I believe one of the reasons the game felt so slow, or unengaging was because it gave the player too much time to make decisions and get bogged down. It also meant that items weren't being used as frequently as I would have liked. No pressure also meant the game didn't "feel" very rogue lite to me. I was starting to lose hope in the project. It wasn't as interesting as I would have liked, and the items weren't  impactful or useful.

I tried to avoid adding time pressures to the game as I felt a puzzler should be about raw logic and thinking things through. But I found that this just led to long pauses of not doing anything...this is not what you want in a game, it loses the players engagement and interest, and once that's gone it's impossible to get back.

So I decided , what the hell. Let's try it out and see how it feels to play.

It's only a matter of time

Immediately I noticed a change in the dynamic of how I was playing the game. I HAD to make a choice, the timer wouldn't let me just sit idle. The countdown forced me to start moving symbols on the board, some just shuffling as I tried to dig up the answer, and some more meditated based on past knowledge. I found it added a nice pacing to the game. bouts of chaotic shuffling followed by "Aha!" moments as more information allowed things to click into place.

A great consequence of this is that I found the items alot more useful. I NEEDED TO USE THEM or I wouldn't dig up enough information about the puzzle in time.

I really like the way a timer boosted my engagement in the game, so for I now I think it'll stay. Maybe not in this form for the final version. But some variant of time pressure I feel is crucial to drive the player to action.

Trials and tribulations

A smaller quality of life bump. I knew I wanted the player to repeatedly attempt to finish all the puzzles in one string. Breaking that string meant going back to the start, but they would gather "essence" along the way to upgrade their toolkit and make the next trial run more engaging and more "completable" given the constraints.
In order to better inform the player I decided to add in a simple "test" tracker. So they could see the progress they were making through the trial and how much further they still needed to go.

I think it does the job for now. The player can immediately see that they are progressing and where they're going. Much like the timer, this is not in it's final form. But I feel it adds enough to the experience to stay for now.

The sound of music
One of my biggest priorities at the moment is the sound. I feel that games just feel flat without sound(unless intended for effect). So I'm working on upping the ante on the sound and music. On that note I've managed to rope in a talented musician friend of mine to make the game a custom soundtrack and sound effects :D I can't wait to have you all hear it.

Included in this update are also some small quality of life improvements. More particles, more movement, more sounds to try make things more interesting and engaging for the player.

I hope that you enjoy this update and find the game more enjoyable, and as always thank you so much for any and all feedback :) Without the community I would've run out of ideas long ago.