Tetroidvania
Explore ancient maze where Elder Gods of gaming rest in slumber.
Repeat the path of gaming pioneers, defeating Old Fashion. Aquire power of tetrominoes and restore the Core.
Along your journey you may come across old friend - Weighted Storage Cube. Give it your all - and you may even find your way into the heart of lovely Companion Cube.
Controls: Keyboard
Est. time: ~15-30 min
UPD 16.03: "Space Invaders" room is now open! Challenge is getting harder, by don't let it stop your adventure!
Known Issues:
- Softlocks are present in mild form. Long hold [R] may resolve the issue. If there are more problems, please, comment it. Maybe, I will be able to help
- Several objects collisions work odd
- Several sound effects are timed badly
Used tools: Unity, Aseprite/Krita, Audacity
Used assets: Font and Sound Effects by https://pastebin.com/vRU1naEc
Made during Metroidvamia Month 23 Jam
by mrBell270
Development log
- Room (2, 5) exit fixed41 days ago
Comments
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I think i locked myself out of the portal on the top right of the map by pushing the blocks the wrong way.
I'm really enjoying this! It's a lovely concept and refreshing. I have SAFE PULL and PUSH and I feel quite fondly towards my little blocks. I haven't finished it yet but want to.
I like the map - it's straightforward and descriptive. I like the puzzles so far but i think i softlocked myself on the first screen and had to restart. The graphics work.
I would prefer if the movement was a little more responsive and if the puzzles also moved a bit faster (the wall of danger circles on the East screen for example - i kept dying and waiting for the next gap)
This game is really great :D
Thnks for your comment!
Is it possible to reset an entire room? I softlocked myself in one room.
Unfortunately, it is prototype, and not all functions are ready. Rooms that can be softlocked should have soft reset with long "R" (2sec+). Can you give more info on your situation? Maybe I should use grace period to fix it.
I passed the room I was struggling with, but I found another softlock over here:
No, the imprint did NOT prevent me from getting fried by the lasers!
Also, I noticed that you like puzzles. Maybe you would like to try sokoban-like "The Last Spark" on my page? it is couple of years old, but it is far more polished than this one :D
There seemed to be too many opportunities to have to restart from the beginning. If I got the first L shape, coming back to the room with the lasers (after the pong room), if I dragged a block accidentally making the laser cross the entire room, I can no longer get to the rest of the room. A reset did not move the blocks back to a "safe" position where the lasers were passable, and the shape was no able to progress as it was behind the laser.
Similar things happened if you had moved blocks with the starting piece.
It is an interesting concept. If I had been able to switch pieces maybe that would have resolved the issue? Also it would have been nice if the movement speed was a little faster.
Interesting!
Thanks for your review!
You are right, this braking sequence is possible. Firstly door in room above center was oriented the other way, leaving possibilty to go around lasers. But testers did not like it, so i turned it around, creating deadlock situation. I will be more careful when adding more rooms now.
You know what else testers did not like in first versions? Speed of movement. I think, you won't believe it, but it was 4 times slower :) Even more, the first draft made you push button for each step (no holding allowed).
So, thanks again for your comment, it will make me update my roadmap and improve the game!
The movement I can understand it not being faster. As it is right now I still accidentally moved blocks when I did not mean to. If it was faster, I think that would happen more.
I think if the reset was adjusted to either reset the blocks to their original position if whatever puzzle was not solved, or reset to a "solved" state if the puzzle had been solved, it would prevent some locking scenarios. That might entail multiple reset states, especially if there were multiple puzzles/blocks in a room.
I'll try playing again later :)
Ok... finished :) That was fun. I did not encounter soft locks on this run, I am not sure if I was just being careful or if the added blocks and ability to shift prevented the softlocks. Good stuff :)
Thanks a lot for your comment! I am glad you like it:)
Thanks a lot for your comment! I am glad you like it:)
So less of a "soft lock" thing and more of...I was experimenting with the saws in the second room, to understand if they mean instadeath (they do), and part of that was pushing a block into them to see if that stopped them (it didn't). But then the block was stuck in the saws, which I believe prevents me from getting anywhere.
Thanks for your comment. First, everything you described is by design. Yeah, a box stuck under a saw isn't very nice, but it is not the end of the world either :) Second, you may try to find your way to other places, for example, right from the room with saw-box problem. It will require some tricky spinning though. Good luck!
Oh, you're supposed to go right first? When I restarted, I used two blocks in that first-to-the-right room to block the north lasers, and went north first. It didn't occur to me that I could even go right (probably because of the tricky spinning).
I ended up hitting other problems: the game doesn't stop immediately if you hit a "RRRR" reset point, so at one point I'd managed to drift into another room before things stopped, at which point I couldn't reset my way back out again.
This is the beauty of metroidvania: you are supposed to explore all the possibilities, there is no right (ooh, I'm bad with puns) way, at least it is not always obvious.
Bad collision, known problem. Unfortunatelly, some of my design choises are protortype-drive. I would like to start devlog and improve all mechenics, maybe even adding more. But first I need to see feedback, like yours :) I hope you would be able to finish the game at least once :D Thanks again!
Less a matter of "explore the possibilities", more a matter of "did not register as a possibility". (Even now, after a lot more exploration, I've been finding the details of rotation kind of hard to guess. And sometimes shifting: I got stuck by accidentally getting a square in both sides of GRAB, and couldn't let go of them, and couldn't shift out of it.)
At this point I've got four rooms I can't reach; three of them seem to be locked behind a shape I don't have (i.e., the mirror of GRAB), and the fourth...is north of the eight-lasers room, through an exit that only PUSH can take, behind lasers that only SAFE can pass. I can't tell if I'm missing something, or if there's another one of these trick rotations that would work.
Well, the last one (row 2, col 5) is secret room, It can only be accessed after obtaining last power - copying. There are last loot piece in it. Hope with all my heart that you will get it.
As for mirror of GRAB - I can't even imagine, what rooms are you talking about. Some of @Doors@ could be opened by Z-shape with box (.::), but no mirrors.
Shifting from Z to I. In several playtest between my testers and me we encountered it twice. Bug, obviously, but it is not easely repeatable, I presume. I will look into it in next versions.
Rotation/Shifting blocks. Do you think point/circle on "main"/center body part will be enough to help? Maybe, allowing rotation both cw and ccw will solve problem? Or it is wiser to implement "preview-confirm" system? Shape module will be rewriten sooner or later, so there is
some time for better planning.