Hey! I’m ProgrammerOnCoffee, and I’ve been working on a puzzle game titled Flecto.
Flecto is a puzzle game where you shatter targets by bouncing bullets around each level. Place blocks and prisms in order to deflect and split bullets as they travel. Strategically use your limited tiles to destroy every target and complete each level in this bullet-bouncing puzzle game.
This originally started as a jam game that I made last May, and it ended up being voted most fun out of just under 150 entries. I finally put up a Steam page recently and am working toward a full release later this year. While it’s on the smaller side of games, it has taught me a lot about the process of releasing a game, which I’m sure I’ll find invaluable in the future.
You can wishlist it on Steam here. I’d love to hear any feedback, questions, suggestions, or other thoughts you might have!
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The Flecto demo is live!
I’m thrilled to announce that the demo is officially out on both Steam and Itch!
You can play it now on Steam here or on Itch here. Have fun and happy puzzle solving!
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Looks good and is fun! Well done. 
Works great on Steam Deck, too.
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Thanks for checking it out!
I actually don’t have a Deck, so I’m glad to hear that it worked well for you.
Overall I think the game is quite fun already, the interaction is intuitive, and the presentation is good. I’ve seen plenty of paid game apps with less than that, so great job 
As a result, my comments are mostly about polishing. I gave up at B14.
Because it’s so suited for it, I’ll assume the game is intended for touch interface as well as for mouse.
Notes:
- The music is nice and subdued, which is nice for a puzzly game like this. The music loop isn’t very long though, and it does get a little grating before long. More music tracks would be welcome.
- Good level / difficulty progression, but there is a pretty big jump around B10+. A16 was also a sudden spike, but that’s a “boss” area.
- It’s good that the projectile fires slowly enough to understand its path, but I think it’s a little slow currently.
- You could use long press to remove pieces, or some other control. The switch on/off system is a little clunky.
- Is there ever a need to have no piece selected, except when no pieces are available? It might not be necessary to deselect pieces.
- It would be nice to visually distinguish pieces that have been placed, and pieces that are locked.
- A more dramatic break animation for orange squares would be nice. Hitting one is close to the most positive thing a player can do in the game, and should be visually rewarded.
- When placing a piece, the piece is sometimes shown though it can’t be placed, when the mouse isn’t close to the center. Expected: any time it’s shown, a click should place it. Oddly, this doesn’t happen when removing a piece.
- Rotating a piece also has slightly odd difference in behavior when clicking close to the edge, skipping clicks.
- Fire and reset icons could be more obvious / larger, both to be more visible and to work better with touch controls.
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Thank you for checking it out and leaving such detailed feedback - I really appreciate it!
Those are incredibly helpful notes. I’ll definitely work on improving everything you mentioned.
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Good to hear
I’ll try and get to some of the further mechanics some other time. I know I can unlock all levels in settings, but I think it’s good to have the real experience.
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Demo v1.0.1 is here!
Bug fixes:
- Fixed tiles sometimes not being rotated when clicking them multiple times close to the edge of the tile
- Fixed tiles sometimes not being placed when clicking close to the edge of a cell
Improvements:
- Added a smooth transition when repairing shattered targets
- Added additional shattered target textures to reduce repetition
- Added the ability to immediately stop all bullets after firing them by pressing fire again
- Rearranged some levels to remove a jump in complexity and make the difficulty curve smoother
- Increased speed of traveling bullets
@phoenixdk Thanks again for the feedback! I haven’t been able to touch up on everything you brought up yet, but this should address a few of the things you mentioned, including the bugs you noticed.
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Very nice, it feels like every feature has been carefully made, with details like ending a shot with the shot button or a timer when the restart key is used (but not when clicking).
I tried B16 for about 15 minutes, and couldn’t make any kind of progress, which makes me wonder about the difficulty. I may just be bad at it, but it’s frustrating being stuck, as we all know. That’s where the fun ended for me.
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That is the last level in the demo so it’s meant to be a bit harder, but if it’s too hard, I’ll tweak it in the next update. Thanks for taking the time to check it out again!
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