This Puzzle Game Is A Tiny Mystery Diorama
141This video has 3 games in it, the game it's titled is the one that appeals to a sense of me that enjoys mystery scenarios but is not that much of a fan of the 100000 word excuse plots that they're usually with.
This video is also how to make use of footage you don't know how to title otherwise.
0:00 Little Locked Rooms
4:05 Little Locked Rooms (intentional failure conversations)
9:02 Betty & Earl
24:08 Colorblind
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2468670/Little_Locked_Rooms/ or https://fishking.itch.io/little-locked-rooms
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1624550/Betty__Earl/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2272310/Colourblind/
Dev provided a key for Betty & Earl.
Thoughts:
- I am looking forward to Little Locked Rooms, as I said, small compact mystery scenarios are awesome, it's like thinking about tricks that are possible with the physical world. The format is most similar to maybe point and click games, and Layton Brothers (or TGAA's Dance of Deduction). I expect that clicking an object will examine it due to prior games, but it's not true for this game, and there should (and probably will be) some UI to address it.
There are some typos, as with anything with text. I hope the dev sees and fixes them :)
- Betty and Earl: I do feel like I've played enough ice mazes in my time, as well as games that involve multi-character control. This game seems to have a LOT of mechanics to try to make it more interesting in each world. Each world's final filter, with the cursed behavior of the monster are pretty cool and builds up anticipation for that moment, but the level-by-level behavior doesn't feel deep enough for me, it would probably have more appeal if I was inexperienced with ice mazes/multi character control.
- Colourblind: This game is made by a content creator who also has a devlog on it https://www.youtube.com/@IcarusoofDev/videos and this game is apparently releasing soon, says September on the store page. Apparently the dev is pretty young too, so it's impressive. It's got a nice monochrome city/gear aesthetic that makes me want to explore it.
The main two things I had issue with was the unsaid key to drop a block, and also the platforming and waiting puzzles. Seems like I've seen a lot of color-combining prism type games recently, and it never feels like the colors matter or are even different relative to each other (as in, these colors don't have special effects, red is not a different effect from green for example).
I am hoping that the game doesn't feel to me like 'effectively, keys and locks' the whole time. I have skimmed enough devlogs to tell that there is indeed an environment built for all the 5 chapters, but not to know what the mechanics are for them. Currently it seems like the actions you can do with blocks are pretty simple - there are not many choices in how to approach it. But imagine a variant where it's like "you can consume red blocks to gain speed (or jump height, or whatever)" that would add more choice immediately.
Short games playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg5Ta3CWcYX4X-lxcjqnig5Do-qXYNBt7
"secret" discord: https://discord.gg/V64JDvbWsf