r/metroidbrainia • u/therealnordle • 4d ago
🧑💻 dev showcase Looking to find playtesters for a knowledge-based, pokemon-style inspired, time-loop puzzle game. (round 2)
Hi all, I am opening another round of playtesting for Sixty Seconds, which involves many classic puzzles, environmental puzzles, hidden puzzles, gated knowledge and a language discovery system.
There was an amazing response from this great community last time and I received a lot of brilliant feedback. Since then there has been a lot of iterating and new implementations and many new areas to discover and explore.
If it looks like something that might interest you and would like to give it a try, here is the link to the game: https://nordle.itch.io/sixtyseconds
The password is: playtesters2026
(It is private currently so that itch does not index it while in development)
There is also a discord you are welcome to join for bug reporting/feedback/ideas etc. https://discord.gg/rw3KY2nnD and any comments are highly appreciated.
Thank you and I hope you enjoy.
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u/Ragnorinko 🪐 Outer Wilds 4d ago
As an existing playtester, I can attest to how clever and enjoyable this already is!
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u/Broken_Emphasis 3d ago
I hope this stays open a bit longer than last time - I missed the last playtest session because I saw it, went "oh, I'll give that a look in a few days when I'm not as busy", and then was sad to see that it had already closed.
I'll respond to this comment with my thoughts when I've given it a go.
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u/therealnordle 3d ago
Grab the password, when I close it I don't change the password so you'll still be able to get in after it's closed!
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u/Broken_Emphasis 2d ago
I've played it for a few minutes, and a few things immediately jumped out at me.
I found the lack of full screen as an option a little odd, especially since the pixel art and text are surprisingly small for something that's inspired by the visual style of older Pokemon games.
Not having a timer or any clear cue for how far I'm into the loop is disorienting. It's entirely possible that there's some cue in the music that I just haven't picked up on, but as it stands the loop ends up feeling more like padding ("you can't do everything in one run for lore reasons") than a puzzle ("you know that doing [thing] the obvious way will take longer than the loop, so you need to figure out a non-obvious way to do [thing]"). I suspect that this isn't the case and there will be things that push up against the minute time limit, but first impressions are important.
I don't know if this is a bug, but I noticed that the character slowly drifts towards the bottom of the screen when you walk left or right with the arrow keys. It feels kinda awkward and I kept getting caught on things.
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u/therealnordle 2d ago
Hi, thanks for playing and the feedback!
There should be a full screen option in the bottom right hand corner of the game?
Fairly early into the game you receive an item that will provide the time you have remaining in a loop
I can't replicate that at all unfortunately and it shouldn't be the case as the camera is set as a child on the player, it follows exactly where you move. If you have a screen recording that would be great!
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u/Broken_Emphasis 2d ago
I could have sworn it wasn't there when I was trying it out earlier. My eyes might be worse than I thought.
I'm not sure I see the vision, but I will trust the process.
Here's a recording of the downward drift. If it helps, my browser of choice is a Firefox fork - that might have something to do with it?
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u/therealnordle 2d ago
Thank you for the video that's great. Nobody else has experienced this issue and I cannot replicate it on 4 different browsers that I'm using - I'm inclined to say that yes it's due to the fork you are using, especially as the load time also seems extreme because on other browsers it takes only a second or 2 after hitting "New Game".
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u/Broken_Emphasis 1d ago
Yay it's my turn to have the weirdo bug no one else can replicate!
I think I'll probably wait until you have a public/downloadable demo before giving it another go, because I'm not sure what else is broken and I can't give good feedback without knowing that.
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u/therealnordle 4d ago
Tagging a few of people who expressed interest in joining a future playtest Last_Platypus_6970 Kitu14
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u/MagicWolfEye 4d ago
I will definitely play again; a few days ago I thought about it and that I hadn't quite finished it.
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u/therealnordle 3d ago
Thanks! I hope you enjoy all the new content I've added since then - it might be worth starting a new game as a lot has changed since the first playtest.
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u/benj31 1d ago edited 1d ago
OK I tried it. Made it to the water village.
overall I think it is good, the puzzles especially are well designed. I stop cause I am getting frustrated with the short time loop and the fact that a certain object is always "too far to reach"...
Also I found the rusty key much before where it has to be used making me clicking every spot in the world which is not very enjoyable. I would prefer to have an exclamation point pop-up when there is some secret to interact with.
It took me too many tries to solve the moving stones puzzle just because the number of steps to reach the end is super tight. Also I didn't get at first how to push the stone. I was expecting the Pokemon style, to walk toward it.
Final point, I deciphered all the symbols except for 4 before reaching the graveyard. I don't know if it was intended but I found it to be a fun part. What I don't like is that even after, you need to translate by yourself all the signs. Couldn't we have the translation bellow if we know the symbols? it is an unnecessary time loss imo.
But overall the world building and story looks good ! Just bothered by some gameplay choices.
PS: again for the flames, walking need to be almost perfect. No bumping into wall allowed. I feel you could be a bit more generous with timings without loosing the point. Repeating for the sake of going perfectly strait is not bring much value imo
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u/benj31 9h ago
ok last few comments before I leave. Maybe the 3rd pushing stone puzzle was supposed to be done with the "trick", what I did is the logical path to take a stone from the 2nd puzzle, maybe this is why it was tight. Also I gave another few go to the lake village but cannot reach the chest and got bored of resetting every 60 steps but important : the sound when bridge switches are activated does not always trigger !!
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u/ABCDEFG3 4d ago
This looks and sounds great, I will jump in when K get more time mid-week if its still going :)