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Author Topic: CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle  (Read 6669 times)

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OmaManfred

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CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle
« on: January 27, 2017, 10:46:31 pm »
Hello everyone!

Today I would like to give you a first insight into Cuit - My almost fulltime project since October 2016.
The key mechanics are explained rather quickly: You are given a circuit. Navigate the currents through various logical gates, avoid the explosives and power the targets. Sounds easy? Try it and guess again.

Cuit is designed to be relaxing and challenging at the same time. If you like mental challenges, this is the right game for you.

Even though Cuit is based upon circuits, it is not only a game for people familiar with those. It was important to me to extrude all the gameplay-unneccesary aspects of circuits to focus to 100% on the binary logic, giving you, the players the best experience possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk2BPsKewyg

Me:

Sebastian Schon - Lead Programer / Designer

Yep. One man project :)

Project details:

  • Release Data: approx. April 2017
  • Platforms: PC (Steam), Android, iOS, Linux (later)
  • Costs: 1.49$ to 2$


Features

Levels
Cuit is very minimalistic - it is about the pure challenge. Cuit will ship with at least 70 hand-crafted (non-random generated), individual and diverse levels, increasing in difficulity and will get FREE level-updates after the release, to keep you, the players busy.

Level Builder
Solving puzzles is fun, yes. But what is solving them compared to creating your own? Build them, play them, share them! Cuit will come with an inbuild and intuitive level-builder, which let's you up-and download, rate and comment user-created maps. CUIT can be way more than just a puzzle -  In fact,  you could even programm Cuit - inside cuit. With a special performance-friendly render-mode, you can create gigantic levels, with sub-level support, that lets you encapsulate logical structures into a "package" to reuse them everywhere you want with global and local modifications - Just for you :) This feature is not used in the game itself.

It was really important to me, to not just programm the core of the game and publish it as fast as I could. I wanted to make Cuit the best Cuit it could have been. And I really hope to see some of you guys maps, to be able to try them out :)





Cuit is live on Steam Greenlight! I would very much appreciate if you would check it out and cosider giving your vote there.

Link:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=866189128

WebPage & Newsletter:

www.cir-cuit.com

TWITTER:
https://twitter.com/Cuit_The_Game
Follow us on twitter, to see all new images and trailers first. There are a couple of .gif's already waiting for you there :)



Thanks so much for reading this! I am very open for any feedback you want to give me.
Also, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them, I will make sure to answer all of them :)


Best wishes,

Sebastian



« Last Edit: February 19, 2017, 05:13:52 pm by OmaManfred »

OmaManfred

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Re: CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle
« Reply #1 on: January 27, 2017, 11:02:33 pm »
SCREENSHOTS: (Large Images, http://imgur.com/a/EfIsp to see them better)

(click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: January 27, 2017, 11:52:53 pm by OmaManfred »

eXpl0it3r

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Re: CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle
« Reply #2 on: January 28, 2017, 03:22:15 pm »
I've seen some of your tweets the other day and it looks quite interesting! :)

I think it might be useful if you described your game a bit more, as in how you actually play it and how the mechanics work and what kind of gates there are etc.
Most of the text here is (and on the Kickstarter preview) is largely just marketing blabla, about how the game "feels" and text about yourself.

Personally I'd be rather careful with Kickstarter. Sure, sometimes I've seen people get really lucky, but more often than not, those Kickstarter that succeed already had a small to large follower base, meaning that there were a couple hundred people out there that knew about the game and a core group that is actively following the development of the game.
While €3000 isn't that large of a number, you'll still need around 800-1000 people to back your project, which means you need to reach a multiple of those 800-1000 people who'll look at your campaign, because most will just keep browsing on.
Finally, make sure you've considered your rewards well. Not sure what your limit for Picasso is, but promising 5min of your time, can accumulate rapidly. Are ready to draw 8+h for 100 people?
As for your largest reward, are 30h of your time really just worth €350? Can you attest somehow, that your C++ knowledge and teaching skills are even worth 30h? I feel like any sensible person will or at least should stay away from this reward, because it's a high-risk/low-gain investment. I'm sure that for €350 one can find C++ courses taught by people who can show that they have the experience to teach and talk about C++ fundamentals. (This is constructive feedback to make you reconsider either your "selling" strategy or change the reward, please don't take this personally. :)).

As a student, I unfortunaley do not have any real financial ressources to rent dedicated servers for the level-database, or a custom web-page,  or the Steam-Greenlight fees.
You and I both know that this is not true. If you can't afford the $100 Greenlight fee or pay a few € per month for a simple VPS, then you're doing something seriously wrong with your time or your money. I know, because I'm a student myself and I run my own server, plus multiple domains and lots of other stuff.
Don't invent facts that are not true, it will just make you less trustworthy and as Kickstarter is based on pure trust (we give you money and trust you to keep all your promises), it will make things a lot harder. ;)

And as a final tip: Activate spell-checking in your browser and set the language to English. In your post here and the text on Kickstarter contain basic spelling errors.

Keep up the work and I look forward to seeing more of the game! :)
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OmaManfred

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Re: CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle
« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2017, 04:55:32 pm »
Hey eXpl0it3r,

thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it. I agree with all / most of what you said, I will explain the game in better detail, but I thought I should do that when I have a finished the work on the trailer, so people can understand it better. This thread merely was just so people already might have heared of it. And I also agree with you on the Kickstarter topic. It is rather unlikely that we will hit the goal. A game like Cuit would need either some good connections, a budget for advertisement or a good portion of luck. However, I thought, why not just try it.

However, I am a bit sad to read that you think I am lying about my financial situation. I do not take it as an offense or an insult, though I have to say you don't know my life. And yes, some things did not went the way they should have been, however presuming that I am lying is a bit rude, in my opinion. Again, I am sure you didn't mean it as an offense. Maybe it was poorly worded, it might sounded like I would need 3000 bucks for Steam Greenlight and the servers - which of course is not true. The 3000 bucks would be 1/3 for the composer, Taylor, then the Steam Greenlight fees of around 100$ / 80€, and the rest would be for me developing android and iOS ports of the game - which I will be working on either way, but those 1500-1700€ left (substracting Kickstarter fees), would make me able to work on them fulltime until their release.

So I hope to have cleared that up, I will edit my post laster today.
Thanks again for your feedback :)

Have a nice day!

eXpl0it3r

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Re: CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle
« Reply #4 on: January 28, 2017, 05:40:43 pm »
However, I am a bit sad to read that you think I am lying about my financial situation. I do not take it as an offense or an insult, though I have to say you don't know my life. And yes, some things did not went the way they should have been, however presuming that I am lying is a bit rude, in my opinion. Again, I am sure you didn't mean it as an offense. Maybe it was poorly worded, it might sounded like I would need 3000 bucks for Steam Greenlight and the servers - which of course is not true. The 3000 bucks would be 1/3 for the composer, Taylor, then the Steam Greenlight fees of around 100$ / 80€, and the rest would be for me developing android and iOS ports of the game - which I will be working on either way, but those 1500-1700€ left (substracting Kickstarter fees), would make me able to work on them fulltime until their release.
My statements where solely based on the quoted text, here it is again:

Cuit is not yet finished. As a student, I unfortunaley do not have any real financial ressources to rent dedicated servers for the level-database, or a custom web-page,  or the Steam-Greenlight fees. Therefore, I decided to try KICKSTARTER.

Here the only arguments why you want to do a Kickstarter is because you don't have the financial resources to a) rent dedicated servers, b) get a custom web-page and c) pay the Steam Greenlight fees.
No mention of paying a composer or using the money to go full-time (or part-time).

So to rephrase my previous statement: Your argumentation for why you want to do a Kickstarter are rather poor at best. It's actually also something that's currently missing on your Kickstarter campaign completely, i.e. what are you going to use that money for. I also recommend to read this blog post by Cliffski (and browse a bit around on his blog, he has quite a bit of good advice here and there).

Again, my point was not that you'd never need €3000 to develop a game, but it was more a critique on your listed reasons as to what you want to spend the money on. ;)
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Mario

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Re: CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle
« Reply #5 on: January 28, 2017, 10:46:41 pm »
Few points I noticed regarding the Kickstarter page:

I'd try to use a cleaner header image. Those example circuits are nice, but I'd try to keep the image clean. You've got such a nice logo, it should be enough to grab attention (and it will also work great in thumbnails). Also the platform buttons on the lower left are a bit too close to the borders for my liking. Maybe you even want to replace it with a short demo video?

Get someone to proofread the text. My English certainly isn't perfect, but there are quite a few obvious typos easy to spot, e.g. "Match" rather than "March". Maybe setup a Google Docs file with tracked changes or something similar?

I'd remove the formatted Unicode characters (e.g. "2x key") from the goals, since they might not show up for everyone and could cause some confusion.

The 5$ option says it offers 2 keys, but you'll get a total of 6 keys? Or do you have to pick? This is also a bit confusing.

Might have missed it, but you should add SoundCloud samples to the Kickstarter page.

What do you mean with "(Native)" remarks on Steam stuff? Do you mean it's guaranteed? I would remove the bracket then.

OmaManfred

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Re: CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle
« Reply #6 on: January 29, 2017, 01:04:41 am »
Hey Mario,
thanks for your feedback.
Yes, the kickstarter page is a totall mess, atm, was a mistake to link it already. All those texts were not meant to be final, just a quick brainstorm I had three days ago or so. I will rework it, and put it back online.

And thanks for the tip with the logo. I just saw all those thumbnails of the other projects on kickstarter which are filled with action and detail, so I thought I need to put some "clickbait" in form of a circuit and the "Hard!" corner on it. I'll reevaluate this decision :p

Edit: And conerning the 2x stuff, thats natively done by kickstarter, when you enter a number higher than 1. Do you think some users could have troubles with it?
« Last Edit: January 29, 2017, 01:07:05 am by OmaManfred »

Mario

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Re: CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle
« Reply #7 on: January 29, 2017, 11:24:18 am »
Ah, if it's actually done by Kickstarter I wouldn't worry about it. I thought you're pulling off some Unicode character tricks (but didn't really check the page source).

OmaManfred

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Re: CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle
« Reply #8 on: January 30, 2017, 12:22:30 am »
Updated with a small first teaser-trailer :)

sjaustirni

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Re: CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2017, 03:03:44 pm »
The Kickstarter preview link is missing.

BTW, Cool project, I really like it so far!

OmaManfred

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Re: CUIT | A challenging, minimalistic logic puzzle
« Reply #10 on: January 31, 2017, 02:19:49 pm »
Thanks :)

Yes, the kickstarter link was removed again by me, because the page still needs some work done.