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just to clarify, I did understand that weapons are room specific. What I meant more was maybe to avoid a weapon at first so a snail could act as a wall to access a lever or something before going to pick up said weapon to finally attack the snail (or something similar), since I noticed you couldn't switch back to bare hands after picking up a weapon.

Also also, I don't actively dislike the character, and I hope it didn't come across as such! Luca seems an inquisitive character himself which I can relate to. It may just have been I was more used to silent player characters in puzzle games, and so him speaking for quite a bit was a bit different for me.

21/05/2023 VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1825615889

1. CypherGrid

2. Knights & Runes

3. Veggie Quest: The Puzzle Game (early demo)
- attempted, but obs could not pick it up so abandoned

4. Sliding Hero

Total: 4

Really interesting game!

As mentioned before on stream, the biggest thing for me was really the sfx during the boss battle being especially jarring, and I had to turn off the sound entirely to deal with the boss.

I did notice that there was never an incentive to NOT pick up all the weapons in a room so perhaps it might be interesting to have a puzzle where the player must purposefully avoid weapons initially to set up a room before coming back round.

I did very much like the last room puzzle, and thinking back to it, I think one of the reasons I preferred it to the room with all the barrels was because there were no gaps in the floor that forcefully reset the room.

I also feel the weakest element in the game right now is probably the player character. I don't think I find his personality very compelling or interesting for whatever reason. The boss character on the other hand seems a lot more interesting.

All in all, I liked it.

Interesting concept, but hampered by puzzles that seem a little disjointed to each other.

Each rune type added a different type of challenge, but the puzzles sequences did not seem to be interested in keeping to a puzzle theme or teaching a particular concept. Examples would be a sequence focusing on needing to use the only green tile to change all the required tiles, or moving the hidden tile to allow changing the red tiles away from edges. Some puzzles like this do exist, but not in any particular order or grouping.

There were some puzzles that seemed to have a very elegant solution and some puzzles that just required some amount of brute forcing.

Because the total amount of puzzles in a sequence were unknown, or at least not obvious to me, trying to manage my resources of displacement or mana felt a little pointless. Except for the last puzzle, the amount you started with also seemed to be a bit arbitrary. You could end up using all your resources before you finished the sequence or you could end up with an abundant amount by the end because you were too careful in the beginning. Funny enough, the very last puzzle was the one to circumvent this, giving you only a specific amount of displacement resource to solve the only puzzle in its sequence.

One possible puzzle concept would be keeping track of element sequence and very limited mana to identify which few tiles you have to activate. On that note, a legend or a graph to keep track of what symbols change to what symbols would have been very helpful, or a number value added to them, because the symbols don't read instantly as earth, water, air, fire, and just becomes noise while you solve the puzzle.

The level going in order from right to left also did not help in teaching the symbol sequence.

The sfx for moving tiles around was far too loud and jarring for an otherwise calm puzzle game.

Mouse controls might also be nice to have, especially for some of the bigger puzzles.

Would be interesting to see what comes of this.

Really nice puzzles, both the puzzle process and artstyle remind me of old flash escape room games i used to play over and over again~

The cypher puzzles themselves are fun but I'd prefer if they were more related to other puzzle solving elements like the map and clock puzzle at the beginning rather than straight cypher grids at the end. The QTE and non-standard grid at the end were nice additions though, and I did like them too, though I was a little surprised the demo ended so quickly on a comparatively "fast-paced" note.

The password feature to return to certain parts is very on brand for what the game is, but at the same time I wonder if a chapter select after completing the required section/finding the required password wouldn't be more convenient. I realised at some point I really only commit the latest password to memory, which is fine for progress but not as great if I wanted to revisit older puzzles. The same would apply for the new spicy pics.

TLDR: Other supportive puzzle elements nice, chapter select not a bad idea. Good game.