Cercle funeste by moi93101

Hey everyone !
It all started with a bad pun that is understandable only to French speakers. And it became a nice little puzzle game about a dude in the realm of death, trying to find it's way throught 8 levels with the help of a "Grim Magnifier" (A "loupe" in french which is prononced more or less the same way as "loop", story spoiler: there is still a real loop in the game).
We hope you will like it as much as we do !
PS: For those having trouble with the mechanic. Each map is composed of bigger squares divided in the same number of smaller squares (mostly 3X3 square). When you zoom in, your small square position become your next big square position and your previous big square position become your next small square position. Example: If the map is a 3x3 bigger square, each bigger square are divided in 3X3 smaller square. If you are in the central small square from upper left big square and you zoom in, you end up in the upper right small square of the central big square. Hope it's clearer.
PSS: For the people tired of finding answer here is the coordinate's list of all the zoom you have to do. (0,0) is the top-left of the map, first number is horizontal, second is vertical.
Lvl1: No need to zoom
Lvl2: (1,1)
Lvl3: (1,0) (3,1) (7,5) (5,8)
Lvl4: (0,2) (1,8) (4,7)
Lvl5: (1,0) (1,5) (6,4) (2,3) (7,5) (7,7)
Lvl6: (0,2) (1,3) (5,2) (8,7) (7,4) (5,6) (6,0)
Lvl7: (5,8) (4,2) (2,11) (6,15)
Lvl8: (5,3) (11,14) (8,9) (4,7) (2,9) (7,4)
Lvl9: No need to zoom
We also have a video walkthrought for your pleasure only : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izMz9qYVWXY
| Youtube | https://loiclegrosfrere.itch.io/cercle-funeste |
| Youtube | https://loiclegrosfrere.itch.io/cercle-funeste |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/cercle-funeste |
Ratings
| Overall | 970th | 3.38⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1182th | 3⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 123th | 4⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1034th | 3.38⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1056th | 3.28⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 688th | 3.313⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 697th | 3.48⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 42🗳️ | 25🗨️ |
well done!
I think the problem is that "zooming" in with a magnifying glass makes no sense and the blur effect makes it more confusing.
I thought it had something to do with the placement of the character on the screen. Like when you zoom in, the board gets bigger but your character stays the same and the new position is calculated based on where your position overlapped with the zoomed in board.
Obviously i was completely overthinking it and it was a lot simpler than that.
Once I figured it out it was a solid puzzle game. Definitely try to rethink how you communicate the mechanics to the player
Anyway the mechanics idea was absolutely unique to me and it has I believe a lot of potential. Your game is really cool and deserves recognition!!
#### Now entering "eventual post jam version" feedback mode:
##### Levels design
In the later levels I sometimes accidentally won while actively following another solution that I had found and planned carefully with my poor little brain alone, but ended up winning before "randomly" on the way removing a good chunk of the satisfaction you're looking for when playing this genre. Since after a certain size of squares trying out every possibilities becomes impossible for a human, I think what could be interesting would be to try to explore algorithms to generate levels with only 1, 2,... or n solutions (should be similar to algorithms for making sudoku grids).
##### Graphics
From 4x4's to more it becomes very hard to distinguish in an efficient way while thinking about a path solution and memorizing it (at least for me). We could say we need a loupe to play your game... (nice one me, nice one...) Finding a way using the art to much better distinguish big squares from small squares would make the game much better for a small effort cost.
#### End of "eventual post jam version" feedback mode.
Again bravo for this game, I enjoyed playing it fully.
Innovation is a five star without any doubt for me.
If you would like to try out another potentially too complicated to understand puzzle game, but somehow still understood and enjoyed by puzzle game lovers, feel free (but not obliged) to check out our :)
So, I did try again, but still didn't get it :face_palm:
That said, apart the game mechanics, which seems isn't for me, it is super nicely done!