neat idea, needs a note pad or a way to view the ships and flags at the same time

I like the graphics of the game. Clear to read.
I think it would be good to have simple codes in the beginning, so you can learn the basics.
Dealing with all the signals at the beginning is overwhelming.
Congrats for finishing your game. :)

cool idea but very hard!

Very original and creative idea, but the gameplay is missing something to make it more entertaining. A bit confusing and complicated to understand. Anyway, good job!

Could you give an example of what we are supposed to do for the first boat?
The game looks cool but it is very hard to understand if we are not familiar with maritime signal flags.

@yopox

1) The ship starts with only flags indicating its code hoisted (in this example, VT58).


2) In the notes, an entry for said ship is created with its code already noted. There are 3 input fields, each for data that you will need to note down. Their hints are the request codes for respective data that you will later send via flag rack.


3) On the flag rack, prepare your message by selecting flags. The message is just the ship code followed by the data request code (in this example, with the data request code of ORI, producing the message VT58ORI). Hoist the message flags.


4) If the request is valid, the ship with the code will now hoist flags signaling the data requested (in this example, BORDEAUX).


5) Go back to the notes, note down the data in its relevant field (in this example, the field for ORI). Repeat for remaining data and ships.


We played this in "co-op" mode as a team of two people, which was fun! :) For people who used the flag alphabet for the first time, it was very hard, though. Even with pausing the game as much as we could on the "main view", we barely managed to record ships :D We noticed that the view gets wider with wide windows, which also helped a little bit to have more time.

We would've liked a more "didactic" approach, which maybe introduces only a couple of flags at a time. Sound or music can also really improve gameplay, I think.

A lovely interpretation of the theme, though!


Best use of the theme of the games I've played so far. Pretty hard, I only got 1 right lol. I think I should get half points for getting at least some information... But I enjoyed role-playing as someone who was terrible at their job :P

I wasn't able to understand your game myself, so I read the comments here and following your instructions know I understand.

Anyway, I still didn't have the time to log any ship completely before it disappears...

I may have discovered I have dysflagsia...

This game was a little too stressful for me to properly enjoy. 😅 I am not sure if I got the whole gameplay loop, but to me it seems to be as you described:
- Jot down and encode the most recent boat's ID.
- Then, hoist both the ID and the characters 'ORI' to request the info for "origin".
- Quickly scramble to decode the boat's message using the flag chart while inputting the decoded characters in the other screen.
- Then, do this again for DEST and ERVD.

This was just too much for me within the time limit. I think slower ships (at least at first!) and a transparent "mini" overlay of the flag codes could have helped make the game more accessible. That being said, I'm sure someone who already nows this stuff by heart from time on the sea could probably do pretty great. :)

I liked that game, because I learned something new, I had no idea ships used flags like this to communicate! Gameplay for me was a bit slow but well made.

I also had no idea what these flags were for before. I feel like this could be a fun challenge for someone who already knows the signals. For a noob like me it felt almost impossible. xD I did manage to record one ship correctly but I had to have the wikipedia page and a notepad open. Also had to pause the game to be able to decode the flags in time. No chance doing it in real time. 😅

It's an interesting concept but it's definitely very challenging. I had to pause to have any hope of getting anything done, too.

Side note: A ship that was supposed to be labeled QO27 had its third flag being red on top and white on bottom, which isn't anything on the list. 2 is supposed to be yellow-red-yellow horizontal bars.

@coda-highland

Tried it out myself, and the flags are displayed as intended.


Not your fault for the confusion though, as the combination of colours of the flags for "O27" is indeed confusing, which could have been avoided if the flags are separated better.

Oh, dang, I see, it was just too small on my screen for me to distinguish it properly. Never mind then!

I can say that I've beat the whole game, I recorded all 13 ships that showed up. Probably the last one was the hardest as I had about 20 sec to ask all info and record it. I would appreciate if we got number of all ships that sailed, as I needed to count them on my own just before the end. Sth like: *"You've recorded 8/13 ships"*, would be enough. Also maybe you could get some points for recording just 1-2 fields for the ship? Because at the beginning noting any info isn't easy and you get no feedback that you did anything correctly, if you missed any field of the ship.


At the start I definitely needed instruction that you gave to Yopox to know what to do. And to get hang of it I needed combination of pausing, screenshoting and noting on paper. But I quickly noticed that DEST/ORI locations are repeating so it didn't took me long to memorize all of them by their starting letters, and I was able to start doing it real time (without pausing etc). Also I could always get ship codes as they were written in my notepad already. This allowed me to "camp" for the ships, I would be:
1. Waiting as notepad updates and read the ship number there
2. Quickly go to flag tab, find letters of the ship and then add ORI to the end.
3. Look at waters to see what location ship hoisted, read abt 1-2 first letters to recognize name and memorize it.
4. Go back to flags, delete 3 letters, add DEST and hoist flags.
5. Look at ship and memorize DEST location.
6. Go back to flags, delete DEST and append ERVD.
7. Read number and then go to notepad.
8. Write all the memorized info.
9. Quickly switch back to flags and delete all of them to prepare for the next ship. (Maybe some button to reset all the flags, could be added there)
10. Go back to notepad to wait for the next ship.

Technically even without ID in notepad, I could just look at the ship and without much thinking repeat its flag sequence without really decoding it. Sooo maybe in some hard mode you could just make the 4th input field when you need to encode ship id on your own? Yeah after learning a bit game, it gets a lot of easier. But there is a learning curve, as you can read in other comments. Maybe dividing game into levels could fix that? Slower tempo on first levels, faster later. This would also allow you to change up locations every few levels, to keep it fresh.

Some Quality of Life improvements would be also key shortcuts, like **ESC** to turn off tabs, maybe **Z** or **X** to turn on flag tab or notepad, sth like that. I definitely appreciated that I could already copy and paste locations from input fields