mind-circus.org

Games

point and click adventure

SHOW HN2018

341points
98comments
#60of 2,155 in 2018
Top 3%of 2018 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

16 positive, 26 neutral or asking, 12 mixed, 9 critical, out of 63 comments about the project. Thread score +0.14.

Design: 3 for, 4 againstExecution: 2 for, 4 againstPerformance: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Art style and atmosphere praised as impressive and consistent

    From 4 comments
    • Seems very macabre for a 12 year old mind. There's a consistent, creepy mood throughout all the screens that I saw, and I think it's very well done. The quality of the artwork /…
      tejohnso on HN
    • First off, this is wonderful. I have a 2 year old daughter. A little too young to be coding but I look forward to seeing if she gets into it. The art is pretty great too. My only…
      throwaway2016a on HN
    • Does she like Tim Burton? Jokes aside, I'm really digging this sketchy art style.
      westmeal on HN
    • As an adventure game lover, I think this is a great little game! I love dark, macabre adventure games and I'm really digging the art style here. The mood is very consistent and…
      kernelbandwidth on HN
  • Impressive coding and design for a 12-year-old

    From 3 comments
    • Really loving the art style. I'm also impressed with the code quality. Way above what I would expect a 12 year old would be capable of. I've seen college students that would…
      jugg1es on HN
    • pretty good for a 12 yr old.
      sharemywin on HN
    • Nice data structure. No classes, just objects. Which makes it faster to iterate. Feedback: Throw in a bunch of throw's for sanity checks like if(!room) throw new Error("room=" +…
      z3t4 on HN

Objections

  • Puzzle logic is unclear and hard to follow without hints

    From 3 comments
    • too difficult for me...
      R4FKEN on HN
    • Figured it out. I feel so dumb. there's nothing I can do in this game. so frustrating. HELP!
      singularity2001 on HN
    • Very cool. I finally beat the game, although I did need to look at the source code. The most confusing thing to me was that you need to find the items in order. I kept clicking…
      chatmasta on HN
  • Clickable items are not signposted

    From 3 comments
    • Excellent game. Very well done! Small suggestion: If items were intentionally made not to look like clickable, it's fine. Otherwise, a simple 'cursor: pointer' on doors and items…
      8x8squares on HN
    • First off, this is wonderful. I have a 2 year old daughter. A little too young to be coding but I look forward to seeing if she gets into it. The art is pretty great too. My only…
      throwaway2016a on HN
    • Good work! It would be nice when you mouse over clickable items that their outlines glow or something :)
      darepublic on HN
  • Does not fit on mobile portrait screens

    From 2 comments
    • Doesn’t fit on portrait iPhone 6 screen I expected it wouldn’t be perfect and I’d have to wrangle left and right, but about an inch is missing off the left of the page even when…
      aetherspawn on HN
    • first of all congratulations and as someone already said it doesn't fit in the iPhone, also the click area of items is too small, finally the tutorial could have a previous button
      sudouser on HN
  • Bugs with inventory and interactions

    From 3 comments
    • Bug reports: After you stab the girl in the back of the head with the knife, the knife magically finds its way back to the kitchen. When you get to the TV color photo thing in…
      BugsJustFindMe on HN
    • There are some bugs in that part. I saw the knitting hint and clicked on bella's knitting pin. But it didn't appear in the inventory for a loooong time. After about 5 minutes of…
      dingo_bat on HN
    • This was such a cool little game! I agree with the comment that assets should be preloaded. For some reason the only item image that ever showed up in my inventory was the nails.…
      emmacastor on HN

Requests

  • Add hover or cursor cues on clickable items

    From 3 comments
    • Excellent game. Very well done! Small suggestion: If items were intentionally made not to look like clickable, it's fine. Otherwise, a simple 'cursor: pointer' on doors and items…
      8x8squares on HN
    • Good work! It would be nice when you mouse over clickable items that their outlines glow or something :)
      darepublic on HN
    • First off, this is wonderful. I have a 2 year old daughter. A little too young to be coding but I look forward to seeing if she gets into it. The art is pretty great too. My only…
      throwaway2016a on HN
  • Allow collecting multiple items in inventory

    From 2 comments
    • Nice adventure, but I got mad at "1-item-at-time" picking rule. I'd rather prefer all of them being collectable, instead of putting an ordering that forces you resorting every…
      ai_ja_nai on HN
    • Bug reports: After you stab the girl in the back of the head with the knife, the knife magically finds its way back to the kitchen. When you get to the TV color photo thing in…
      BugsJustFindMe on HN
  • Preload assets and optimize images for slow connections

    From 2 comments
    • I think it might be necessary to preload the game resources, otherwise the game becomes unplayable on a slow connection with a round-trip > 500 ms (and I guess the server is…
      yorwba on HN
    • One more thing, I guess. I didn't have any trouble with the server at all, but those images can definitely be optimized. The total savings would be small, but percentagewise the…
      BugsJustFindMe on HN

Questions

  • Whether the game's dark content is appropriate for a 12-year-old

    From 2 comments
    • Hey OP, how did you feel when your 12 year old said she wanted to make a game that starts with the phrase "Aaron deserves to die"? Some people would be concerned, but clearly…
      BugsJustFindMe on HN
    • Seems very macabre for a 12 year old mind. There's a consistent, creepy mood throughout all the screens that I saw, and I think it's very well done. The quality of the artwork /…
      tejohnso on HN
  • Which tools a kid would use to make point-and-click games

    From 1 comment
    • Yeah it reminds me a lot of the HyperCard games me and my friends would make as kids. What tools are kids using these days to make point-and-click style games like this?
      kalleboo on HN

Alternatives named

  • Crimson Room and Viridian Room Flash games

    From 1 comment
    • Reminded me of Crimson Room & Viridian Room from back in the Flash Player days. http://escaperoom.net/page-top100.html
      alpb on HN
  • The Secret of Monkey Island

    From 1 comment
    • Start with 'The Secret of Monkey Island'. £2.37 on Steam [0]. I spent hours on my Atari ST wondering how to get past the governor's dogs. With no WWW to look for cheats I ended…
      jimnotgym on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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