Code Monkey Trials by Rolith

[raw]
made by Rolith for LD19 (COMPO)
The game's basic mechanics are to light the entire screen. The puzzle comes in with the limited resources of your lamps, and the various traps lurking just out of sight in the darkness.

The level designs are uninspired, as I spent the last day building a level generator that I ultimately had to pull as it conflicted with the game engine's base code and was causing bugs to leak back into the original game.

Ratings

Coolness 4% 121
Overall 2.79 125
Audio 1.00 197
Community 2.88 102
Fun 2.96 81
Graphics 2.25 196
Humor 2.91 47
Innovation 2.92 100
Theme 3.17 100

Feedback

FatherGoblin
20. Dec 2010 路 01:50 UTC
No room for the "e" in monkey?
馃帳 Rolith
20. Dec 2010 路 01:51 UTC
:) not when you draw the title screen at 4 am apparently. *just saw this*
stevejohnson
20. Dec 2010 路 17:07 UTC
Nice tutorial, even if the level design is, as you say, uninspired. It wasn't clear if you also need to light the walls. (Apparently you do?) Could have used some sound.
increpare
20. Dec 2010 路 21:36 UTC
the tutorials were great I thought - quite funny, but one of the levels, with keys and doors around a junction of the breakable tile, doesn't seem solvable - and the proc generation doesn't help :(
Devenger
21. Dec 2010 路 14:15 UTC
Not a bad bit of puzzling. The whole lighting thing never really became important, since you needed to light everything every level, and you always had enough lights to place one every two spaces/whenever you would otherwise need to move into darkness (I think). Still, well done.
zdanielz
21. Dec 2010 路 15:23 UTC
Fun!
badlydrawnrod
21. Dec 2010 路 16:18 UTC
Played it for a lot longer than some of the other games. Reminds me of DROD, but cuter.
refrag
22. Dec 2010 路 05:55 UTC
Nifty game, I was able to understand the mechanics quickly. Gave up around level 4(?) with all the keys and doors and cross-sections of gravel.
Starspell
22. Dec 2010 路 19:36 UTC
I actually disagree with the others. I thought the tutorial message boards were good - but the levels that the tutorials were in to be too easy and boring. It felt weird learning a new thing and just reading text so that could just light one square up.

I did like the set pieces - especially the gravel.
KoryWazHere
23. Dec 2010 路 12:03 UTC
monkeys are great =)
Tom 7
27. Dec 2010 路 19:20 UTC
This is a good idea for a play mechanic. It needs more levels, since only the last one provides any challenge (and really that one is all about guessing and remembering because you can't possibly know which order to get the keys in). For a long time I thought the grey and white squares were representing the falloff of the lightbulbs, but actually it's just a pattern--could definitely have done more with light effects. The problem I see with turning this mechanic into a full-fledged game is that in order to conserve lights, you need to wander out into darkness and place them blind, but when doing this you can easily place in such a way that you don't light up the corner of some room (or worse, step in a trap). So harder puzzles are going to almost always involve guessing, which I think is unfortunate (guessing punishes the player for something outside his control). I bet there is some good direction to take this idea, though.
Endurion
29. Dec 2010 路 16:24 UTC
Nice little game.
However the lighting part feels tacked on mostly. Needs sound and an end.