Poseidon

I love the dialog, it made me laugh quite a few times! Amazing job!

Really enjoyable. game. Very fun and kept the theme in mind.

Overall nice game. I like the pixel art graphics. The music was nice and calming, it really fits the game. I enjoyed the simple yet unique puzzle mechanics. The dialog was entertaining and works well for transitioning between levels. I'd say its pretty original yet it fits the theme very nicely. The game is very well polished. Good job!

Very nice, I'm always impressed with the concepts you come up with!
I especially liked level 9(?) with the disjoint areas. And the foreshadowing before the last level. ^^

This was a really fun game! The music, gameplay and theme was amazing. I struggled at the beginning because I wasn't really sure what to do but after figuring it out i really enjoyed it. The writting was also great. Overall really fun game man!!!

The atmosphere of this game is so perfect! Art fits the game really well and the dialog is funny. The puzzles were a bit too simple, but at least I didn't have to drop it halfway :D
Maybe the difficulty feels low because it was so fast to iterate/brute force through the puzzles.

"I have the feeling that the game will end with a nonfunctional "continue" button :D :D :D

What a great puzzle game. It really got my head thinking. The mechanics work great, there seem to be no bugs and the text between the puzzles adds a nice touch.
I would love to see this extended to a longer version with more puzzles and of course the ending of the story.

My only "complaint" might be a personal thing. The music sounds quite oriental, more like middle east to me than like ancient greece. Perhaps I have weird references in my head, but I would have located it in the Egypt region. Anyway, that is just a minor issue. Overall a really solid and well crafted game!

Great game, and it felt very polished (despite the missing ending, but it happens…)

The graphics communicated the game board clearly, with the tracking of the subgoals (both in the side-panel and with the name appearing on the board) being a helpful progress indicator.The in-between scenes including the humorous text was a fun diversion between the levels, and the little animation effect when completing a puzzle, with the board fading away, felt very satisfying. Also, the font was a nice touch.

I liked the puzzle design, there was enough common elements between the islands to obfuscate the immediate solution, but still a clear solution if pondering the available pieces for a bit. Having to occasionally bridge "blank" terrain was a nice variation of the patterns as well.

Very fun game!

@M2tias:

Maybe the difficulty feels low because it was so fast to iterate/brute force through the puzzles.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about difficulty ;) I discovered during level design that the core mechanic is flawed: it's pretty hard to come up with difficult puzzles using these mechanics.

If you use more types of symbols, the puzzle gets easier because there are more handholds for the player. If you use fewer types of symbols, the puzzle gets easier because there are more options to combine them. If you use more empty space, the puzzle gets easier because there are more paths to form the right islands. If you use less empty space, the puzzle gets easier because there are more symbols to guide the player.

I also wanted to make it so that there is only one unique solution, but some puzzles still allow multiple solutions.

@Laguna:

My only "complaint" might be a personal thing. The music sounds quite oriental, more like middle east to me than like ancient greece. Perhaps I have weird references in my head, but I would have located it in the Egypt region.

Thanks for the feedback! I never really composed anything outside a game jam, so your calling it "music" is already a big compliment to me ;) So let me talk about how the music was made.

I googled for "greek scale", took the first result (G Ab B C D Eb F G) and threw something together using those notes. I took some inspiration from Einaudi in the harp part, because that's what I'm currently studying on the piano (remember I have no idea what I'm doing). I didn't think about what chords these are or standard chord progressions, just tinkered until it sounded OK-ish to me. I wouldn't even know what ancient Greek music sounded like, nor whether it would be listenable to our modern ears.

It's also always a struggle to find the right instruments in the big bag of mixed-quality stuff that I downloaded for LMMS. The flute with the warble at the start of each note sounds awesome and super atmospheric, but is absolutely useless to compose a proper melody, hence the use of the piccolo in the second melody section. And the harp has an annoying "twang" on the lower notes, which I tried to cover up by lowering the note velocity; probably I should have tried to compose the harp a couple notes higher and pitch-shift the whole thing back down.

How would you (as someone who clearly knows more about music than I do, because your avatar wears headphones) approach it?

Oh wow, that is an extensive answer. :o

I am surely far from a professional, when it comes to music production. I did play the drums, released some music and I have a bit of production and recording knoweldge as I happened to be the one who did the recorings in most of the bands I have played in. But please take everything I say with a grain of salt.

creating music is always a very iterative approach for me. I just start with something, change the parts I don't like and work out the parts I enjoy more and more.
What I absolutely suck at is to create music with a certain emotion or feel to it. That's why my game has two tracks, I just failed horribly on the first track which was way too energetic for a rather relaxed puzzle game.

A great value for money library is the Native instruments stuff. They usually offer a 50% discount around Thanksgiving, but still it is quite a hefty investment for a hobby.

Unfortunately I am not well enough versed with harmonies and thos things to give some concrete advice or to pinpoint what to change or improve.

@Laguna Thank you! Maybe you're not a "professional" but you're miles ahead of me :) Probably it comes down to the usual "practice, practice, practice" too.

Nice game! I had a lot of fun with the different puzzles and the dialog with nice as well. Not much to nitpick really, except maybe the lack of a proper ending.

Pretty chill puzzler! Kinda easy. The callout to the end and then doing it was quite funny. 😜

The pacing between story and actual gameplay was pretty nice. I would have leaned a bit harder on the gameplay though as it was very easy. But of course something like doubling the gameplay sections would have made it already a bit repetitive without introducing anything new.

Looked and sounded great! Only one small nitpick from both areas. Visually the only thing that annoyed me was how the completed tasks were shown. For me the checkmark just wasn't enough and those rows still were stealing my focus. I think maybe dropping the opacity of the completed ones or otherwise trying to make them dimmer might work. And for the sound side, I only felt that the victory sound was a bit thin, shallow and unrewarding. A bit more oomph there would have felt great. It was supposed to be the grand celebration after all.

And for the conversation sections I would have liked to see more clear separation on who was talking. Maybe using different colors for Hera and Poseidon in addition to just being aligned differently. Also accompanying those line deliveries with sound effects would have made it easier (for me at least) to follow the conversation. And of course it would have given more personality to each different person talking.

So yeah, nice easyish puzzler that plays very well and has great art and sound. The story was funny enough and delivered and paced well. Good job! 👍

@anttihaavikko Thanks for the extensive comments!

I would have leaned a bit harder on the gameplay though as it was very easy.

True. I struggled to design harder puzzles with this mechanic, so I suppose the mechanic is just broken. See my earlier comment above.

I think maybe dropping the opacity of the completed ones or otherwise trying to make them dimmer might work

Absolutely! That was the first thing I tried… but it messed with the text shadows so the text ended up looking butt ugly :) With hindsight, maybe I should just have drawn a transparent ochre rectangle on top.

And for the sound side, I only felt that the victory sound was a bit thin, shallow and unrewarding.

Good point! Will keep that in mind next time!

And for the conversation sections I would have liked to see more clear separation on who was talking.

I would have done portraits if there had been an hour or two extra. But colour would have been a good addition too, and much quicker to implement besides.

Yeah I get it. Increasing the size and number of target islands to craft would make it harder at least a bit (with multiple solutions though) but dunno if it would be that fun and might become too complicated to plan that far forward. But I don't think the mechanic is flawed at all, it's interesting and pretty fun. I guess it's just somehow incomplete is it doesn't offer enough depth for more difficulty on it's own. So I guess it would need to be expanded with some secondary mechanic or something.

Heya :D
Today I played your game in my stream.
I really, really liked it!
The art, the music, dialogue..
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1595550364?t=0h18m15s
a really great entry :D

@xXBloodyOrange Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed it! I loved your voice acting, it's very expressive :D

Pretty well polished entry for a jam game, the puzzles were interesting to solve and the dialogue between levels was fun. Really nice entry, great work.

Nice game! I finally had the chance to play it. Would have liked to playm more levels!
The levels were indeed quite easy, but I understand from your earlier comment that its quite hard to make harder puzzles. Maybe it's possible to do more with the shape of an island: force the player to make some long islands by placing some items very far apart, or demanding that an island has a "lake"? Didn't think this through tough. ;)
I enjoyed the music and the funny dialogue. Well done!