Feedback Request: The Putty Puzzle

[kevglass]

This is my current project, The Putty Puzzle. I'm hoping to make it interesting enough to make money from google ad revenue and/or by selling it to web games portals.

It's been in a development a few weeks now and should be pick up and playable if a little taxing at times. You're need Java 1.5+ to play. All the levels are possible to complete and I don't know of any bugs (I'm sure there are plenty lurking). I'm still developing and uploading to the following site so please excuse if bugs turn up out of the blue.

Screenshots:


http://www.cokeandcode.com/demos/putty3/putty10.png
http://www.cokeandcode.com/demos/putty3/putty11.png
http://www.cokeandcode.com/demos/putty3/putty12.png

Game:

http://www.cokeandcode.com/demos/put...et2/putty.html

I'm interested in all feedback, but especially what I can do to make it more appealing to web game portals who might pay for it. I'd also be really interested in suggestions to make the control system more fluid.

Thanks in advance for any time,

Cheers,

Kev

[oNyx]

It's probably worth mentioning that Putty already got quite a bit of overly positive press:

http://kotaku.com/5009509/saturday-t...r-putty-puzzle
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1763
http://www.bright.nl/game-van-de-week-the-putty-puzzle
http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2008/...ty_puzzle.html

I'm really envious.

Seeing it on some portals such as Arcade Town would be great.

[Maupin]

Nice puzzle game. I'm currently stuck on the Snooker level. One annoyance is that right-clicking (in Firefox, at least) causes the browser context menu to pop up and the only way to get rid of it is to click somewhere on the page outside of the game.

It would be nice if the putty morph box would shrink/redraw if you mouse back over previous cells.

[AlexWeldon]

It's kind of fun, but once you have more than two blocks in your putty, it's not always easy to figure out which block you have to click on to get the shape you want. It would be nice if you could just move any non-linking piece to any spot adjacent to another piece. E.g.:


*
AXXXB

Here you can click A or B, but you can't move any of the Xs because they hold the putty together.

If you click B, and then click the starred spot, you get this:


X
XXXX

[ChrisP]

I'm really envious.

Me too.

I was stuck at the "tata greenie" level until I stumbled onto the fact that you can combine white and yellow - I didn't think this was possible since you can't combine other colours (I think?).

Some things I think would improve it:

* Easier controls. Let me be sloppy. (I know you know but just re-iterating the point...)

* Graphics: Less use of gradients, flat-colour tiles, and square things. What if the putty was round and blobby instead of having perfectly straight edges? Clouds in the background. Animations; moving arrow belts on the conveyors, goal spots with animated arrows, slow-moving background clouds, eyes that blink and look around (it would be cute to have the eyes follow the mouse cursor when it's nearby, for instance). More attractive colours. The crumbling blocks don't look crumbly; it's fine as an iconic representation but it's visually boring, and the "crumble overlay" effect looks very flat, not 3D at all. Maybe crumble the edges and stick some cracks through it.

* The music is OK but irritating after 15 minutes or so. Please add a way to disable it from within a level; I resorted to turning my speakers off so I wouldn't lose my progress.

[Maupin]

I was stuck at the "tata greenie" level until I stumbled onto the fact that you can combine white and yellow - I didn't think this was possible since you can't combine other colours (I think?).

Argh. So that's the solution. I was going to ask about that since I was puzzling over that level for at least an hour last night. If you ask me that's a bit of a contrived puzzle since it breaks the rules you've already given the player...

[LiquidAsh]

Great game! I just played through all but the last three levels. One thing I found a bit frusterating was that mouse overs lock the direction my putty is set to move (unless I right click to cancel). It would be really nice, if moving the mouse back over a previous move cell would cancel later move targets.

I hope that makes sense. I enjoyed the game, and hope it does very well for you.

[kevglass]

Thanks for the feedback

One annoyance is that right-clicking (in Firefox, at least) causes the browser context menu to pop up

Thats wierd, which version of FF? It'll be a java issue of course but I guess one I'll have to fiddle my way round.

It would be nice if the putty morph box would shrink/redraw if you mouse back over previous cells.

This one has come up a lot, I'll definitely take a look at it.

flat-colour tiles, and square things. What if the putty was round and blobby instead of having perfectly straight edges?

The rest of visual updates make lots of sense to me but this one confused me. The square flat style was intentional. I was hoping it kept things easier to see and understand while still looking reasonably polished.

If you ask me that's a bit of a contrived puzzle since it breaks the rules you've already given the player..

Heh! Every feature thats added extend the rules slightly. Interestingly (ok maybe only to me), each different group of people I've seen playing the game has got stuck with a different feature/rule change as the game's gone on. It seems most people eventually by hook or by crook learn how to beat it though.

So far, levels are up to "medium" difficulty. Hope this isn't too much.

Thanks again,

Kev

[ChrisP]

The rest of visual updates make lots of sense to me but this one confused me. The square flat style was intentional. I was hoping it kept things easier to see and understand while still looking reasonably polished.

Up to you of course, but I didn't mean messy necessarily. You can still keep your stark, clean look without needing square corners. Picture spheres and cylinders; a putty tile by itself is a perfect sphere. A tile with neighbours to the left and right is a horizontal cylinder. A tile with a single neighbour on its right is the left half of a sphere but with a cylinder replacing the right half. (i.e. The cylinder is capped by a hemisphere.) And so on.

Heh! Every feature thats added extend the rules slightly. Interestingly (ok maybe only to me), each different group of people I've seen playing the game has got stuck with a different feature/rule change as the game's gone on. It seems most people eventually by hook or by crook learn how to beat it though.

Extensions are fine. Changes are not. A "white block" doesn't look like enough of a new thing; after all, we've had differently-coloured blocks come in throughout the game so far, why would a white block be any different? It doesn't set itself apart, so it's confusing when it behaves differently. Especially when you don't tell the player and expect him to work it out by himself.

Perhaps you could mark it more distinctively. Or just get rid of it entirely and replace it with yellow in that puzzle, since it's not necessary to be able to combine it with the other colour.

[kevglass]

The white putty seems to have been a bit of cruncher for everyone, a suggestion I had elsewhere was to make it more distinctive from the others:



So it's now transparent, hopefully indicating it's worth playing around with a bit

Kev

[kevglass]

Just put up a new version with a full level set, some new features and a bunch of bug fixes (maybe even some new bugs). I looks like it'll just be freeware from my site, maybe get some ad revenue.

Kev