Candle Prick

Graphics are horrendous in terms of readability. Rather poor choice of art style. Makes it hard to tell what's going on. Got a headache while playing, which is rare for a turn-based game. Even the level-select screen is hard to look at. The puzzles themselves seem decent from the little I've played, but not enough to compensate for the messy visuals. It takes away from the enjoyment of working through puzzles when you have to strain your eyes just to make out what's happening on screen. You'd expect much more from a game that's 8 USD.

Firstly I want to say that I enjoyed the game enough to 100% complete it without any hints, so I think the game can really be fun. But the game is not really polished, and contains many serious core problems that it is hard for me to recommend it. [h3]Visuals:[/h3] The visibility is really bad. The color palette has 3 colors, and I am not saying that you cannot make a game that both looks good and is clear, but that wasn't the case here. The ground tileset is too complex and the items are hard to see. Some of the decorative tiles seemed like real tiles so that's not good either. The color palettes don't help as they are usually literally unusable and the game flashbangs you every time you get a new one, forcing you to see the horrible colors. Also I cannot understand the decision to make the levels dark. I know that you are going for an atmospheric look, but if I cannot see the whole level for no reason other than aesthetics you may need to reconsider your choices. It doesn't help that the game is also still limited to three colors thus the game uses a dither effect to get the shadows and this makes the tiles nearly impossible to read when they are half dark. [h3]Sound design:[/h3] When you look at other puzzle games like baba is you, witness, talos principle, stephens sausage roll, toki tori or even sandbox games like minecraft or factorio you can see that their music is non-intrusive or replaced completely with atmospheric sounds. This is deliberate as these games are slow in their nature, and leave you space to think and reconsider your moves. The music in this game is not only a really really short loop but the music also makes it nearly impossible to stop and think about the level. I had to mute the game after 15 minutes of gameplay unfortunately. It kinda fits if you are going through the levels really fast, but that brings me to my other point. [h3]Levels:[/h3] Nearly half of the levels are just filler, and you can easily solve them without much thought and most of the time the first solution that comes to mind is the right one. Some of them contain spoilers for a later level. Let me explain what I mean by "spoiler". Normally I like when puzzle games let you figure things by introducing small parts of a bigger puzzle over several levels, but here the levels act more like explicit tutorials. You aren't given much freedom to explore or to actually solve these levels. [spoiler]More over the "secret" levels where you cannot see anything ends up being just an annoying gimmick rather than an actual challenge.[/spoiler] A lot of the time, when making a sokoban puzzle game there is a hard balance to hit. Your levels needs to be hard and interesting, but if you make them too complex without any new ideas they may be tedious instead of hard. The levels that took longest to solve were really tedious, even though the solution was obvious. There are stars on each level which I thought indicated diffuculty, but that doesn't seem to be the case as the hardest levels in the game only had 2 stars. This was really confusing especially when I got to 5 star levels.

A short and fun puzzle game with some cool ideas that feel like extensions of stephen's sausage roll. Only a few of the puzzles are particularly difficult and the game does a really good job of building ideas on top of previous puzzles, leading to cool and complicated tricks by the end.

Candle Prick é um jogo de puzzle daquele estilo clássico de "Arraste a Caixa" muito desafiador! Eu conheci o jogo e os devs num festival ano passado, e quando lançou decidi prestigiar aqui comprando e jogando ele. Os puzzles são muito bem pensados e lógicos, o jogo tem um set de regras específico e se mantém firme nisso. A parte visual também é muito bem feita, embora eu ache que às vezes fica um pouco difícil de discernir o que é tileset e o que é apenas detalhe do cenário. No geral, um jogo muito divertido! Aprovado!

Joguinho pouco dificil slk, jogo muito bom, claro, porém se não tiver paciência quando não conseguir pegar as paletas, medeus, esqueça, deveras interessante, as cores escolhidas, os detalhes são ótimos, o som da morte dos inimigos são fascinantes, de modo geral, jogo muito bom, não desistir é a chave para vencer no game.

Vi na mostra da USP e quis apoiar os desenvolvedores <3

I've been playing a lot of sokoban games lately but Candle Prick really stands out with its unusual pricking mechanics which introduce extra layers of movement and interaction with the environment. Love the 1 bit (2 bit?) pixel art. Love the branching level design too. Candle Prick's an interesting sokoban game in that it doesn't feel like sokoban because you're pricking as well as pushing and really interacting with the environment in unusual ways. Refreshing. For more niche curation, follow me at: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27440015-CSH-Picone/

Quando sai Candle Prick 2???