[Demo] Symbology

[TOG the Mighty]

Here is a demo I made. http://www.kongregate.com/games/TOGgames/symbology-demo I plan to eventually use something similar to this as the central gameplay, maybe with a book-styled story around it.

My problem is that it seems to random and too much like a guessing game. Can anyone see a way to keep the runic style and general puzzle feel, while making it less of a guessing game.

This is based entirely on a trap disarming minigame contained within the game Dark Legions made in 1996 by Silicon Knights.

Please give me some feedback. Thanks, TOG the Mighty.

[tonypa]

Try marking/removing used arrows or circles with some new rule that each arrow or each circle can be used only once.

[Son of Bryce]

I have a hard time imagining this as the central part of gameplay. I think tonypa's suggestion is a step in the right direction.

It seems like there isn't any way to actually tell which is the next move? You have to guess. I don't see why there is a "loop" arrow because it only makes it more likely that you'll guess wrong. I think that design may have been in Dark Legions to penalize you and make it harder to get the reward, but here it just feels unfair.

There doesn't seem to be much connection between the runes at the bottom and your moves, aside from the spaces that are already filled showing which one is next. Perhaps you can give clues between the empty spaces and the runes at the top. Like a color/element at the bottom matches the rune.

It's good that you've taken the game and are looking for ways to improve it, mix it up and learn from it. I think that when you get a story and progression in it, you can give a reward for solving these stages, which will help a lot. Add in a level select and it could be something to come back to.

Something that I think would be cool is if these "circles" linked to other circles. Something like the sphere grid in Final Fantasy 10. http://faqsmedia.ign.com/faqs/image/...sphere_ign.gif

Oh yeah, add a help button for people like me that click before reading the explanation.

Good luck!

[bluemagica]

The game is fun, but I personally don't like guessing games. The main problem here is, the runes and there arrangement makes no sense. I would suggest 2 different approaches:
1) Give a "key" to the runes like a word(name, purpose, whatever), then instead of just arranging them one after the other, how about writing a gibberish magic spell or something which will give a clue to our goal....like say: level1 - create a cloud spell. That way we will kindof have an idea about what we are trying to achieve, and if you plan correctly, only a correct order of runes will match the situation. (water rune->fire/Sun rune->Wind rune->ice rune)

2) If you want infinite levels generating randomly, then obviously the above approach wont work! However, if you just reverse the gameplay a bit, it might solve the guessing part. I mean instead of lining-up the runes at the bottom from a pattern, how about using the runes at the bottom to create a pattern? In each level give a set of runes, and a target pattern. You can set rules about which runes can be connected to which type, and how many runes of a type can be chained together! If you can figure out a good set of rules, the game will be more of a logical puzzle solving, than a guessing game.