T w e n t y S i d e d
Have you been following the development of this game? Well, I’ve managed to get the thing on Stream Greenlight. If you’d like to see Pseudoku on Steam, then please vote for it.
Link (YouTube) |
I was going to have a longer post about it this week, but I’ve been goofing off recently and have fallen behind on my work. Composing this tune and editing this minute and a half trailer is all I managed to get done.
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Just for you went through the hassle of resetting my password, using the “this is a new browser” code, and then logged in to vote yes.
You should feel extra special I jumped through those 2 minutes worth of hoops.
;)
There’s a phone-app for Steam, for Android and iOS. Slightly less hassle to deal with access from there than going to your email. :)
But can you access Greenlight on the app? I couldn’t find it.. (on Android here)
Possibly not, but it should at least handle the 2-factor auth, when you log in to Greenlight on a different computer / incognito browser session.
I actually haven’t authed it with my phone number, because I don’t need Valve tightly integrating themselves into my cell phone. The emails work just fine, and I’m pretty sure Google knows how to handle email auth. :)
Ahh, I see, you were referring to using the app for two-factor auth, not using the app to vote on Greenlight..
I’m using the app for verification, it is indeed very convenient if you are fine with giving your phone nr. to Valve.
Nearly completed all the puzzles from the last build (curious how you’ll handle hotkeys for tiles >10). So far, I felt forced to make a guess only once.
I’ll be sure to vote when I get home.
I’d probably have solved them all if the previous build saved my progress on later levels. Alas.
Well, it was surprisingly difficult to get there through the Steam client, they’ve really pushed Greenlight out of easy view since it was released. Hidden under the Community tab with no connection from Store, and by default it only shows (and permits searches upon) a queue of 10 selections the algorithm expects you to like.
Your current rival on my end is Microsoft Sudoku, the free Xbox/Windows Store app. It also does some puzzles with shapes and colors instead of straight numbers, and it also does unconventional boards; they’re always 9×9, but the interior blocks aren’t always 3×3, often being uneven scattered shapes. It relies on modal clicks to place tiles; there’s a 3×3 off to the side from which you select which tile your click is currently placing (which I believe works with numpad, and also grays out tiles that have been fully slotted on the board). This generalizes well to making notes; your tiles might be more intuitive, but they leave no mechanism for marking which tiles could possibly fit into a given square, important for people making the jump to Hidden Twins-style techniques even if your highlighting relevant tiles helps for lower difficulty. They also do daily challenges (a board which might be at a higher difficulty level than you usually play, but you only need to solve a few rows/columns/blocks to complete the challenge) and give points which accumulate through the month to give you medals.
The infinite puzzle generator seems a near-must to get very far with this.
I play a lot of 0h n0. It’s Sukoku-like, and also self-generating.
Microsoft Sudoku, the free …app
there’s your biggest problem: even with an infinite puzzle generator, anything over a buck a big ask for this kind of game :/
There are plenty of solitaire games being sold.And recently,I even saw a minesweeper on steam.So its not that much of a problem.
Microsoft Sudoku: the subscription app that comes installed with Windows 10 and no one actually paid for.
No one noticed when it was quietly discontinued and vanished from existence because it was a subscription app with built-in DRM and (unlike, say, bootleg copies of Wordstar for the Apple II you can still find on the Internet) didn’t exist outside of the system that was continuing it’s existence.
Did I make this up? Would you even know for certain if I did? This is why I don’t support subscriptions for software of any kind.
(I tolerate Netflix and other non-interactive media subscription solutions because it’s cheaper to stream mainstream entertainment than to buy discs and doesn’t take up HD space. I do buy as much physical media and non-DRM downloads as I can afford, though. Physical media lasts as long as I care for it. Apps exist only as long as someone, who doesn’t care about your needs, doesn’t pull the plug on the server.)
EDIT: Wow I need coffee. I didn’t intend that to turn into a rant.
There’s no link to the tune.
Oh nevermind… It’s in the trailer.
Just wanted to let you know it seems that if you have embedded a video on a post then on the home page it seems to shift all the visible embedded videos up by one video, effectively not showing the latest one. Don’t think it happens all the time I visit the page, but it’s pretty frequent, and it’s been happening for at least a couple of months now. Here are some pictures (the huge black borders are because I zoomed out to take the screenshot):
http://imgur.com/a/SW7Lh
Just finished the last puzzle in the currently-available Alpha build. Good stuff, except I’ve noticed several patterning issues that make the puzzles significantly easier to solve. (This is in addition to the fact that merely having the tiles on the side makes it easier because it tells you the number of remaining tiles of each type.)
I put annotated screenshots to explain the problem in an Imgur album (it’s only 4 images), which you can find here: https://imgur.com/a/Lkgsz
Also: The alpha build shows greyed out boxes that I can’t click on for everything past the third board on most of the difficulty settings. I can, however, get to the boards by playing through from the 3rd. But as soon as I go back to the meny, any of that is lost.
That’s an interesting point. It suggests the possibility of an Advanced mode, where instead of a bunch of individual tiles, there is a single tile for each symbol that acts like an infinitely-replenishing stack, and you just drag one off the top. If you drag a tile off of the playfield and drop it, it vanishes.
Agreed. And let’s hope that Shamus takes notice, too. I should add that, as I played through the Alpha build, I had one board that had a single extra tile, so there’s another way to make it a bit harder without resorting to the infinite stack, and he seems to have already partially implemented it, though the infinite stack is a bigger challenge than just one or two extra tiles.
Where can I collect my “I voted” button?
Here you go. I’ve got an extra. *presents sticker*
Oh, right, we don’t have buttons here, sorry. Will a sticker with a Steam logo do?
[Er… that might imply that I voted twice. I didn’t, just to be clear.]
I haven’t checked, just make sure I’d say to take down the old versions of the game, if you intend on selling it.
Any case, I’ll be picking up the game, not usually into puzzle games but after my time with the alpha I liked it and it gives me an excuse to support you and your site; especially since my favorite articles of yours are the game dev projects.
Best of luck making the infinite puzzle generator, I do think that’s prolly the safest way to increase sales substantively
Shamus, are you aware that Steam are going to be cancelling Greenlight, and replacing it with a new system called Steam Direct, which will have an up-front listing fee of between $100 and $5000 (has not yet been finalised)?
They have a blog post about it here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/558846854614253751
He was talking about this in the comments of the last post on this game (or maybe it was in the post itself), so yeah, he knows. He decided against waiting for the new system with its unknown risk/investment IIRC, but you should check the previous post in this series to see exactly what he said
Ta.
Voted! Hope you can get it greenlit :)
that a very fine tune you made! you usually seems to look down on your musical skills, but to be able to make a fitting music for a trailer is quite a feat.
will write a bit of article on the pricing of your games ? I suppose it will be a very different process than for good robots (which was a bit overpriced in my opinion).
I was going to vote for Pseudoky to be released on Steam. Not because I enjoy puzzle games, but because I respect you and want you to succeed. Except that my client keeps freezing every time I open the page for the game, meaning that I cannot vote for it. Irritating.
My first impression: It’s very grey. The background, the grid, they could do with some more colour. And sparkles when you win. Definitely reward that lizard brain with dopamine.
Definitely better than the Good Robot trailer. I think adding a tiny bit of animated tracking to the text would help.