Thanks for playing!

Cosmologicon on 2019/04/14 05:42 of Universe Factory 27

Thank you to everyone who tried the game! Sorry if it didn't work for you. I had one pygame issue and one Python 2/3 urllib compatibility issue. I'll make a note of them for next time.

This is my first solo game with any sort of user-submitted content. I was hesitant at first, but I realized soon that I had to, because the gameplay isn't nearly as interesting as looking at the finished result. In the end the gallery really makes the game IMHO. My major concern was security. I didn't trust myself to write a foolproof check against faulty uploads, so I decided that I would be manually approving designs before sending them to players. This turned out okay, but I should have made it so that you can at least see your own designs in the gallery before they're approved.

I expected quite a low amount of content submitted and that's what I got. There are currently 40 designs in the gallery, 19 of which were made by me for the starting version. The other 21 were created by about 4 people, the earliest of which was six days into judging. Anyone who played up to that point only saw the designs I made. I tried to make it as easy to share as possible, but I didn't want to require it.

The main mechanic - placing shapes to enclose dots distributed throughout the snowflake - presented a design challenge. I like it except that it's too hard. Easy mode - which places the dots in the area you control - was a very late addition to the game, like in the last 4 hours. I came very close to making it the default but decided against it. It's a little too easy, but that's not the problem. The problem is that it lets you ignore that you're designing a snowflake altogether. I wanted players to think about the symmetry as they go along. When I play tested on easy mode, I felt much less of a connection between my actions and the finished design. I always prefer the theme to relate to the core mechanic rather than anything superficial, and that's what decided me in the end. Some way to make it easier without sacrificing this connection would be ideal. (Shout-out to Tee whose feedback nailed this issue exactly.)

Thanks to mauve for running things again! You've really done a great job with the competition! I especially liked the ratings dashboard. Thank you for that!