This very much reminds me of Imagine Logo. It was a drawing software with a cute turtle in the middle, and was used to teach programming back in my primary school.
You could definitely take inspirations from the Logo programming language. With a major ones, being obviously the ability to change color / line style, and the ability to allow/disallow drawing the line.
This is absolutely brilliant, love the way the puzzles work, as well as the visualization, i think if the line updated in real time as you write would be a tiny bit less of a challenge, but would be a major quality of life improvement. The puzzles are neat, i love games that let you figure out the rules on your own such as Taiji or The Witness, and it was done beautifully here. I'd be super excited about a full release of this, it's a great idea executed amazingly!
Great game, love the concept, can't wait to see the more out-there runes! I hope this game will actually have some tricky navigation puzzles outside of simple pathing and optimization though. Can't wait to see more!
Also came from Aliensrock. I had to try it myself after seeing the first few minutes. The atmosphere is brilliant, with soothing music and lovely pixel art. It feels extremely satisfying to 'master' each rune. Excited to see more!
the game design is just absolutely amazing. i also love how theres a balance between letting the player know what tools they have and what they do but also not telling directly
So, it's a very good, pretty, cute game, and this cube-cat - it's so cute! But, i have 1 thing to say more, the R rune, in start, i don't understand it, so, i think, you need to say it
I love the vibe. If this turned into a bigger game, I think it would be amazing if typing runes in the overworld could be used for secrets!
One thing I think could be improved is, once you know the controls of the runes, the underlying puzzles aren't usually very interesting. "Go through this, don't touch that", it's a bit simple and tedious. I liked the 'CC' ban because it made me think a little bit more about what I was doing. More mechanics and constraints would be great.
Okay this was a ton of fun! I'd love to see more, especially if your obelisk puzzle skills keep up! (The only thing I got a bit confused on at first was somehow thinking I couldn't use "C" at all in the third area, but that's probably just me being derpy)
This is a very promising game! The way that you have to learn how your input works gives this game the potential to explore many unique ideas. I would love to see runes that mess with the properties of the line, such as how it interacts with shapes on the board. I also hope you explore rune count more, like limiting the amount of a certain rune, as even this demo has some clever tricks for reducing your rune count. After optimizing several times, I got down to 81 runes used, which I conjecture to be the minimum (pun intended).
Also, when accessing the Settings from the main menu, the header says "SSettings," which I would assume is a typo.
Absolutely love this game. I disagree with others who want to be able to see your progress as you're typing the runes; the interesting part of the challenge for me was trying to remember where I was after I entered each one. Makes for an interesting challenge. Maybe you could have multiple difficulty levels - a beginner one where you can see your progress as you type and a more difficult one where you can't. I wouldn't change a thing about it; just add more runes and make it longer!
Thanks, I'm glad you like it! I too have thought of adding those difficulty options, and maybe even a harder one where you can't see the line at all! 😈 I might use this to increase the difficulty of the later puzzles to truly test the player's knowledge. Will test it out and see how it goes :)
Not showing what your current in-progress string does is definitely weird - I mostly just Enter'ed after each letter and rewrote the whole string again and again. Would be arduous for whomever has a slower typing speed, so seeing it immediately change (like Pheonix suggested) would be great. In fact, Enter doesn't really serve any purpose in this demo, it could just auto-enter after each change in the string.
Overall, I liked the demo but felt like it was even slightly too drawn out so I doubt more puzzles would do it any good - but more letters is cool and I really liked the finale! Final runes used: 84.
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This very much reminds me of Imagine Logo. It was a drawing software with a cute turtle in the middle, and was used to teach programming back in my primary school.
You could definitely take inspirations from the Logo programming language. With a major ones, being obviously the ability to change color / line style, and the ability to allow/disallow drawing the line.
This is absolutely brilliant, love the way the puzzles work, as well as the visualization, i think if the line updated in real time as you write would be a tiny bit less of a challenge, but would be a major quality of life improvement. The puzzles are neat, i love games that let you figure out the rules on your own such as Taiji or The Witness, and it was done beautifully here. I'd be super excited about a full release of this, it's a great idea executed amazingly!
What asset pack is this? I've seen it in a few places now
You can find it here, it is one of itch.io's most popular assets! https://cainos.itch.io/pixel-art-top-down-basic
Cheers, I knew I'd seen it before, but couldn't find it while looking
Great game, love the concept, can't wait to see the more out-there runes! I hope this game will actually have some tricky navigation puzzles outside of simple pathing and optimization though. Can't wait to see more!
Beautiful game. Got it down to 81 :)
Also came from Aliensrock. I had to try it myself after seeing the first few minutes. The atmosphere is brilliant, with soothing music and lovely pixel art. It feels extremely satisfying to 'master' each rune. Excited to see more!
I want to add to wishlist the full version of the game, but I can't
Just saw Aliensrock play this on YT, already love the concept and visual. Really look forward to the expanded version in the future.
now I'm only with 82 runes
Really fun! The cat-tofu thing confuses me.
Absolutely loved this. Deeply disappointed that there wasn't more!
I want to play this forever. I'd happily pay for this
I need this to be a mobile game with like 1000+ levels so I can just play it forever
This game has a really unique and interesting concept, and i think that this idea can go really far if you pull if off right
i hope this game dose great
Love the game can't wait for more of it
love it! fatastic, beautiful.
I love the vibes of this game :D!
the game design is just absolutely amazing. i also love how theres a balance between letting the player know what tools they have and what they do but also not telling directly
So, it's a very good, pretty, cute game, and this cube-cat - it's so cute! But, i have 1 thing to say more, the R rune, in start, i don't understand it, so, i think, you need to say it
this was a good game ,very nice
Awesome! Love the fact that we can try to optimize the path, I managed to go down to 100 runes used.
Guess who got it down to 90?
I really enjoyed the puzzles and atmosphere of the game! I'd love to see more levels, runes, and mechanics if this gets expanded into a full game.
Do you count soft-lock as bad ends?
Love it! So much fun to figure out hidden rules. Looking forward to more stages!
Walkthrough for Runic Conjecture
Final Runes used: 81
Dang it! I had finally lowered it down to 82 before noticing this comment.
Edit: for heaven's sakes, I had all of the tricky ones; I merely forgot to apply the solution for 3-R-2 to 3-R-1.
nice game
yooo sick concept I hope you expand on this. Also love the character.
I love the vibe. If this turned into a bigger game, I think it would be amazing if typing runes in the overworld could be used for secrets!
One thing I think could be improved is, once you know the controls of the runes, the underlying puzzles aren't usually very interesting. "Go through this, don't touch that", it's a bit simple and tedious. I liked the 'CC' ban because it made me think a little bit more about what I was doing. More mechanics and constraints would be great.
Okay this was a ton of fun! I'd love to see more, especially if your obelisk puzzle skills keep up! (The only thing I got a bit confused on at first was somehow thinking I couldn't use "C" at all in the third area, but that's probably just me being derpy)
Awesome game. When are the walkthroughs being posted?
it was a fun little game, and i would like to play more of it
This is a very promising game! The way that you have to learn how your input works gives this game the potential to explore many unique ideas. I would love to see runes that mess with the properties of the line, such as how it interacts with shapes on the board. I also hope you explore rune count more, like limiting the amount of a certain rune, as even this demo has some clever tricks for reducing your rune count. After optimizing several times, I got down to 81 runes used, which I conjecture to be the minimum (pun intended).
Also, when accessing the Settings from the main menu, the header says "SSettings," which I would assume is a typo.
It took me 180... :(
88 runes, nice game
Love the concept and the execution. I finished with 104 runes used.
Brilliant mechanic! would love to play the full release
Very fun! I ended with 96 runes used.
Absolutely love this game. I disagree with others who want to be able to see your progress as you're typing the runes; the interesting part of the challenge for me was trying to remember where I was after I entered each one. Makes for an interesting challenge. Maybe you could have multiple difficulty levels - a beginner one where you can see your progress as you type and a more difficult one where you can't. I wouldn't change a thing about it; just add more runes and make it longer!
Thanks, I'm glad you like it! I too have thought of adding those difficulty options, and maybe even a harder one where you can't see the line at all! 😈 I might use this to increase the difficulty of the later puzzles to truly test the player's knowledge. Will test it out and see how it goes :)
I like the idea of having a level at the end of each section where you can't see the line, to test understanding (like the game "Understand")
Not showing what your current in-progress string does is definitely weird - I mostly just Enter'ed after each letter and rewrote the whole string again and again. Would be arduous for whomever has a slower typing speed, so seeing it immediately change (like Pheonix suggested) would be great. In fact, Enter doesn't really serve any purpose in this demo, it could just auto-enter after each change in the string.
Overall, I liked the demo but felt like it was even slightly too drawn out so I doubt more puzzles would do it any good - but more letters is cool and I really liked the finale! Final runes used: 84.