itty 8bitty by 8bitmatt
A tiny NES puzzle game.
Html5 and JS. Using the Zepto.js library for convenience. Sound effects coded in MML (source is included). Music was created in garageband with the YMCK magical8bit plugin.
Works best in webkit desktop browsers (Chrome, Safari). Note: It takes some time to load all the sounds/music and I didn't include a loading screen so it'll just kick in when it's ready, hope it doesn't scare you when it happens.
Enjoy.
Html5 and JS. Using the Zepto.js library for convenience. Sound effects coded in MML (source is included). Music was created in garageband with the YMCK magical8bit plugin.
Works best in webkit desktop browsers (Chrome, Safari). Note: It takes some time to load all the sounds/music and I didn't include a loading screen so it'll just kick in when it's ready, hope it doesn't scare you when it happens.
Enjoy.
Ratings
| Coolness | 0% | 1178 |
| Overall | 3.63 | 91 |
| Audio | 3.84 | 28 |
| Fun | 3.55 | 82 |
| Graphics | 2.78 | 492 |
| Humor | 2.26 | 407 |
| Innovation | 3.83 | 67 |
| Mood | 3.31 | 117 |
| Theme | 3.23 | 324 |
I rated it 5/5 for innovation. I think the only thing missing is instructions because I didn't get what was happening at first. Other than that awesome work!
I knew what the game was all about because I saw it at indiegames.com (congratulations on that!); shouldn't I had already seen it, I probably wouldn't have known what was going on, so I'd say some more instructions are needed.
Congratulations!
Published my postmortem last night:
http://8bitmatt.com/itty-8bitty-postmortem
I talk about the lack of "instructions" in that post but here's a summary of my thoughts. Discovery is part of the design. There are two sets of instructions in itty 8bitty, the "Remember This" screen and the arrows around the puzzle. I'm only showing what's necessary to help the player figure out what's going on. With this little bit of help every player has been able to "get it". I think that moment when it "clicks", and the player feels a sense of empowerment because they were smart enough to understand, is very special and it's a certain kind of "fun" we've lost in modern gaming because of tutorials.
About the instructions. While I agree entirely with you, I think that for itty 8bitty that doesn't work as well. The reason why is because there is a little too much ambiguity, beyond a certain threshold, in my opinion. It boils down to the fact that there is no visual feedback (as part of the mechanics) and that there is no discernible difference blue, white, green and black squares. We see the arrows, but all we had seen before were blocks. My first impression was that this was more like Tetris and that we could move the three-colored block or rotate it somehow. In other words, while I absolutely love discovering what to do, and even who I am in games, and also did not include any instructions in my game, I think that there is a certain minimum feedback you should provide in order to not distract too much from the core gameplay. When I did discover what I was supposed to do in itty 8bitty, I was not satisfied, but simply annoyed, after 2 or 3 game overs. That instantly went away because the game is so goddamn good, but it worked against it instead of for it, in my experience. I don't know what the best solution would be (and I'm certainly not suggesting putting simple instructions in there), but you could experiment. A thing that could help is not having a game over in the first level, just audio feedback when you press the wrong key, until you move right.
But like I said, this really didn't impact the fact that the game is a great achievement, I was just trying to give some positive constructive feedback.
Awesome job!
Would have been nice to actually have an explanation, though - I game overed twice before I figured out what was going on.