Square Maps

I liked this.
Good job.

Fun Memory game with a cool concept.

@AaronBacon Memory game ?

Your highscores are incredible!

@psevrain Lol, think I was tired when i wrote that, guess I meant observation game. But honestly, the game is fun when played normally, but when it comes to getting a high score, I found that just mashing all 3 keys gets a higher score than is possible playing normally. even with the combo multiplier, sometimes by random chance I happen to mash the right keys 5 or 6 times in a row, which means it becomes a game of luck from a High Score perspective. The game is interesting, but if I'm focussing solely on getting a high score, key-mashing is the best strategy lol.

Minimalist, but very efficient! The way the perspective is lock is very interresting!
Sometimes the camera look at an empty view :o!

@AaronBacon : what a highscore! :o

Clever concept, simple but well executed. I like that it's entirely keyboard-driven to allow for the quickest response times (although mouse-look + 123 would also have worked).

@AaronBacon Ha thanks for the feedback. I did not think that trick may work. Next version (post jam…) will have a short timer against that :)
With a little animation perhaps, it would be nice!

@Tipyx Thanks. Next version will also include a workaround to avoid the empty view. I had no simple idea at the moment, but now I know how to do it. Well, after the jam.

@thomastc Thanks for your feedback. I discarded the mouse control to simplify the realization (I only work on the game the sunday, minimalism was mandatory!). But I agree offering several control alternatives would have been better for the different players.

Enjoyable game! Making split-second optimal decisions about what to look for (specific pattern, number of colors, etc.), from the three choices and starting view angle was entertaining.

Although, as Tipyx mentioned, sometimes you lose valuable seconds by having the camera pointing away from the boxes when the map starts.

Nice idea, and fun game!

Fun and addictive. My usual scores were around 150 but mashing the button improve my score to 250+.
A one point penalty on error shouldbe enough to fix it.

A novel idea. Pattern recognition done quick is usually part of a bigger design, yet here it is the essence of the challenge.

Ending the run on a single mistake would solve the smashing buttons issue. It would also highten the tension by offering a punishing, but fair, risk reward system. Great for highscore hunting that.

Simplicity is the key to a smart design. There is room for extra features, though, such as bigger maps, different perspectives, moving/rotating the camera automatically, etc.

The small problems are unfortunate. Good job otherwise.

Nice idea! You practice what you preach, as it's so minimal(ist) that other than that and 'well I had at least some fun with this' I find I hard to come up with something that hasn't already been said.

I think a solution to mashing the keys may be to have (randomly assigned) different keys for the maps each time, and count a completely wrong input as a miss. (So, if we keep it limited to the numbers, an example would be '6', '2', '9' in the first round, '8', '0', '6' in the second, etc.) That way people who have incredibly good reaction speeds (definitely not me) would still be able to play without the time limit getting in the way, but key-mashing will become sub-optimal (depending on the score-multiplier).

Very simple and nice gameplay idea! I'll have my kids play it.

Feels kinda unfair at times that you have to (slowly) rotate the camera to discover the scene; no chance to be blazing fast.

Also I felt like maps were randomly generated, so most of them were easy to distinguish. Maybe at higher levels providing small variations on the same map would add to the difficulty (or I may not have gotten far enough, eh!).

@oparisy
Yes, the maps are totally random, for now. As well as the camera orientation :)

Nice little game, very simple but fun and effective! Can't wait for the 3D levels rubik's cube like version :D

The keyboard-controlled camera was a bold move, I'm undecided whether I would have preferred mouselook or even just the camera being centered on the level at all times. The limited camera speed does create an interesting tension so it might have been the best choice actually, I'm not sure! Maybe what's missing is making sure we always start with at least one cube in view.

There's an exploit with the game though being that we can mash the 1/2/3 keys without getting penalized, making it possible to reach 300+ I think. Setting a limit of 3 failures max (or 1, or heck even none) would add some challenge.

Maybe increasing the map size througout the minute could be interesting too? There's plenty of potential to expand this actually :)

@Wan Thanks for your feedback!
The random camera is definitively an important part of the experience I think, but I agree it should avoid blank starting views.
For the exploit, there is already a punishing rule, but it seems too light. I'm going to insert a litlle delay - with animation - between the scenes, so the pure random will not have time to give a good score.

Increasing the map size is indeed a strong lead for improvement for a second version.