atte Posted December 16, 2017 Version with post jam updates (audio, small animations and tweaks) available now: https://atteo.itch.io/phaedrus2010 Phaedrus 2010* Welcome to an annual exhibition showcasing the work of a mysterious artist only known as Phaedrus. This year there's electricity in the musty gallery air - sources close to Phaedrus say that hidden among the official selection, there might be also something else, ready to be discovered... Is it more free wine? Is it VIP pass to the employee toilet? Or is it something so strange and provocative that even the usually bold and daring Phaedrus decided long time ago to hide it from the visitors? With this jam timing I have quite a lot of free time but much of it is away from my computer, so I devised an art focused, gameplay light project. The game will be about finding hidden things and solving a simple puzzle(s) in an art gallery where all the paintings are named after Thumbs episodes. The local musician friend who did the excellent score to my last WJ entry will make an appropriate track for this. * Other possible titles were: "I Considered An Oeuvre"," Fundamentally dangerous to the notion of culture" and my own stroke of genius: "The Da Vizard Code" Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
atte Posted December 16, 2017 First painting sketches. These are pretty straight forward interpretations of the titles (not filled with references and memes) so Serious Ma'am is just a face of a serious woman. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Zirrrus Posted December 16, 2017 Oh, yes. The art is brilliant, although I have to say that I can't guess most of them(but then I only ever look at episode titles in preparation for the jam)...what is that Yog-sothoth-looking thing(3rd in the lower row)?? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Siromatic Posted December 16, 2017 Really wonderful art, and the game sounds rad. Great work! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fabian Posted December 17, 2017 Looking forward to this one, as the other have said, the art looks really promising! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
atte Posted December 18, 2017 Thank you! Looking at that art is 95% of the experience so I'm happy you like it On 12/16/2017 at 4:39 PM, Zirrrus said: Oh, yes. The art is brilliant, although I have to say that I can't guess most of them(but then I only ever look at episode titles in preparation for the jam)...what is that Yog-sothoth-looking thing(3rd in the lower row)?? The titles will be shown beside the paintings in the final game so you won't have to guess what I might have been thinking but for now I thought it would be fun to present them without the names (there's 6 from Thumbs and 2 from Important if true, I think) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
atte Posted December 30, 2017 I had a long no-jam zone, but this is a very small and simple thing so I should be able to get a version done for tomorrow (though there's lots of extra details I'd like to add but that's probably post-jam work). I redesigned the puzzle/code input in a way that eliminates some amount of guessing what it wants from the player - still, the puzzle (that is the whole game) might be too obscure and I'm somewhat amused how it reminds me of some of the clunky challenges from the old Silent Hills Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Squires Posted December 31, 2017 As cool as the sketches are, I personally am really digging the aesthetic of the numbers puzzle. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
atte Posted December 31, 2017 I had to check this, here's a coin puzzle from Silent Hill 2... Progress on the paintings: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Travis Posted December 31, 2017 The art looked good, but now with the added shading, they look amazing! Can't wait to solve that impenetrable puzzle for that rascally Phaedrus. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
atte Posted January 1, 2018 I got the core into an adequate state so I uploaded a version to itch. Audio and extra stuff (mainly small animations for gallery visitors) will be updated at least before weekend. So, I'm really curious how hard/easy/dumb the puzzle is, so please let me know if you try it https://atteo.itch.io/phaedrus2010 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sergiocornaga Posted January 4, 2018 I could not solve the puzzle. Reveal hidden contents I noticed that there were different numbers of blue balls in each of the paintings almost instantly, and it didn't take long to verify that they corresponded with the numbers on the pillar. However, the layout of the paintings doesn't easily lend itself to any kind of order for me. I tried rough left-to-right (13678425), clockwise from top, clockwise from 1 o'clock, and alphabetically by title... then I succumbed to exhaustion and gave up. Curious to know if I missed something obvious, encountered a bug, or even fell for a red herring! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
atte Posted January 4, 2018 Hmmm, here's a vague hint: Reveal hidden contents The solution is not a complicated thing, you have to notice a connection between a couple of things (that can be probably missed pretty easily). In hindsight I could have made the balls/circles a bit harder to spot Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sergiocornaga Posted January 4, 2018 OK, the reward was pretty amazing. If I'd ever watched that video before I feel like I might have made the connection! Thanks for the help, nice puzzle. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fabian Posted January 6, 2018 I seem to miss something very obviouse here, or do I miss knowledge of a certain part of thumbs-lore? Damn, I wish I could solve it, because the art is great! (btw: fullscreen didn't work for me. At first I thought, the game wouldn't start, because I had a completely black screen, but then I saw on itch that I can toggle fullscreen, and when I did that the game appeared) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
atte Posted January 6, 2018 I just updated the game with audio and some small animations and tweaks, so check it out (again)! https://atteo.itch.io/phaedrus2010 On 1/6/2018 at 5:09 AM, fabian said: I seem to miss something very obviouse here, or do I miss knowledge of a certain part of thumbs-lore? Damn, I wish I could solve it, because the art is great! (btw: fullscreen didn't work for me. At first I thought, the game wouldn't start, because I had a completely black screen, but then I saw on itch that I can toggle fullscreen, and when I did that the game appeared) Certain (quite obscure I admit) lore bit helps, but I don't think it's necessary... Hmm, GameMaker is weird with fullscreen and I'm very lazy/scared of that kind of technical stuff so I hope other people also realize the fullscreen toggle if they have trouble with it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fabian Posted January 6, 2018 On 1/6/2018 at 5:20 AM, atte said: I just updated the game with audio and some small animations and tweaks, so check it out (again)! https://atteo.itch.io/phaedrus2010 Certain (quite obscure I admit) lore bit helps, but I don't think it's necessary... Hmm, GameMaker is weird with fullscreen and I'm very lazy/scared of that kind of technical stuff so I hope other people also realize the fullscreen toggle if they have trouble with it. It's also very possible that I am just dumb and / or very tired right now Hmm, can you specify if the game starts windowed/fullscreen? Maybe that could help prevent people from thinking the game is not running Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
atte Posted January 6, 2018 Yeah, I just realized also that starting in windowed mode is the obvious solution here Edit: And now the game starts windowed, thanks for bringing the issue up. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Mythalore Posted January 6, 2018 Wonderfully simple, and really nicely done @atte! Most of all I just really like seeing the episode names realised, especially in your whimsical artstyle. One thing though: Reveal hidden contents It might help to name the exhibition "This is Phaedrus" instead of "Pheadrus 2010" at the start, just to seed it into the player's mind. Might be too easy then but if it's there from the get go there'll still be the initial work to decipher the numbers and then link it back. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Nappi Posted January 7, 2018 Loved the art! And the reward for completing it was indeed brilliant. The puzzle took some figuring but I got there eventually. I was thinking of way more complicated solutions for the ordering the numbers at first... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Teljoor Posted January 7, 2018 Great work! I also got stumped by the puzzle until I found your hint in this topic, but in hindsight it wasn't too obscure. It was nice that the you didn't have to solve the puzzle all at once. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fabian Posted January 7, 2018 I saw this game being solved by a smarter person than I am and now I understand the hint of course Great little puzzle game with a great/terrifying reward at the end! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
atte Posted January 7, 2018 Thank you for playing and commenting! Puzzle making is such a peculiar, delicate and fun thing. Trying to predict the player's behaviour and experience is very tricky. Luckily it seems like the game worked close to how I hoped it would. This was much shorter than my other WJ puzzler, Bogost in the Shell, so I wanted to make the one riddle pretty obscure. I thought also that even if the player couldn't solve it, they would at least hopefully have a good time checking out some random new art. Here's some spoilery things about the game and its development: Reveal hidden contents One possible tweak could be to make 'Phaedrus' appear in all caps somewhere or in all instances - just seeing 'PHAEDRUS' like that might be enough to nudge some players to the right direction. Or maybe making the first letter of every painting bolder/ stand out more somehow. If you look at the first sketches posted here, you can see that the hidden dots are not even there - I hadn't yet decided how the pictures would relate to different pieces in the puzzle view. I decided to make an art heavy / gameplay light project when I saw that the jam was during christmas. I started to think about somekind of a hidden object game and the very first idea was actually very different from what I ended up doing: The abandoned idea featured cursed paintings that had stolen and absorbed different items from their owners - The player's job was to find these items that were somehow embedded into the pictures. One of the customers would have been (of course) Dot Gobbler and the cursed painting had stolen the Gobbler's precious dots... So even when I rethought the whole game, weirdly the "Dot Gobbler's dots in the paintings" thing came back. I didn't really think about this during the developement, but having Dot Gobbler as the reward feels actually somewhat interesting: Other than the names being episode titles, there is really no Idle Thumbs memes and references thrown at the player* before the end reveal. So, in a gallery full of completely original art, the hidden masterpiece ends up being a picture that is a parody featuring a bootleg character that's a meme in the community... While it may not contain any grand truths about art and culture, I find that unplanned contrast intriguing. * That's somewhat notable because I usually love that stuff. Lastly I want to point out a goofy thing that probably could go otherwise unnoticed forever. When I asked my friend to make a track for the game I send him two youtube videos as a reference: So the gallery music is actually Dot Gobbler's audio* adapted into minimalistic art music! * I also used it as such as a siren in Bogost in the Shell's storage area. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
atte Posted January 9, 2018 Oh, one more thing. I realized some might not be familiar with this, and it makes the ending about 50% more ridiculous so - Reveal hidden contents - the final painting is (for some random reason?) a direct parody of The Scream by Norwegian Expressionist artist Edvard Munch. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sergiocornaga Posted January 11, 2018 Great to see behind the scenes. I also had a fun time watching @TychoCelchuuu play through it, more notes on that below. Reveal hidden contents I love how his puzzle-solving process mirrored mine. I noticed the circles instantly and took much longer to notice what I could spell. He noticed what he could spell instantly and took much longer to notice the circles. We both did lots of complicated fruitless tasks in the middle, including ascribing numbers to the artworks in a clockwise order. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
