Lemma IndieCade feedback

Entry: Lemma

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I played several hours, but got stumped on how to proceed in the greenish level with four large elevated pillars.

Overall, it was a nice platform switch-hitting game.  From the description I had expected the game to be more about building, but once that mechanic was introduced I saw it was more about shortening the gaps between the platform sections.

I had some big problems with performance in the beginning, and since this was a fast action game I ended up turning everything off and reducing the resolution to 800x600 in order to have the smallest latency possible between my action and the game's response.  I have played Mirror's Edge as well as some Minecraft parkour levels so that experience colored my impressions.  I would say that LEMMA reminded me much more of the Minecraft levels than Mirror's Edge, especially in the speed of the action.

The story and (initial) score seemed like regular science fiction and after the first few notes I chose not to follow the -- what appeared to be optional -- plotline about matter waves and instead just tried to get to the end of the level as fast as possible.

I will say the second song (I believe) was fantastic, as well as the third.  It sounded like a completely different musical direction than started the game and came off as fresh and new as I would expect a game alluding to modern particle physics to sound.  The sound effects though, felt off and I'm not sure if it was the effects themselves or the mixing.  Sometimes the "falling" wind sound would begin and then immediately truncate such that I heard it for a quarter of a second.  It was a bit disconcerting.  The other thing about the music, is that it amplified how dead the world was.  There didn't seem to be any sort of activity or life -- audio or visual -- to the world these platforms were embedded in.  The cube monster did make noise, that is true.  In fact, that creature was the first thing to bring a smile to my face during the playthrough, but I never encountered their likes again.  I wonder if the score should be even more sparse to echo the emptiness of the world, or vice-versa.

The beginning few levels felt like a two hour tutorial -- I really wish the game would have just started with matter creation.  The first time I spewed blocks during a roll I thought it was going to turn into the first real Silver Surfer videogame but I soon realized the creation time was limited by inertia.

Speaking of inertia, the death condition in this game was really odd.  There seemed to be no stakes -- missed jumps simply resulted in another try.  I feel like this sapped a lot of the intensity out of the game.  I was reminded of Starseed Pilgrim, where a mistakenly placed or destroyed block could shut off part of the world (seemingly) forever.  Here, the repetition of jumps made me feel like I was being herded along a single "happy path".  I did find it interesting that you could game death though, in that sometimes you want to not land softly so that you don't have to start back at the bottom of whatever platform you are on.

The feel of the jumping never seemed exactly consistent to me.  There seemed to be some kind of "repulsion" going on that made it difficult to predict landing spots, unlike Minecraft parkour which is so rigid in its controls.  The roll-to-generate-blocks also seemed very spotty.  I'm not sure in which order the going-off-the-ledge and left-shift and left-mouse was exactly supposed to occur so I found myself spamming the controls a bit.  It was also humorous that the traditional FPS run button was mapped to slow-motion, but I suppose that in this game running was momentum based so it makes sense.

One other note I took, that doesn't seem to fit exactly anywhere is that the notion of an achievement for reading a note placed obviously in the middle of a hallway seemed a little intelligence insulting considering that the player character is supposed to be either a particle physicist or often in the company of a particle physicist.  Especially since at that point in the game almost nothing had happened yet.  Perhaps achievements make more sense for hidden orbs?

My favorite part of the game was "racing" the assembling effect of the blocks coming together, and figuring out the puzzle where you rolled over to connect the circuits.  Overall, it seems like there is a ton of potential especially in terms of populating the world with non-platform obstacles and the "speed building" that is alluded to in the player's repertoire and that the game world performs (as a special effect).  It seems like the game would also benefit from an increase in speed-of-action at the expense of traditional humanoid canned animation.  It is intriguing to imagine traversing your environments at a brisker pace.  I wish you luck with the game and look forward to playing the final version!

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- This game is fun and pretty. While I was playing it, my not-very-interested-in-video-games girlfriend came over to watch for quite a while. This is unusual.
- The movement is fun and fluid. I enjoyed getting the hang of it. But I also felt like the game was a too generous in what i was able to reach / climb. If I'm capable of all that, make my arms longer!
- The sound and art design are top notch.
- When I understood what I was trying to do, I enjoyed puzzling out the solutions. I would have liked a little more direction about my objectives at any given time, though, like a compass telling me where to go, or any other hint. My times of confusion about why I was where I was, or where I was trying to go, were frequent.
- I love the enemy design. They are cool and frightening, they sound great, and the way you interact with them is unique.