About Minogue Puzzle
Hello everyone, my name is agoo, is a puzzle game enthusiast, "Mino Puzzle" is a puzzle game that I independently developed in my spare time, from last July, to now more than half a year of development, I think I can take it out to show everyone, and see if you can get some feedback.
To put it simply, "Mino Puzzle" is a game that uses polyomino to puzzle, everyone should have played with or seen the toys in the picture below when they were young, generally using 4 dominoes (also called Tetris), the goal is to fill a rectangular area.
I have played it myself, although it seems not difficult, but in fact, it is difficult to find the law, many times it is random to fight, completely depends on luck, and often spelled to the end to find that the spelling can not continue, but do not know how to adjust, so in fact, not much fun.
"Minogue Puzzle" has done a lot of experimentation and optimization on the basis of this gameplay, so that the puzzle has more reasoning space, but also added a lot of interesting mechanisms, so far, there are about 8 mechanisms, which will be slowly introduced in the subsequent development log.
It is better to look at the actual game screen, here is an introductory question, not involving any mechanisms.
Like many good puzzle games, when introducing new mechanics, they will try to make the mechanics look natural, self-evident, and do not do text prompts, and players can try to understand various mechanisms.
For example, the puzzle in the picture below introduces some new mechanisms, can you understand just by looking at the pictures? If you understand, you can also try to solve this problem.
1.1 About current progress and follow-up plans
Because this project was originally intended to be released on the mobile phone, it was done in 2D, and then because of the version number and Apple developer account problems, it is now published on Steam and changed to 3D.
The original 2D version is already perfect, but there are still many mechanisms that have not been migrated to 3D, and the process is not simple, many mechanisms look intuitive in 2D, but in the 3D environment is not easy to understand.
The current progress is that the basic framework of the Steam version has been put in place, and 3 mechanisms have been migrated in the 3D environment.
Development Progress 2
During these 2 weeks, I mainly optimized the art effect of the game, including optimizing the lighting and skybox, supporting fixed-size question boards (the question space, which is very related to the follow-up mechanics), and adding the transition of the puzzle start.
Here's a look at the results:
In addition to the artistic effects, these 2 weeks also basically determined the way to choose the topic, and will use a similar way to solve the puzzle to select the topic to ensure the consistency of the game experience. The overall topic selection scene is still in production, and I hope that the next update can show you the way to choose the next topic.
2.1 Follow-up Plans
The follow-up plan is to start with a playable demo, and the plan is to include about 10 puzzles, including 2 to 3 mechanics.
Demo allows everyone to experience the game more intuitively, hoping to get more and more accurate feedback, not only about the quality of the puzzles, but also about the operation, art feedback, which is of great help to me to improve the game in the future
2.2 Mechanism Sharing
This time to share with you an early mechanism, I personally also like it, called symmetry, I believe you will understand at a glance:
Symmetric mechanics are mechanisms that can only be implemented in games, and symmetric operations cannot be perfectly implemented in reality.
Symmetrical blocks move and rotate symmetrically, and the player needs to take into account the position of all the symmetrical blocks at the same time, but this also gives the player some room for reasoning.
Development Progress 3
This time is mainly in the preparation of demo, because the basic framework of the game has long been done, these 2 weeks are mainly in the optimization of the topic selection scene, probably conceived of the formal game in the selection of the topic, but the number of puzzles in the Demo version will be relatively small, so slightly make the topic selection scene smaller, estimated at about 20 to 30 questions, covering the early stage of the game mechanism, because the need to show more mechanisms under a relatively small amount of questions, so the number of questions for each mechanism will only be about 4 questions, but Demo The mechanics will be crossed as much as possible, giving players the opportunity to familiarize themselves with. The official version of the question difficulty curve will be a little better, and the question will not be completely copied from the demo, except for some good questions.
The theme selection scene is as follows (the transition effect is temporary)
The problem selection scene adopts a similar operation to the actual problem solving, each grid on the blank question board corresponds to a problem, and each time the player solves a problem, the nearby grid will be opened, so that the player can also play the branch puzzle in a certain level, and will not be stuck in the whole game.
In addition to the topic selection scenario, these 2 weeks also did the archiving system, optimized the operation of the block, solved some bugs with high concealment, and overall, the progress can be ha.
3.1 Introduction to the Mechanism
This time, some game mechanics are also introduced in a routine manner, unlike the symmetrical mechanism introduced last time, which is a bit subversive of the gameplay mechanism, and this time the introduction is generated after digging deep into the previous mechanism at some points.
In the previous development log, the game's 4-square dominoes (commonly known as Tetris) were introduced, but there are also larger blocks such as 5-slot dominoes and 6-bar dominoes in the game.
In addition to this kind of block called multi-grid dominoes, there are also blocks that cannot be called dominoes, such as the following one
And the interior of the block is not only one color, there are also blocks like this combination of 2 blocks, and there are also blocks with partial color changes inside
Such a mechanism made by modifying the basic elements of the game can be well integrated with other mechanisms of the game, like multi-lapeles can do some shape reasoning very well, suitable for strangely shaped question boards, like multi-color blocks, and color prompts can be well matched, making some particularly clever problems, making these mechanisms seem boring, but in fact have their own special problem solving mode.
3.2 Some nonsense
Although since last year began to do independent games in their spare time, but it is really very difficult ah (ノへ ̄), people to middle age, life is a lot of trivial things, do independent games can only be ranked after work, family, once the work of the project began to busy, or the family has something to deal with, will compress the time of independent development, sometimes can only be temporarily stopped, this time finally stumbled to the point where you can look forward to the release, I hope to be able to do it smoothly.
Puzzle games like this, I feel that even in the indie game circle are considered niche, many people's impression of this kind of game is small games, puzzle games, but the game I want to do is more emphasis on the quality of the puzzle, the flow of puzzle solving, and the "aha moment" that only the puzzle game can bring me, I call this kind of game (Puzzle Game). Since the advent of "Witness", there have been a lot of excellent puzzle games, such as "Baba Is You", "Monster Expedition", "Steve's Sausage Roll", etc., I know that the puzzle quality of this game can only be medium in this kind of game, but every mechanism, puzzle I have spent a lot of time thinking and polishing, as the first game, personally has been satisfied (wake up, you haven't finished it... ）。
I hope this time can be successfully released, I already have several good puzzle game ideas, I want to hurry up and do it!!