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Tarm: Can I use a controller?
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amok: I don't know, can you?

OT - congratulations, I will checking it out
Apparently not. You unlearn something new every day.
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Tarm: Can I use a controller?
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adambiser: The next update will have controller support. I also plan to post an updated demo, too, so you'll be able to try that out to make sure your controller works with the game.
Thanks. :)
Post edited April 28, 2016 by Tarm
A puzzle game? Sure, I'll be in. I can also give you a review/feedback, if you like.
Bump.
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adambiser: The next update will have controller support. I also plan to post an updated demo, too, so you'll be able to try that out to make sure your controller works with the game.
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Tarm: Thanks. :)
The new version is up now and includes controller support.
The demo has also been updated to be just like the full version (except only 3 levels), so you can try out the controller with it if you'd like. If you get the chance, let me know whether it works for you or not.

Thanks.

Delaying the drawing for a day..
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Tarm: Thanks. :)
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adambiser: The new version is up now and includes controller support.
The demo has also been updated to be just like the full version (except only 3 levels), so you can try out the controller with it if you'd like. If you get the chance, let me know whether it works for you or not.

Thanks.

Delaying the drawing for a day..
Great!
I'm going to try it this weekend. Kinda thrilled because it looks like I'm going to play a Chip's Challenge with a controller. :)
Hmm, looking it over the post, I see only two entries, well, three if I count zeogold, but why the negative rep? I haven't been so active in the forums lately.
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adambiser: Hmm, looking it over the post, I see only two entries, well, three if I count zeogold, but why the negative rep? I haven't been so active in the forums lately.
Scammers. I call out NES and his buddies regularly, and as a result, he's so upset with me, he takes away 6-12 rep points from me every day because he likes to feel powerful. Kinda pitiful to watch, really.
He has a "list" of sorts. tinyE drops the same amount I do every day, and amrit, apehater, and pimpmonkey have also dropped into the negatives as a result. Rep means nothing on this forum.
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adambiser: Hmm, looking it over the post, I see only two entries, well, three if I count zeogold, but why the negative rep? I haven't been so active in the forums lately.
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zeogold: Scammers. I call out NES and his buddies regularly, and as a result, he's so upset with me, he takes away 6-12 rep points from me every day because he likes to feel powerful. Kinda pitiful to watch, really.
He has a "list" of sorts. tinyE drops the same amount I do every day, and amrit, apehater, and pimpmonkey have also dropped into the negatives as a result. Rep means nothing on this forum.
OK. I had looked and could find anything that led me to think that the negative rep meant anything because I mainly saw puzzle giveaways (hence your title). I didn't even find downrepped posts. I do see that you've lost 6 since I last checked.

So that makes three entries.
Since there were only three posts that I recognized as being "in" by saying they were in, all three received an itch.io key of the game.

If you posted here and had intended for your post to be an entry, let me know.

Thanks to all who checked out the game, those who voted for my games on the GOG wishlist, and those who voted for them on Steam Greenlight. Toxic Terror will be going up on Greenlight soon.
Toxic Terror is now on Steam Greenlight
If you think it's a game you'd like to see on Steam please vote "Yes". Thanks!

Other games on Greenlight:
Kilgazar
Boot Hill Blaster
Alrighty, I DID promise a review, so let's start with the pre-game impressions. Premise seems pretty simple, vague theme put together to fit the game. I recognize a few of the included things as free assets, which isn't bad at all. Rare I see somebody who can actually fit these things into a decent game (I sure as heck can't). The cover art is quite excellent, fine piece of digital art there. The screenshots have a very classic feel to them. Judging from what I'm seeing here, it looks like a sokoban puzzler but with enemies. I can already tell that goo-spitting monster from the water is going to be a major source of headaches.
I'm a touch disappointed with the look of the title character in the screenshots as compared to the cover. It's Swamp Thing in the cover, and then...a mutated green crab in the game? However, I can't really fault you for that, since it's more a matter of personal preference. I also would have liked a bit more backstory than is given, but the game itself might have more.
The soundtrack offered is good so far. I especially like the theme, and hope that'll be used for most of the game. I'm a bit concerned seeing as it's only 5 tracks that it will be enough, but this depends on how long the game is. I like that you include the soundtrack with the purchase.
I do question what the difficulty will be like when you mention the player is "defenseless". With the amount of enemies I'm seeing, I expected a sword or bomb of some sort, or at least a way to trap the enemies. Of course, this will be seen when it comes to gameplay. And I AM the Puzzlemaster, after all, so such tricky situations should be no trouble for me. The difficulty will be something I'm interested in seeing, though.

Pre-play score:
+1 for low price (how fair this price is, I'll see after playing)
+1 for including soundtrack
+1 for controller support
+1 for good soundtrack
+1 for including a demo

-0 for length of soundtrack (it's possible the 5 ones listed on the gamepage aren't all)
-0 for sprite design
+0 for difficulty level (looks like it's gonna be tricky, but I have no idea yet)

-1 for primarily free assets, it visually appears as a game one would expect to find online for free (this may change depending on how well the game is designed)

Overall score pre-game: 6/10, average
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zeogold:
Thanks for your "pre-play" impressions. I appreciate you doing so.

A few responses:
- The soundtrack does contain all music from the game.

- What assets do you recognize as free? The vampires were posted free for any use by Jason Perry who also authored the packs I purchased for the other characters in the game.

- Thanks about the cover art. That in-game monster is a swamp creature, too

- "I expected... at least a way to trap the enemies" - There is. :)

Looking forward to your post-play impressions. :)
Post edited May 06, 2016 by adambiser
Post-play review:

I started off by trying to read the help page. The scrolling thing may look neat, but it goes really slow and on top of that, it states the exact same information from the itch.io game page. I would have preferred if you'd made it just a stationary page you could scroll through instead. Same with the credits. The slow-moving text only served to make me less inclined to read it. On top of that, in the help section, you neglected to list all of the controls. I was really confused when I was on the menu and attempted to use the WSAD keys to scroll around. It took me a minute to realize that you could press the first letter of each option in order to select it (for example, I kept pressing S which brought up the sound options. Q would quit the game and D would bring up the demo.)
As a sidenote, I can't really figure out what the demo does other than take you to the title screen and, if you wait a minute, run through an animation of the computer attempting to complete the first level, failing the first time, succeeding the second time, and then going back to the first one. I think this function would be better named "Title" personally, rather than "Demo" since "Demo" implies you're going to see a bit more than what's shown.

I have to admit, I got frustrated rather quickly. It feels much less like a puzzle game and more like an action/platformer game for one main reason: The enemies.
They seem to be moving fairly randomly until an open pathway could reach me, then they'd fairly quickly start hunting me down. Which makes sense, but gets dangerously unfair when you're attempting to set up a trap that one monster won't walk into, and in the meantime, another monster from a different area is crossing a bridge and is about to hit you. And shame on you for waiting too long for the monster to walk into your trap, because if you're on the level for too many minutes, a giant ghost K.O.s you. Darned if you have enough time to figure out how the boxes should be moved, because chances are, there's something on your tail. Whenever I beat a level, it felt mainly like I'd just gotten lucky rather than like I'd actually "solved" anything. The only chance I had was attempting to gauge how the pattern of movement would change based upon where I was standing. It was usually pretty unpredictable outside of "they're probably going to move in my general direction". It was helpful that the monsters couldn't climb ladders or cross spikes, but not by much.
I was rather disappointed that I couldn't kill them in clever ways, such as squishing them between two boxes or using the lake monster's goo spit on them. I did like some of the ideas of the enemies, however, especially the box-pushing skeleton. Very unique idea and forces you to think a bit more about how you lay your traps. I think that 90% of the frustrations I encountered could have been solved by just making the movements of the monsters predictable rather than random. Randomizing it may add a challenge and boost gameplay time (this game looks like it would normally last about half an hour or so, but was drawn out to 2-3 hours just because I kept getting killed off unexpectedly by an enemy which just happened to move to where I needed to be), but it changes it from a puzzle game to more of an action game without weapons.
It is, of course, entirely possible that I was supposed to trap these monsters in ways I didn't realize, but considering the amount of time I had before the ghost showed up, I figured this was unlikely. Let me know if I'm wrong. I'm assuming you playtested this and found it to be fair before you released it, so I can only guess it's at this difficulty level on purpose. It admittedly felt like there was more logic in some levels than there was for others.

+1 for clever level designs, I liked the methods of trapping monsters sometimes
+1 for clever enemy designs, I especially liked the box-pushing skeletons
+1 for making excellent use of premade assets

-0 for music, got repetitive eventually after spending a long time on one level, but it can obviously be turned off
-0 for lack of fine tuning on levels, I can't tell whether some of them were designed in a tricky manner on purpose or were oversights in development
-0 for help/credits design, didn't really detract from gameplay any since it was fairly obvious how to play even without a help page
+0 for making me memorize the levels and essentially speedrun them, it made me feel like I was getting more out of the game, but was necessary due to that CarrionCrow-level-rage inducing ghost.

-1 for high difficulty due to randomness of enemy movement
-1 for success being based more on luck than on wit due to enemy design

Score: 5/10, better than I expected but feels like either the enemies need to be toned down a bit or the levels should be altered in such a way that the enemies can be trapped in an easier/more apparent manner. It's quite possible I missed what I was "supposed" to do, but I had no time to think because in the back of my mind, I knew that if I wasted too many precious seconds to consider what I was doing instead of going off of reflex/memory/instinct, that blasted ghost would show up and ruin it.
If there WAS an actual pattern to it that I missed, I'd say it's a 6/10.
However, even if it IS an 8/10, it's still worth nothing that the ghost is a sort of "timer" that prevents you from waiting and puzzling it out, so I suspect that most people, due to this, would either:
A. Just start barging through it and hope they get lucky on the monsters
B. Memorize every fine detail of movement (there were a couple moments for me where I knew if a certain monster didn't go a certain way, I was screwed)
C. A combination of both
In any case, they're likelier to get through the level by luck sooner than by solving it the "right" way, so that would reduce it to a 5/10.

Overall score: 5/10.

I may have gotten frustrated at times, but I have to say, I DID enjoy it enough to finish it.

Could benefit from:
- a timer showing how long you have before the ghost arrives, or just remove the ghost altogether
- less random enemy movement
- perhaps a walkthrough of some sort available online which shows just how each level is supposed to be completed
Post edited May 19, 2016 by zeogold
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adambiser: - Thanks about the cover art. That in-game monster is a swamp creature, too
I recognized it was the same creature, I just was a touch disappointed by how the sprite of it looked as compared to the cover art. I mean, of course it's to be expected that the cover art is better, but eh. Just me being picky.
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adambiser: - What assets do you recognize as free? The vampires were posted free for any use by Jason Perry who also authored the packs I purchased for the other characters in the game.
Er, sorry, "free" wasn't the right word. I meant premade. Like, bought/not made specifically for this game. I have the Toxic Sewer asset myself. I bought the Humble gamemaker bundle (or whatever it was called) and I got a coupon for $10 on gamedevfort.com, so I bought it because it was the only thing available for $10 that Humble didn't already include.
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zeogold:
Not a problem. Thanks for clarifying what you meant. That is how I got the Toxic Sewer asset as well. I added some animation to it because it was just too static otherwise.