ThemsAllTook
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 244
Registered: 06-23-2014
IP: Logged

Hi DROD folks! I'm still around, and since October, I've been working hard on a new puzzle game. DROD players should feel right at home, as this draws a fair bit of inspiration from it - there's turn-based fighting, room clearing, and a rich set of mechanics with a lot of intricate interactions. Also, you get to play as a ferret!



The game will release on May 17th. There's a substantial main puzzle campaign, and a full-featured level editor.

If you're interested, you can wishlist it on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2880750/Leafs_Odyssey/

Jordthro
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 101
Registered: 07-22-2012
IP: Logged

Thanks for posting, Alex! Really looking forward to playing this. Good luck with your release.

____________________________
105th Skywatcher

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[Last edited by Jordthro at 04-26-2024 01:40 AM]

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1917
Registered: 12-09-2004
IP: Logged

very cool!

Looking forward to more puzzling fun.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5106
Registered: 02-04-2003
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Wow, looks neat!

Looking forward to the odyssey. Good luck with the release.

Wishlisted!

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

ThemsAllTook
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 244
Registered: 06-23-2014
IP: Logged

Game is out now! Available both on Steam and itch.io:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2880750/Leafs_Odyssey/
https://themsalltook.itch.io/leafs-odyssey

Ezlo
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1224
Registered: 01-08-2006
IP: Logged

Very much enjoying this so far! So many little differences that make the puzzles so much different from DROD, it's funny to be so reminded of it while still having to think in completely new ways. Enemy facing being important is taking a bit for my brain to work around. It'll be a bit before I can manipulate a winged serpent with the same confidence I would a roach.

Congrats on release! Here's hoping for a successful one with many sales and custom levels in the future.

The one thing I'd add, as I said on my steam community post, grid lines would be super useful, especially in the snowy biome I'm finding it very difficult to line things up against the white.

Also, in a month full of great puzzle games (Animal Well, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Isles of Sea and Sky, amongst others) this has been the best surprise and my favorite game of the bunch so far.

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[Last edited by Ezlo at 05-18-2024 01:42 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5106
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

I was excited to purchase this on Steam as soon as it came out!

Played through dozens of rooms so far and have appreciated and enjoyed every moment of it. Lots of ahas and pleasant surprises all along the way as new puzzle elements and game features made themselves known.

This game grabbed my attention away from "I Wanna Lockpick!", which incidentally I'd highly recommend Alex jump into for a Let's Play.

Veteran DROD players will feel right at home here. Leaf's Odyssey gives me a vibe of a Smitemaster's Selection that goes in a new direction with fun novel puzzley elements. Also, I get the sense there's a ton of content in here.

I love all the room design I've seen so far and how the areas fit together as a world map. It's cool to tackle a few rooms that follow a thematic progression and it feels good to be rewarded with a key at the end. Feels well polished and I can see how a lot of thought went into it.

I like the Journal feature, which ensures the player is clear on how each enemy interacts with the environment. I acknowledge this information is really important for this kind of game, and I like how the information is just right there.

I like the affordance of how clicking on the room clear gates highlights the enemies you need to finish off in order for them to open. I haven't needed it, but why not make this explicit?

Difficulty curve feels pretty smooth in ramping up so far. These puzzles don't do much to hold your hand, but they're designed well. Veteran stepping puzzle gamers will likely catch subtle clues for things they need to pay attention to, but none of the solutions have felt obvious to me, which I liked. If you're up to the challenge, you will feel oh, so clever each time you solve a room. Thank you, Alex!

Progress so far:


Love the enemy types and their mechanics. It feels rather intuitive. Particular impressions:


____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 05-23-2024 02:46 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2806
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Decided to record my first impressions. Here's the first episode, no schedule for these. I won't post each episode here.



EDIT: Unfortunately some technical issues with my recording setup (mostly my computer isn't powerful enough) means I won't be recording my playing of this and I'll do it silently on my own.

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[Last edited by kieranmillar at 05-19-2024 02:51 PM]

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3642
Registered: 10-06-2005
IP: Logged

It looks like ThemsAllTook has started his own "developer's commentary" of the game, focusing on how the puzzles were created, what they are trying to teach, and why the rooms are organized the way they are, plus some development anecdotes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJBDNP6u-wg&list=PLBk6-z6v3pDI4OZ2VIfIvgn0wrJdUTQSo&index=1

I've also started my own Let's Play of the game, focusing on the good old usual "how to analyze a room and figure it out, and discussing strategies for how to beat a tricky room or un-stuck yourself":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVO8RMfH0rw&list=PLPJnHh-qd0aB-6ClYO6PTPM0Q5WCdwQkP&index=1

...

Finally, did you notice there's a Level Editor for the game too? In case the main campaign somehow wasn't enough, the lifetime of this game is going to be pretty long if people can start making tricky usermade campaigns for it!

____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):

Kalin
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 213
Registered: 01-25-2016
IP: Logged

Will the dev commentary go into tile rendering? I want to know how you got rounded corners on different types of floor tiles (like around the waypoint). Are floor tiles allowed on multiple map layers, or is something complicated going on?

____________________________
he/him
~170th Skywatcher

ThemsAllTook
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 244
Registered: 06-23-2014
IP: Logged

The initial commentary series is mostly focused on level design, but I'll probably talk about more technical aspects at some point. For the tile rendering for rounded corners and stuff... Yeah, there's actually a lot to it. I implemented and discarded two entire auto-tiling systems before finally coming up with one that seemed to do the job. I'll try to make sure to remember to talk about it in detail at some point!

Bombadil
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 522
Registered: 06-01-2005
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I'm really enjoying it so far! Difficulty curve seems quite well tuned. I got a bit stuck on some puzzles, but have managed to continue to make progress eventually.

Loving the aesthetics and the fact that the whole thing is 3 MB. Was keeping the size small some sort of self-imposed challenge on your part?

ThemsAllTook
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 244
Registered: 06-23-2014
IP: Logged

Yup! I find size optimization a lot of fun, and the underlying technology I used to build the game allows me to squeeze it down pretty tight. The main big thing is that all of the sounds and music are in a custom format that gets synthesized at runtime, so no wave data at all needs to be stored anywhere in the game - the entire 30+ minute soundtrack is only about 72 KB of data files. The puzzle data is a bit heftier at 433 KB altogether, graphics are somewhere around 200 KB, and the rest is code and miscellaneous supporting data.

In the age of 100+GB video games, I like to do my part to be sure I'm making good use of your hard drive space.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2806
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Just beat this fully. Great game, I highly recommend it!

It was more difficult than I had expected it to be, having played DROD for a long time I thought I'd breeze through it, but nope, this was full to the brim with really solid puzzles from the get-go. The quality was consistently really high and there was no filler.

The tiny element selection was also a surprise but you did really well with making them all fill a lot of different roles and there was lots of interplay between them. Making the roach-equivalent a flying enemy was a good choice too. It's really cool how much you managed to do with just them in the first dungeon.

Allowing pressure plates and some other floor-based elements to sit on top of others was a great idea. I was surprised by how much mileage came out of toggle floors.

My favourite element was probably the Angry Eye. I think the lamest element was the multi-push block, I did a count and they only showed up in 4 rooms, and two of those rooms weren't even real puzzles? A bit of a waste of time.

I think the only room I actively disliked was Parallel Roads (6, -3, 0). Seemed like you had a cool setup with the slug on the pressure plates making a kind of moving platform but the puzzle that came out of it felt like a magic move sequence mess.

List of favourite rooms by area:


Slowest solves according to end game stats (which is a cool feature btw):


Minor gripes:
- I wish the world map cared more about continuity between adjacent rooms and macro decoration. Each area is clearly styled differently but the borders between areas are just a straight jump from one thing to another. The river weaving between Angry Eye canyon and Block Hills is cool, I hoped the map would be more like that.
- I really enjoyed the freedom in the early game to tackle sections of each area to get one of three keys, it opened up a lot to work on at once. But in the second half of the game each area was a straight corridor, so you were more likely to just get totally stonewalled when a puzzle stumped you, less others to work on while you take a break from a hard puzzle.

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[Last edited by kieranmillar at 05-25-2024 03:18 PM]

Ezlo
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1224
Registered: 01-08-2006
IP: Logged

File: leaferror.png (37 KB)
Downloaded 15 times.
License: Public Domain

I wish I could find a way to reproduce this bug but I've tried several times and after I closed the game and reopened it I wasn't able to do it again. For some reason in High Ground I Pressed undo and somehow created a game state that shouldn't be possible? The bombbug replaced with the Flying Serpent, a monsterblock where there was none before? If I reset the room it went back to normal but if I continued to press undo it would revert back to that weird setup. If it happens again I'll try to document it better but it happened at 2am last night and I wasn't in the best frame of mind to solve puzzles let alone bug hunt.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5106
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

I need a hint on Assembly Hall.

I only see a couple naive directed paths to reach the lower three statues, and from there, and I can only defeat one statue before getting stuck. Wondering where the diagonal movement controls are

...and Cliffside View

Assuming I need to get the snakes onto the pressure plates, but how to get any distance from them?

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 05-25-2024 08:47 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2806
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

mrimer wrote:
I need a hint on Assembly Hall.

I only see a couple naive directed paths to reach the lower three statues, and from there, and I can only defeat one statue before getting stuck. Wondering where the diagonal movement controls are

mrimer wrote: ...and Cliffside View

Assuming I need to get the snakes onto the pressure plates, but how to get any distance from them?

ThemsAllTook
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 244
Registered: 06-23-2014
IP: Logged

Ezlo wrote:
I wish I could find a way to reproduce this bug but I've tried several times and after I closed the game and reopened it I wasn't able to do it again. For some reason in High Ground I Pressed undo and somehow created a game state that shouldn't be possible? The bombbug replaced with the Flying Serpent, a monsterblock where there was none before? If I reset the room it went back to normal but if I continued to press undo it would revert back to that weird setup. If it happens again I'll try to document it better but it happened at 2am last night and I wasn't in the best frame of mind to solve puzzles let alone bug hunt.

WHOA! That's a new one to me, and I can't even begin to imagine how it could happen, other than some sort of save file corruption. If you remember, did you happen to have exited the game while inside this room, and only see the bug right after relaunching?

Some Assembly Hall hints:



Some Cliffside View hints:

disoriented
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2394
Registered: 08-07-2007
IP: Logged

You should play this hold game.

____________________________
34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

Ezlo
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1224
Registered: 01-08-2006
IP: Logged

ThemsAllTook wrote:
WHOA! That's a new one to me, and I can't even begin to imagine how it could happen, other than some sort of save file corruption. If you remember, did you happen to have exited the game while inside this room, and only see the bug right after relaunching?

That's exactly right, I had left that room to come back to it later and this happened just as I started undoing previous actions from the previous time I closed out. I actually still haven't left that room incase that turned out to be relevant and my save data might be useful.

ThemsAllTook
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 244
Registered: 06-23-2014
IP: Logged

Ezlo wrote:
That's exactly right, I had left that room to come back to it later and this happened just as I started undoing previous actions from the previous time I closed out. I actually still haven't left that room incase that turned out to be relevant and my save data might be useful.

OK, that's super helpful and gives me a line of investigation. If you happen to be able to export your player profile (from the Player Data screen accessible on the main menu) and attach it here, it would also help me debug. Thanks for the report!

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5106
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thank you for the hints!

It was funny. I wasn't at all getting how those hints helped me for Assembly Hall, but it finally dawned on me. Amazing puzzle!

For the other, I just needed to internalize better how snakes move.

I've progressed a good ways and am on to what I'm considering the four challenge areas. Onlookers is stumping me so far

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 06-11-2024 08:46 PM]

Ezlo
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1224
Registered: 01-08-2006
IP: Logged

File: CitrusGremlin (197.4 KB)
Downloaded 16 times.
License: Public Domain

ThemsAllTook wrote:
OK, that's super helpful and gives me a line of investigation. If you happen to be able to export your player profile (from the Player Data screen accessible on the main menu) and attach it here, it would also help me debug. Thanks for the report!

ALright, exported it. Changed it's name since I didn't want my legal name here. Also I did open and close the game a few times since trying to reproduce the glitch but I always kept to this same room. Hopefully you can find something!

Illusionist
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 172
Registered: 05-27-2020
IP: Logged

It's wonderful to see people grow. Thank you Alex for you game, I will check it out.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2806
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

File: grin_and_ferret.world (37.8 KB)
Downloaded 18 times.
License: Public Domain

While playing through the main levels I had some ideas, so I had to go ahead and make them in the editor.

Here's a short 8 puzzle world called "Grin and Ferret". Difficulty is all over the place.

Illusionist
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 172
Registered: 05-27-2020
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kieranmillar wrote:
While playing through the main levels I had some ideas, so I had to go ahead and make them in the editor.

Here's a short 8 puzzle world called "Grin and Ferret". Difficulty is all over the place.

It's really amazing that it happened. That's why I love this forum

vittro
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 482
Registered: 04-17-2005
IP: Logged

Highly enjoying this game so far. Here's my review (left on Steam):
https://steamcommunity.com/id/victorius72/recommended/2880750?snr=1_5_9__402

Highly polished puzzle game that focuses on solid core mechanics and respects the player's time and intelligence. No frills (good) nor storyline (arguably good or bad) -- just pure puzzle solving.

New elements are elegantly presented by gradually more difficult puzzles that require understanding of all their rules and mechanics. There is an in-game journal that explains every element's mechanics -- I wish it was more obviously advertised (maybe a big bouncing arrow that only disappears after you open it once) because I didn't realize it was there and I had to deduce the flying snake's axis preference by trial and error, which was a bit annoying.

The idea of the journal is however really cute and useful. A cherry on top would be being able to select any of Leaf's observation and have a short animated/interactive example displayed on the screen or even a visual diagram. Consider that a feature request!

You can clearly see the inspiration from DROD, my favorite puzzle game of all time. This game is kinda like a distilled version of DROD that extracts the core of what makes it a great puzzle game and presents it in a cleaner and more accessible manner.

The obvious drawback of this approach is that everything else that makes DROD great is lost -- the storyline, characters, voice acting, exploration, cutscenes, etc. I personally enjoyed those aspects of DROD a lot, as they provided good motivation to actually solve the hardest and most frustrating puzzles.

The game has a nice level editor and begs for Steam Workshop support -- it's quite easy to integrate via its C++ API, assuming that the game was made in C or C++. I am more than happy to help the author with integration as I've already done so in my game "Open Hexagon".

Maybe a per-room hint system would be nice for people not experienced with DROD or similar puzzle games. I can definitely see how some mechanics that we take for granted might not be obvious to people who have played DROD before.

All in all, a great game with quite a lot of room for additional improvements and polish.

____________________________
http://vittorioromeo.info

ThemsAllTook
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 244
Registered: 06-23-2014
IP: Logged

Glad you liked it, thanks for the review! My current top priority is indeed to set up a central location for world sharing. As convenient as it might seem for Steam users for that to be the workshop, I don't think that's the right place since the game is also available elsewhere and I don't want to split it into multiple repositories - I'm thinking I'll do something quick for the first phase and get a simple webpage up with a file list, and sometime down the road, probably integrate it directly into the game DROD-style where you can view a listing and import the one you want to play.

Bombadil
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 522
Registered: 06-01-2005
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Just finished Tower of Destiny. All in all, very enjoyable game with terrific puzzles.

Posting some comments in a spoiler tag, although I don't think there's anything spoilerific about them.

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[Last edited by Bombadil at 06-01-2024 06:32 AM]

kolbesag
Level: Delver

Rank Points: 41
Registered: 02-02-2021
IP: Logged

File: 20240601144832_1.jpg (288.3 KB)
Downloaded 54 times.
License: Public Domain

Brilliant Game. It captured a DROD-like itch that makes the puzzles so addictive and rewarding to solve. Especially as it starts to mix and match all the mechanics you learnt later on. The only room left me in a rage is Cycles which I found a fittingly cruel joke for the end of an area.

There's also something to be said of how no frills the game is, with the serving of puzzles as efficiently as possible, nice to just purely focus on the puzzles at hand.

The only missing feature is a portrait of Leaf that would make ferret noises when he bumps into objects. I've attached a proof of concept for this essential feature.