Puzzle Dots - Test release

Good morning community.

I want to share with you the very latest game I am working on.
This game is being writing in jME3.0 using my own little GUI and physics 2D library for jME3.0.

It is a brain puzzle game where the player draws a solution on a chalkboard in order to solve a puzzle.
The current puzzle is to get 2 balls to collide.

Draw on the chalkboard and see how your drawing becomes alive.

Here is some preview videos of the menu and level editor and some game play.
Enjoy.
Levels Menu:

Editor:

15 Likes

So cool. Since I have the pretty obscure Nvidia Shield tablet, I even have a stylus. Let’s see if you were prepared for that! :stuck_out_tongue:

Hehe, I will inform you when it is release.
This will be a good test.
Hahaha.

I can cheat with my cheap wacom tablet too :smiley:
Looks like fun!

lolz nevermind. I’m gonna send it back before it literally murders me in my sleep.

WHAT???
That is just crazy.

@erlend_sh, don’t you have another android device to test on?

Hi you all.
Puzzle Dots is now available on the play store if you wish to be an Alpha Tester, so please help me if you have an android device.
Any feedback would be much appreciated.
Link to become an alpha tester is here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.bruynhuis.puzzledots

And here is the latest video preview of the game:

5 Likes

Just gonna repost my feedback from our chat here so that there’s less repetition in case others chime in:

Erlend Heggen [12:53]
I noticed that I can play any level I’d like, I don’t have to start on 1

Erlend Heggen [12:53]
and when I complete a level further ahead, all the other ones were marked Done, even though I hadn’t even played them yet

Erlend Heggen [13:04]
And clicking “next” should immediately put you in the next level, not back to level selector

Erlend Heggen [13:08]
The cutoff point is kinda strange

Erlend Heggen [13:09]
I mean when you stretch the line too far, like into the ground

Erlend Heggen [13:09]
The line is sometimes reduced significantly

Erlend Heggen [13:10]
Way past the point where you hit the undrawable area

Erlend Heggen [13:10]
Also the characters should have the same effect on the line as the ground

Erlend Heggen [13:10]
But you can currently draw into them

Erlend Heggen [13:10]
And the line will pop out instead

Erlend Heggen [13:12]
The timer doesn’t have to start until you start drawing something

Erlend Heggen [13:22]
Should probably have a minimum length for a line to get drawn as well

Erlend Heggen [13:23]
Or else you end up with silly misclicks sometimes

Erlend Heggen [13:23]
Now on to the good

Erlend Heggen [13:23]
I think you’ve got a really fun game on your hands here!

Erlend Heggen [13:23]
Works great with a stylus too :grin:

Erlend Heggen [13:23]
Perhaps too great, I dunno

Erlend Heggen [13:24]
I certainly preferred it

Erlend Heggen [13:24]
Gotta test more with just fingers later, heh

Erlend Heggen [13:24]
The levels were pretty good

Erlend Heggen [13:24]
Maybe too many of them

Erlend Heggen [13:25]
At least without some other gimmicks added (like angry birds with its gradual new bird types)

Erlend Heggen [13:25]
The last levels are hard! Which is good

Erlend Heggen [13:27]
Well, only level 69 has me stumped so far

Erlend Heggen [13:28]
70 wasnt too hard. Good level though

Erlend Heggen [13:28]13:28
I from maybe lvl 20 to 60 to see what the later stage was liek

I assume you’re planning to pretty up the grey ground and stuff a bit?

Erlend Heggen [14:11]
it should probably be in the same style as the yellow lines, just a different, neutral color

everything in your game should look like it was drawn with chalk

Erlend Heggen [14:12]14:12
but you can vary the line thickness, e.g. your main characters could still be pretty sharp

@erlend_sh, thanks I wanted to do that to but got busy at work.
:smile:

Tested on an “HTC One S” with Cyanogenmod 10.2 (Android 4.3.1)
http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_s-4574.php

This is one of the few games that embrace the mobile platform.
Also love that music. Reminds me of cut the rope a lot!

Here is my feedback:

  1. I hadn’t watched your trailer. In the first moment, I had NO idea what to do. When you tap the screen, they just fall.
  2. When I select a level in the menu, I would like it to close when I click outside of the paper.
  3. Back-Button position: in the menus it’s in the bottom left, ingame it’s in the top left
  4. Please give me time to think, before I act :slight_smile: I would prefer the timer to start from my first draw.
  5. This is a game where you can easily give stars or so for time performance.
  6. Woah! I can swipe right in the level selection? I just found that out by accident! I would add a page indicator or scrollbar to the bottom (like this http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/33/32638/thumb_300x150/mzl.xntozadz.png)
  7. the transition time between level pages takes very long

Wow, thanks @zanval this is very good feedback and I really really appreciate it a lot.
I am currently working on getting those bugs out of the way and give you guys a new version.

I really hope this Puzzle Dots will succeed as a game on the playstore and who knows maybe on istore as well.

Definitely stick to it and polish that game. I really enjoyed it. And I only ever enjoyed about 5 games on mobile. Ever. I will gladly test anything you give me ^^

Hey, I just gave @eashi my phone and … well, he was hooked!

We noticed could release it for PC as well.
Actually flash portals would probably love it, but luckily it isn’t slow flash.

  1. It’s hard drawing where you cannot see, because your finger is blocking sight :frowning: Give us an option to offset the drawing, so we draw above the finger. This must be tested with levels with require you to draw close to the border of the level/screen!
  2. The goal is unclear at first. You could make a “self-playing” level to demonstrate the game’s goal.
  3. Level 3 is more advanced than you think. And/or we are noobs. Drawing a line/curve to accelerate the smiley is not too easy with a finger
  4. The player does also not know that he can draw at first. This needs to be introduced in a very simple way (casuals).
  5. Start the timer when you start drawing. We don’t have enough time to use our brains.
  6. The fence is a good mechanic, it’s introduction is great.
  7. Introduction of the lever game mechanic was good.
  8. When you fail and press reload, sometimes the restart menu opens after the level was reloaded.
  9. Do you have metrics? You could probably use the data on how we solve the problems.
  10. Do you want to have a score? What will it be? Line length, time?
  11. @eashi first noticed in level 10, that he could move the second smiley. You could use this as a challenge or generally limit the interaction to one of the smileys at first.
  12. Level 40 was the first level which required him to really move both smileys (to activate the lever)
  13. Characters colliding with levers results in wierd situations sometimes. The lever goes away but the smiley was halted. Maybe you could experiment with levers being triggers (non-blocking)
  14. “Next” button doesn’t work. It should directly launch the next level and not go to the level selection.
  15. Why do we need to click on a level two times to start it? At the moment there is no extra info there.
  16. If you need german localization, contact us via PM ^^
  17. Make Options to have two blue or two pink smileys. Insert gender discussion here :stuck_out_tongue:

Performance Feedback: (the HTC One S is comparable to a Galaxy S3)

  1. When Colliders are in the green energy-walls the fps drops to the floor
  • When “trapping” loose platforms, the FPS drops heavily
  • It ate my battery. I had to give him my charger. :smiley: He is playing ALL THE LEVELS.
  • Performance becomes an issue in later levels (with many colliders, energy-walls etc)

Watched the video… really neat concept. Wish I’d thought of it. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Tested on LG G3, working as intended. (tested up to level 54)
The good:
General awesomeness. I like how each level has an infinite number of solutions, from intented to completely bypassing the puzzle (what I often do haha). I was surprised with the quantity of levels, since frankly I was expecting like 20 or so :stuck_out_tongue:
The bad:
I agree with @zanval on not seeing the drawing because my finger is in the way, but It’s managable. What I was most bothered by was that sometimes the line didn’t follow my input, but cut before the end/didn’t register beginning although sometimes it also worked perfectly so I have no idea what’s going on. There are also some noticable framedrops when physics is under more stress, but I guess that’s to be expected based on the collision precision.

All and all I’d say this is a really interesting and innovative idea. If I were you I’d choose a more simplistic and clean art style, that would make it seem more like an app and less of a flash game, but that’s just my personal preference.

Really nice! I love it. Things I would change:
Style (it is ok but as MoffKalast I like cleaner styles more), Next button etc. as other pointed out, sometimes when I draw too fast, the line does not get recognized.

Besides of that: great, it is one of these games you cannot stop to play because the idea is simple but genius.

Hey guys and thanks for all the input I will surely take everything I heard here into account.
I am very excited about this game and I am planning to give you all a level editor with the next release to make me some awesome levels and who knows they might just end up in the game.

Performance optimization is really a headache at the momentum and I already have a lot of optimization in the game.
Saying that I really need to make it even better.

Time will tell.

I’ve tested it this morning and it’s really great. Reminds me of “crayon physics”.
Only thing that could be enhanced IMO is that the “Next” button actually goes to the next stage without getting the user back to the levels screen.
Other than that , it’s very polished, and fun.
Nice work, as always :wink:

Thanks @nehon.
If it wasn’t for the jME contributors team I would not have been able to do this.
Thanks for keeping jME going.
:smiley:

I noticed my phone started overheating / getting slow in later levels… I am guessing because using the GPU for a long time at 60 fps does it. Maybe it should automatically slow down when nothing is happening? Not sure …