cannot defeat them and can only knock them back. I didn't even realize until I had almost all the pillars done  (I think I had 1 or 2 left) on the last room that I could hit them enough to remove them, but once they are gone then it's too easy. I'm actually glad that I didn't know until I was almost done, because it was more fun evading.

Neat use of the "helpful obstacle" with the thing that you have to both run away from but then also wait for and use while trying to not get hit. That was clever.

I did the browser version, and I did not have the problems with it that you described. I did have to press escape to release the mouse pointer sometimes as you said, but the sounds including the alarm all seemed to work and I was able to complete the game and escape. Good job.

Edit: I've showed this game to a few people I know, and we all think this is a cool idea. Playing as a cryptid-like entity escaping containment could be expanded into many fun ideas.

I couldn't put the paper in the printer or clean the whiteboard while holding the cleaner, either by clicking or pressing E, but I was able to complete other tasks on the list instead. Good idea having more possible tasks for the day than needed, so you can choose which ones to do. I can see this game being expanded into a great office comedy full game with the right game mechanics used.

That was great! The most creative one I've seen so far, and it was fun. Someone else nearby asked if they could try, so it looks fun to the people nearby too!

I tried it a few times trying to see how fast a time I could get. I clicked until I could click no more.

The art styles and concept are good. You should add some instructions, even if it's only in the description. I could only make ruined quality parts and didn't figure out how to make better ones, and there were a few other confusing things too, so a few words about that in the description would help. Even though I added instructions to my game's submission explaining every button, some people are still finding mine confusing. Good job on your first submission!

This was the most captivating one I've tried so far! After I got the hang of it, it was quite fun for a while. After you get to the mid-to-late game the coins become meaningless because I always had way more than needed for anything, but at that point the dream currency for fuel and expeditions became even more important so it didn't unbalance too much. You got my best rating so far, thanks for the fun!

Good job, especially since it's a non-standard type of game that made it more interesting. It was fun.

Improve? I wasn't trying to complain before, in fact I was impressed that your entry was so polished when it was a vanilla JavaScript project instead of a game-making engine! To do this in JavaScript in the short time we have for the jam and then to still outperform some of the other submissions, you must have some good experience.  Congrats again on your quality submission!

Nice graphics, music suited the game well, nice job. I think I ran into the same bug that someone else described: I had already completed a number of orders, but then one wouldn't accept even though I was holding the specific ones it wanted. I had the stuff in inventory for 2 drones and submitted to a different one just before that though, so the ones it wanted weren't in the leftmost spots which were empty, so maybe that had something to do with it. That was a minor issue though, no biggie.

This was a great idea! Poor scientists though, I felt bad for zapping them. :( Good job on your project. Rated.

Good job! With all of the 2D game mechanics you've used here, you have enough experience to make a much more complete and balanced game if you get more time than what the Game Jam allows. It's surprising you made something like this as the first game you've made, and even more-so for such a short 3-day jam. Well done, and congratulations on your first game release!

Good point! I didn't even think of that. You can make it go the other way by putting in a negative torque value, but whichever way it spins with positive torque is the way the icon should go. Thank you for your attention to detail.

Rated, and that was fun. On my second play through, I got the boss core health very low then got a Game Over screen, so I thought I won, but then I realize I think they dealt the killing blow to me just barely before I did to the core! That was so close. Also, FYI: your game picture that I used to link in is clipped around the edges so I can't see the first letter which makes it say something less flattering. My submission is less polished than yours due to the time constraints, but it's still beatable - you should try it out.

Sorry yours rated so low for theme implementation, that rating is just wrong, ignore it. Your game was unique in using old fashioned annoying ads, giving it extra creativity points, and it implemented the theme well. It used those ads the same way as lots of the top theme rated entries, by shooting them, but you found a creative way to stand out. Good job, really.

Unique way to do the theme! It's interesting to see the old fashioned ads.

Same here, the turret cycle button didn't work so I could only place the one kind. Also I was only able to use the secondary shooting attack 1 time, then it never worked again.

One of the best theme implementations. Note that the ads with the text input, it's often difficult to make out exactly what it's showing. That was my very first ad the first time I played, and I never figured out what a couple of the characters were for that one. Another one, the first character looked like an 8, the rest were fine, but it wouldn't accept, so I changed 8 to g, still wouldn't work. Couldn't figure out what that character was. Maybe increase the font size on them. Otherwise good job.

That's not my issue. I was not able to get a single one. As I said, they are literally impossible at the speed it's going at unless the X is right in front of the turret to begin with, and even when it is nearly right in front of the X, I click to shoot immediately and sometimes the shot doesn't even reach the X before the next ad pops up. The last time I played, I finally nearly hit my first ad. :( Maybe it's browser related? I might try later on different browsers.

The ads are so fast and the turret so slow it's completely unplayable for me. The ads are not up long enough to even allow the turret to rotate far enough to hit the X, sometimes not even halfway there. Did you forget to multiply something by the framerate delta time, so maybe running on a faster PC makes the ads stay up less time?