Comments on: Turnament (Aaron Steed, for Nitrome)

By: Free PC Game Reviews

Free PC Game Reviews — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 21:55:14 +0000

A simple concept used creatively to create a wonderful and original game.

By: Istur

Istur — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 15:25:21 +0000

i really like this game!

By: Buttons

Buttons — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 04:14:24 +0000

Man, this 50×50 series is the best thing that’s happened to Nitrome. The length is perfect and the level design is really clever. Gave me Zaga-33 flashbacks.

By: nobody

nobody — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 02:07:20 +0000

Ah, got it. Thanks for clarifying. It’s neat Nitrome is letting you do these at all (all three have been great!), so I guess that’s the trade-off…

(If a review comment says they don’t know how to kill things, my guess is what they really mean is that they don’t know how to predict when they’ll end up being killed? But figuring out that behavior is the essence of the puzzle here, so what can you do. You’re probably lucky those testers didn’t make it to the spiders.)

By: st33d

st33d — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 23:07:21 +0000

Correct.

A large skill gap was evident in testing. People who play roguelikes or DROD find the game opens too slow and slows the pace even further to illustrate puzzles. The rest of the world can barely keep up with the speed the game changes and adds rules.

Numerous review comments have come up where people don’t understand how to kill things, even though I’ve forced them to.

By: Zaphos

Zaphos — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:41:11 +0000

Really like this one, nice job st33d.

By: nobody

nobody — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 21:16:19 +0000

I’m sure you’ve thought this through much more so than I, but on the surface that sounds a bit hasty, no? For instance, couldn’t both of those wait times be interruptable? Or is the concern there that some players who need the hint might end up inadvertently interrupting the camera animation?

By: st33d

st33d — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 20:10:06 +0000

That’s what you’re stuck with if the real estate is smaller than the puzzle I’m afraid. The game needs to be playable by people with the attention spans of children.

The best solution is to simply make a bigger game with puzzles that fit nicely on the screen to be appraised in one look. That would be a nice project to make.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:19:17 +0000

Enjoyed this, but when repeatedly trying puzzles the wait to respawn and for switch pushing effects grated on me.

By: nobody

nobody — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 15:20:57 +0000

Make sure to collect all the coins on each level –and go upward to the left before going rightward to the king in the final level — as there’s an extra section introducing a new game mechanic if you do.

(And it looks like you can go back and visit earlier sections if you’ve missed anything, though the level-select interface is a bit cryptic.)