itch.io

Hey all.

I don't see any evidence that the Beta Test is being maintained any longer. No patch notes, no announcements from William, nothing. Is this still on? If the Beta test is done, maybe we could get some confirmation of that?

Thanks.

Just wondering: Why is there a mechanical sound effect when I walk close to a tree? It sounds like machinery in there. Shouldn't it sound more organic?

Also, the sound effects have been largely updated since I last played. Well done! I like the minimal, slightly lyrical feel to the general sound atmosphere. That's how it should be - minimal, mostly woodwinds and bells IMHO.

After a long time of not getting around to it (real life you know? sorry) I've finally gotten around to booting up the Manifold Garden Beta. I'm seeing a lot of the changes you described in the dev logs, particularly the new visuals (they look great BTW!)

One of the things that startled me most was that the sound effects that play when you change direction have changed. Previously they had a gently falling off note; now I'm hearing a more metallic "plunk" or "clang" type of sound. I'm interested in knowing why this design change was made. Personally I liked the former sounds better; I felt that they fit in better with the meditative feel of the game.

On the same note, I'd like to ask about the walking sound effect. To me (just my opinion!) the sound is too overt and distracts me from the puzzle at hand. It sounds like my character is hauling a sack around (and wearing a baggy jogging suit to boot!)

I'd be especially interested in seeing a video explanation of the sound effects and sound design for Manifold Garden. That might be a cool thing to add to the channel, if you have time.

Awesome!

Man, you are contributing!

:O

Whoah, not sure how much value my input has, but this looks awesome! Maybe for some of the later levels, towards the end?

Since the last update, I've been unable to continue the game. The program gets stuck on the loading screen with the loading animation endlessly looping.

Great, thanks! That must have taken a while to get done.

Perhaps. Would you like me to post screenshots to the forum if I have a sreenshot-reliant report to make?

When I select the "Quit" option from the menu, the menu disappears and I see the cream-colored background with the watermarks, but nothing happens. I suppose that I could wait even longer, but the game is stil open about 2 minutes later.

Ah... hm. I have no idea how that's happening. If I was deleting them, how would I have done it? Don't the screenshots automatically attach?

Title says it all. It feels awkward.

Is the Mouse supposed to work across all menus? It works to change an option, for example, to click through resolution settings, but it doesn't work to select "Resume" or "Save Game" or any other option on the pause menu.

I'm back now. Since I was last here, I got a great new gaming laptop, and transferring all my stuff over took a while. But I'm back and with Manifold Garden running smooth as cream on this new machine, I should be able to get playtesting in.

Still no dice. F7 does nothing in the menu.

The bug I wanted to report was that the Fullscreen and VSync settings do nothing. I turn them off and nothing happens. Upon switching to another menu and switiching back to the Video menu, they're set as "On" again. Am I doing something wrong? Turning off fullscreen may be my only chance at getting reasonable FPS, it's all but too slow to play on my mid-level laptop.

Same. I can't get F7 to do anything inside the menus, and I'm having a couple of menu bugs that I want to report.

This makes good sense, I did not think about that before. So hyped to see the new build, will get playing right away! :D Congrats on the mind-numbing effort of these past months.

Awesome! I'd been following you on Twitter so I saw that this must have been a pretty crazy time for you.

But you didn't give up, you're pulling through! And the gaming world will be the better for it. :D

I'm not sure if this happens in all worlds (I tried it in two) but for the past two days when I select "Video" from the settings menu, the game freezes up.

Sorry that I haven't been testing for a while, I've been sick for about a month.

Anyways, in World_015, when I ran (holding the shift key) up any stairs, I got the wind rushing sound effect, as though I was falling. This didn't happen without holding the shift key. Anyone else get this?

Also, I saw the UI dev work that Mr. Chyr did in the stream a few days back. Looks perfect! Totally fits the aesthetic.

I second this. I'd like to be able to jump around between parts of the puzzle just to test them, even when I'm not being smart enough on a particular night to solve them. :P

Thanks for the instructions!

Well, the problem was that both cubes had to be either yellow or green. They both had to be the same color so that they could both stick to the same wall.

Will we eventually get a downloadable/purchasable soundtrack? I really enjoy this kind of music and would liek to hear more.

Why do the blocks used to make the portals say "1 Meter" and "Prototype" on them?

I found a puzzle at the beginning of World_002 to be inexplicably difficult. I haven't figured out how to post screenshots yet, sorry!

This is the puzzle where you need to unlock a door with two red switches, and two blue switches. You use cubes from a half-yellow/half-green tree to hold the cubes of one color (I started with Red) in position, then do the same for the other color.

It took me a long time to fiogure out how to get the second yellow/green cube off of the tree. For the life of me I can't see how you're intended to get it off. Eventually I got lucky while flipping the gravity around and sort of "pixel-mined" my way into a weird position where I could get to it.

I don't know if there's an obvious solution to it that I was missing, but it was pretty frustrating. Not difficult in the fun sense.

Okay, great! Good thing it's not just me. :P

Ah, I haven't gotten that far yet. I need to ramp up the amount of playtesting I do. :)

I dunno what to suggest. If I think of a good cue idea, I'll mention it. Zorginvasion's idea is good, it would fit with the gentle/minimal atmosphere.

Do we have scenarios yet where there are two trees of the same color next to each other?

Actually, I personally think that sprinting would be a great feature to have in the final game. There have been quite a few games where I've badly wanted a sprint feature. Minecraft was that way before they added a sprint feature.

And I don't even use it all the time. The sprinting is so fast that there's no point to using it inside a room - you can't control it enough to make it viable when you're solving puzzles - but for the huge outside areas, I found it handy.

Just my 2 cents worth. ;)

In reply to FungalCactus:

Yeah, that's what I suspected. Still wanted to be sure about it, though. :)

I really appreciate the "Sprint" feature. Some games of this kind forget that players don't usually like to cross long distances at walking pace.

In some of the puzzles, I've been a little frustrated by the lack of a jump feature. Changing the direction of gravity allows me to do almost anything jumping could do, and more. But it's slower and clumsier for simple tasks, like crossing a small gap.

Is jumping going to be included at some point, or is it going to be left out to keep the puzzles tricky? I'd be fine either way, but I'd like to know.

I know that there's supposed to be a sort of "clapping" impact sound when you fall for a distance (i.e., when the "wind rushing" sound plays) but the effect doesn't always play for me. It seems inconsistent - sometimes it plays, sometimes not. I think it plays more often when I fall for a short distance, but not when I fall for a very long distance. But I'm not totally sure, I haven't tested that in detail.

I use the Enter key to select menu options. When I tried to use the mouse cursor, it crashed the game or just didn't do anything.

I'm not sure why there's a message at the bottom of the screen that tells you to use the Enter key for submitting bug/feedback. When I hit the Enter key in game, nothing happens.

Anyway, good thing you got your hands on a controller. Have fun! :)

Thanks. The game is certainly playable as it is, and I'm glad to know that more optimization is in the cards.

I was worried that it might already be as optimized as it could be, and I was totally behind the tech curve or something of that sort. :)

I will hang in there and forge on with testing and feedback! Thanks for this whole deal, it's a real treat to see how the process works. I've always wanted to beta test a game!

In reply to elchavalico:

Are you trying to select the menu options with the Enter key?

Personally - and this only comes from a half hour of game time, so take it with a grain of salt - I think the difficulty level is just about right. It feels rewarding and challenging without tempting me to rage quit.

Ah, I had wondered why Starseed Pilgrim seemed to show up in your twitter feed a lot! ;)

I'd like to hear more of the main menu music. Are we allowed to know what it is?

Also, is there going to be more peaceful ambient-style music in the game at some point? I think that the sound effect selections are perfect, by the way.

Okay, I'm still getting wait times of more than a minute for the main menu, but the problem with selecting options is fixed. I can use the arrow keys and enter key to select options like normal. Thank goodness.

I'm aware that my computer isn't the greatest. I'm using a middle-of-the-road AMD Radeon R4 APU and A6310 Quad-core.

That said, even with graphics and resolution settings at their lowest, my fps is still frustratingly low. And I can't enjoy the crisp, clean lines that I see in the dev streams.

Are there plans to optimize the game more? I mean, I'm sure there are - I don't know if this question sounds inconsiderate or impatient. But I would like to see less lag.

To borrow a turn of phrase from a review of Antichamber, I'm really liking the way that the game gets me out of the "comfort zone" that I'm used to in puzzle games. I didn't fully wake up to what the ability to alter gravity in all six degrees meant until just now. It radically alters what I can do. A skyscraping tower becomes a bridge, an infinite gap is no longer a problem... wow.

And yet the game is still difficult enough, and works my brain like so much soggy spaghetti.

Plus I'm finding that I enjoy the mechanic of "picking" "fruit" from "trees". There's a charm to it that's hard to describe. The sound effect is spot on, for one thing.