Icy Ascent Reborn
Can you get to the top of the mountain?
Made for the Thinky Puzzle Game Jam 4, this year's theme was "Extreme Sports".
Shoutout to spratt who published their submission "An Icy Ascent" just a few hours before I was gonna submit mine with the same name. Great minds think alike :)
Development log
- Version 1.4Jul 26, 2024
- Version 1.3Jul 08, 2024
- Version 1.2Jul 07, 2024
- Version 1.1Jul 07, 2024
Comments
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i am a sucker for getting over it style games, and this adds an entirely new puzzly aspect to it and it feels like this was perfectly catered to me. it was rlyy fun and challenging, excited to see what u make next c(0:
Enjoyed the first part, but decided to stop playing when the orange mechanic was introduced - the timing was a little too precise for me! Really cool design though, congrats to anyone who made it to the top!
platformer :)
Nah sir, this is puzzlescript! :)
yeah ik but it seems really platformy
very cool though, nice job! moving on to today's showcases
I know, I was just joking :) And thanks!
Aahh, this is so painful when you fall and must redo the section again (yes, Rage Game are like this). But in the end, I finally finished it. Good game
This is suffering, got to the long pachinko drop part with the arrows before i finally gave in. I cant believe you managed to make a movement system thats equal parts thinky and actiony. It's so cursed and hilarious. I will be back to finish this!
That's what I was going for, I'm glad it worked :)
Honestly, I think this game is great, but I do appreciate the slowed down version. I just can't seem to get the timing right. Regardless, I continued to come back.
Now, can anyone tell me how to get past the pillars. What are these orange squares of which you speak?
Hi, thanks for playing! Since you haven't seen the orange squares yet, I assume you mean these pillars:
https://imgur.com/a/kWEl5fN
Here's a hint: Try to get them as far right as you can, and try to pull them on both their top and bottom ends. Good luck :)
Hahaha! I actually mean the very first puzzle. Le sigh. Seriously, I'm stuck there. Regardless of how not so smart I am with puzzlescript games, I love them. Thanks for uploading this... going to check out your other ones.
Agreed, I can't get past the first puzzle either. :-)
Ah-ha. I got it. :-) You need to climb the center column so you're "hovering" above it, then hit right twice quickly. Then climb... Understanding this mechanic makes the rest of the game possible.
Thanks for the clue, but I still can't get it. I just gave up on this game.
Ohh haha. Well in that case it's hard to give a hint that doesn't just give away the solution... maybe try to understand from which pillar positions you can climb the left wall, and from which ones you can't. Then eliminate the ones that aren't gonna get you further. Sorry if that's of no help, if you're completely stuck I can also just give you the solution. It does require a technique that was used once before this puzzle, so it could help backtracking a bit.
Up to the orange squares, I thought the precision was hard-but-fair. There's a surprising amount of subtlety in the controls and I was eventually able to make my ascent largely repeatable. With that said, I do think you should offer a way to survey the pachinko-style drop that precedes accessing the entrance to chapter 4, otherwise the randomness of your first interaction with it just feels a bit unfair.
Once I got to the orange squares, I just found it impossible to get the timings repeatable. To the point that I'm wondering if the precision required is either outside of my physical abilities or outside the technical limits of puzzlescript on OSX Chrome. I ended up screencapturing that section with my inputs displayed on screen and hit the first tricky part once in 8 or so attempts. Looking at the inputs frame by frame, I can't really see what was different about the time that worked.
https://file.io/3m08wrJGkqQm
All that said, I thought this was v cool and was technically impressive :)
Thanks a lot for the precise feedback! I believe I was able to identify the problem from your recording: You're holding down the up arrow key, instead of only pressing it once when on top of the orange dash square. What this does, and it's something I kind of neglected during development, is that it constantly triggers realtime ticks. This way the interaction seems to basically become rng. The reason it doesn't happen for the other dash points is probably because they immeadiately follow another dash. I'm not sure why realtime ticks are triggered by this, they are not supposed to be triggered by the player. If you wanna experiment with it yourself, here's the code (updated): https://auroriax.github.io/PuzzleScript/editor.html?hack=c5153b6de142ef8a58071eb0b709615b (I apologize It's very messy, cleaning it up is just not something I had the time for.)
To be honest, I thought this "bug" benefitted the game, since it wouldn't allow players, unlike what you did, to just hold down keys instead of actually trying to time it. However, it looks like I needed to communicate this behaviour more clearly to the player, since others also seem confused by it.
Anyway, so what you need to do to beat this section, is only press the up key when on top of an orange dash point. I hope this makes it easier, and not more difficult. In the end, timing is still supposed to be part of the game, but if this makes it inaccesible to you, feel free to tweak some values or skip sections to beat it.
I wish I could play this like a puzzle game, but it requires such precision in key timing that even the second level of pillars I can only get across once every 10-15 times.
I'm sorry the timing is too precise for you. If you really can't do it, here's a 50% speed version (updated): https://auroriax.github.io/PuzzleScript/play.html?p=498c0db3382c07ea6ec88eb265b6db82 (It's also hackable in case you wanna skip parts that are too hard)
Edit: Also make sure you are only holding down keys when you need to, see my other comments for more info
Thank you. It's still quite a challenge even with the slowdown, but I managed to make it to the top. The puzzle difficulty progression is very good, the last pillar puzzle being a real doozy.
Loving this so far but wow is it hard! I’m currently at part 5 (?) with the orange squares and it’s really tough to get those split-second inputs in a consistent way.
It would be cool to have an easy mode that is purely stepwise that doesn’t rely on reaction times (or even just a slow-mo version) but without that it’s time for me to keep practicing.
I recommend you try to beat the normal version first, since the timing is supposed to be part of the game, but if you absolutely can't do it, here's a 50% slowed version (updated): https://auroriax.github.io/PuzzleScript/play.html?p=498c0db3382c07ea6ec88eb265b6db82
Making a stepwise version would require a lot of reworking and also completely change the game, so I probably won't do that. But thanks for the feedback!
Thank you so much. After testing the same section in slow-mo, it turns out that this may not be an issue of reaction times.
spoilers
https://i.imgur.com/AG9sypj.png
Here’s a screenshot of the section I’m talking about - the two circled parts have <10% of triggering. In both cases I’m holding ‘up’ while passing through them. Every other square has a 100% success rate so there’s something I’m misunderstanding. I’ll keep trying and switch back to the normal speed when I figure out why.
more spoilers
Here’s the path I’m taking if you want to double-check
https://i.imgur.com/GrxvEXm.png
I explained this more clearly in another comment, but you need to only press the up key when on top of the square. I'm sorry this wasn't communicated in the game, hopefully this makes it more doable :)
Thanks! Tapping the input once as the player moves into the square is definitely consistent. I’m sure it would have been clear with more trial and error even without being communicated in the game.
I am back to playing on the intended difficulty.
spoilers progress
https://i.imgur.com/m0yijom.png
Oops that's cheese! You're not supposed to climb that lol, I'll change it
Cool! And wait, you are the same creator of Crate Assembler? I saw this game in the gallery of the PuzzleScript page.
Yes that's me :)