Wellbeing by reheated

[raw]
made by reheated for LD32 (COMPO)
When your enemy is disease, you don't fight with guns. The Rot threatens humanity and our only defence is the Global Wellbeing Ops. In this logic puzzler, you are a newly recruited agent in the GWO, using your treatment emitters on the front lines in our war against The Rot.

The rules are explained over the first few levels of the game, but here is a summary:
* left-click on a tile to mark it (left click again to undo).
* when you mark a connected region of tiles containing the emitter, all those tiles "activate" (they turn blue).
* you need to activate all the tiles containing the Rot sufferers to heal them.
* you can't activate the numbered tiles. The number indicates how many adjacent tiles need to be active. e.g. if a tile says "1" then you must activate exactly 1 of the 4 tiles north, south, east and west of it. (That includes the tiles that you have to activate because they have a person or the emitter on them. The numbered tile will change colour slightly when you get it right.)
* If you know a tile can't be active, right-click it to grey it out. You don't need to do it but it helps you keep track of the things you know.

With thanks to my wife Joanne for some of the voice work, and to Brian Corr for excellent feedback.

Software:
Coding: Notepad++
Code base: I used some code from my LD31 entry, for sounds and the pre-loader
Testing: Firefox, Chrome, IE
Audio: FL Studio, Miroslav Philharmonik, Audacity
Graphics: Krita

Ratings

Coolness 71% 3
Overall 4.20 10
Audio 4.14 21
Fun 3.98 30
Graphics 3.71 197
Humor 3.30 260
Innovation 3.88 99
Mood 4.21 14
Theme 3.61 330

Feedback

Noro8
19. Apr 2015 · 22:51 UTC
Looks really nice and great idea but it took me a while to get the third level, kind of confusing.
chobrah
20. Apr 2015 · 05:46 UTC
This puzzle game is totally awesome! Give it 5 minutes to learn the rules and you will forget you're supposed to be rating it :D
sydan
20. Apr 2015 · 10:34 UTC
This is really interesting and unique. I found the puzzle to be a little difficult to grasp at first but when I got it I really enjoyed the mechanic! What's best about it is the story though. It is roughly hewn but it grips you and really do want to know more about what's going on!
CptDustmite
21. Apr 2015 · 09:31 UTC
Great work again Michael! I was so confused at the start for a little while but I re-read the rules a few more times and finally understood, and then it was really fun much like your other puzzles. Great little storyline as well! The music is lovely. GJ!
madflame991
23. Apr 2015 · 19:15 UTC
Good effort on the audio.
Sanguine
24. Apr 2015 · 09:10 UTC
Wow, this is a really cool puzzle game! I liked how it's a bit like Minesweeper but still radically different. The story was a super nice touch and I really enjoyed it! It would have been nice to make inactive power tiles a bit more dark though
jhell
24. Apr 2015 · 09:24 UTC
I was stuck at the huge puzzle by one generator, damn! Good game, clever mechanic, nice audio and VO. I found the generators too obviously there as an obstacle, I think I'd have liked to have them have a graphic, or some kind of effect on the grid, like maybe giving you more moves (and limit the whole moves :p) ?

Good job.
2R
24. Apr 2015 · 09:39 UTC
I like this game style:)
sentendo
24. Apr 2015 · 09:47 UTC
awesome graphics, I don't understand the tile emitters.
Prowler
24. Apr 2015 · 11:51 UTC
A really good game! I like the possibility to choose how you want to play. Do you want to "treat" the people? Or do you want to "free" them? Great game! Bloody good mood :D
pixzleone
24. Apr 2015 · 12:10 UTC
Omg. Played it all the way through. Genius. 10/5.
Chaoseed
24. Apr 2015 · 12:22 UTC
It looks great, although I got stuck on the third(?) level, the first one with numbered tiles...I was able to activate every tile, including all the ones with people on them, yet the level didn't end. Curious.

Other than that it seems quite playable, though! The voiceovers are excellent.
shrapx
24. Apr 2015 · 12:41 UTC
Wonderful experience. the puzzle was very challenging but seemed achievable. the dialogue with factions and nonlinear elements gave everything an extra interest and wonder. I loved the calm music throughout. part of the puzzle mechanic kind of reminded me of minesweeper, but this game is leagues ahead. lol! wonderful!
yackeroeni
24. Apr 2015 · 15:55 UTC
Nice game, although the difficulty does ramp up quite quickly. The basic mechanics are easy to grasp and fun to play around with. While the voice acting is quite impressive for a 48 hour game, I would have liked to play it a bit louder to be able to understand it a bit better over the music. Overall, a really nice game.
mantis
24. Apr 2015 · 15:56 UTC
Great entry!
nassi
24. Apr 2015 · 16:20 UTC
Impressive puzzle design for a jam game. I also liked the story and the choice presented to the player. Felt a bit like Q.U.B.E in that regard, but this game handled it better in my opinion. Went for both endings and I have to say that the woman had the better deal after all, even if that was only my second choice :P. I didn't actually notice the continue from branch button in the menu, so I did the levels before that twice, but they went by really quickly on my second try.

I found that the graphical style made the puzzles harder for me, since everything felt a bit unclear. The constant shifting didn't bother me too much, but there were little freezes or jumps from time to time, which annoyed me much more. Maybe there should've been more contrast between the different kinds of tiles and their different states. Also I think it would've been better if the tiles with people and emitters would've been marked by default (apart from the maps with a choice). Tiles with the number 0 could also have had grayed out surrounding tiles by default. I spent especially long on the last level of the Utilitarianist side, since everything seemed to be properly connected, but the emitters weren't actually connected to each other.

Playing around a bit more I realized that one of the problems with the visuals was that the game window was too big when playing fullscreen 1920x1080 so it was hard to grasp the overall situation. Now that I look at it in half the size it looks a lot clearer.

Overall a really neat game.
🎤 reheated
25. Apr 2015 · 03:44 UTC
Thanks everyone for your comments! Thanks nossi for taking such a close look. I think everything you said is right and I'll keep it in mind for the next game. If anyone gets choppy animation could you let me know what OS and browser it's on?
DKoding
25. Apr 2015 · 11:32 UTC
Confusing, I did not know what I did half of the time. But I think there is a good puzzle game in there somewhere.
sekaru
25. Apr 2015 · 11:33 UTC
Pretty cool concept. Gets pretty confusing at times. Really enjoyed the fact that there was good voice acting and good music but the music would sometimes drown out the voice acting.
plams
25. Apr 2015 · 11:57 UTC
Nice puzzle game. It has a nice incremental feel to it, i.e. not everything is lost if you make a mistake and you can resolve it by local re-routing. Not sure I understood the right-click thing, but I got to the utilitarian ending (I reckon there's one more ending?) without using it.
mokujin
25. Apr 2015 · 12:04 UTC
Music, puzzles and the story are great. High level game!
coderkeith
26. Apr 2015 · 10:26 UTC
We liked the voice over - better than having to read stuff. Music too loud though.

Took a little while to work out how to play.

Interesting - well done.
Eskoala
26. Apr 2015 · 10:32 UTC
I do love a novel puzzle game :) Excellent, and atmospheric too. The intermittent plot reveals make it a game I want to play to the end rather than just rate and move on.
Fenmar
26. Apr 2015 · 11:08 UTC
This is awesome! I did not expect to make moral decisions here, but it was damn well executed.

Spoiler:
The utilitarian ending was somewhat rushed, so at first I tought, "What is going on?! Oh wait, dinosaurs? Hell yes :D"
GarethIW
26. Apr 2015 · 16:46 UTC
Loved the story and puzzles, once I had got used to how the numbered tiles worked. Dinosaurs!
Pierrec
27. Apr 2015 · 16:56 UTC
Perfect puzzle, perfect atmosphere, perfect game
Andrew Quartermain
27. Apr 2015 · 17:19 UTC
This is one of my favourites so far. Wonderful game. It's a cool puzzle, but the story and atmosphere really brought it to life. I played both endings and I love the ambiguity.
stevenlr
27. Apr 2015 · 18:24 UTC
Well, that was simply great! The mechanics are simple but make for some quite challenging puzzles. The story is coherent and the music gorgeous. Great work!
Dreyan
27. Apr 2015 · 19:00 UTC
I'm a fan of logic puzzles myself and I know how hard it is to come up with a ruleset for one that's interesting to solve and of a good level of difficulty. This game got it spot on, along with wonderful audio and a fun story. The idea for multiple solutions to a logic problem giving two different endings to a game was ingenious.
sararyCow
27. Apr 2015 · 22:13 UTC
That's a clever puzzle mechanic! It really bangs my head. Congratulations!
NeiloGD
02. May 2015 · 07:27 UTC
Enjoyable puzzle game with narrative :) Loved it, and thank you so much for the continue from branch point option!! <3
PinkIndian
03. May 2015 · 17:52 UTC
Definitely the best game! Amazing! Also the music was just spot on and created the perfect atmosphere. And the difficulty was good, not too hard.
If I have to think of a negative point... the speech could have been a bit louder :)
gelisam
07. May 2015 · 03:21 UTC
Reminded me of Slitherlink (http://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/puzzles/slitherlink.html), but you sure put on a pretty coat of paint on top! Impressive amount of polish.