The Runic Conjecture
The Runic Conjecture is a magical puzzle game about experimenting and learning the meaning of mysterious runes. What may seem like Magic now is merely a Science that you have yet to understand.
Controls: Arrow Keys to move, Letter Keys to enter runes, Backspace to delete runes, Enter to submit runes, Esc to pause
Made in 1 week for GameCraft! 2022 🥇
Theme: Magic as a Science
Best played using Windows 10, in a Google Chrome browser, Fullscreen
Development log
- Thanks for your feedback!Dec 23, 2022
Comments
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are you working on full game?
there should be something for putting all c,r,a and ns from the end game text and for putting a path using them
i have a question, what font is used?
It's this one! https://www.zetafonts.com/cocobiker
thanks for responding, sorry i didn't see for a long time
I just discovered this game, and it's AMAZING imo. I love how the puzzle works, and honestly after completing it I'm not even sure I know what each of them do!
I didn't understand how to continue after the end, even tho i came back to the beginning and made sure to use new letter in each one.
I even resetted the game and nothing new came up...
But it was still a fun game :)
Made an account just to say this. Played it on cool math games, and this is an incredible game. It was so much fun, so I hope you keep making games :)
So great. If you develop this into a larger game, one suggestion would be to have 3 optional “challenge stars” you can earn for each level.
Star 1: use the lowest number of runes possible for that level Star 2: “travel” the minimum distance possible for that level Star 3: bonus challenge (e.g. “don’t use the N rune in this level”)
(Perhaps these are only unlocked after earning all the runes in the game, or greyed out until you have the necessary runes to get the optimal number for a given star)
These would require different solutions, adding replayability for each level.
Nice advice, second this.
Amazing! I love the concept of figuring out the rules myself, the puzzles and the aesthetic. 🥰
This game gave me an idea of solving a puzzle by typing a word and making a specific one line "drawing" like. Dunno what I'll do with this idea. 😅
Anyway, thank you for making this game! 👍
Hi there! Can't believe it's been a year since the conception of this amazing puzzle gem.
Is there anything more planned? I'd love for someplace to follow news about this game or any other future projects!
Thanks a ton for your support and enthusiasm! I haven't been able to dedicate a lot of time to this game yet, but I see and appreciate the love that it has been getting <3 I intend to work on it in the near future and will definitely drop devlogs here if there are any updates!
how do I reset so I can play again?
Refresh the page! There should be a button to reset on the main menu :)
81 runes, 12 in last.
Nice game, got to 103 total runes used, i don't think i can optimize any further
cool game, work on android with bt-keyboard, ideas for posible simbols-
M - look up
B- go backwards
M - a-a-r-c-a (if N is a-a-c-a)
Nice game, I think I recognise some art from an asset pack
I spent a minute trying to solve the background lol
The controls to mov around the world feel a little jank and I have no idea why, but I love this mechanic so much that I don’t think I actually care about any flaws this may have. If there’s any game jam game I want to see a full version of, it’s this.
Moving a big cat block is a little weird, but it’s a game jam game so, probably something about time constraints.
Reminded me of Taiji and The Witness, which are two of my favorite puzzle games!
he he he ahhh
also a very fun game, i would play the real thing if i could pay and download it. i love puzzle games and this is on my top 10 favorite puzzle games!!!
Thank you for playing and for your high praise! I'm glad you enjoyed it. 😊 Just a heads up, I've hidden your puzzle spoilers to preserve the surprise for other players!
Ok, i forgot to say it was a spoiler 😅
Very cool game! I really the idea behind this, my favorite part was whenever I managed to "code" the full answer to the puzzle first try. Love the music and the visuals as well. Super well done
Thank you! I am a fan of your games and devlogs so this means a lot to me! 🥰
It was very fun! Just a suggestion but i think when the full game comes out there should be a level/world creator. Also, when do you plan on releasing the full game?
I am still building my team, but don't worry I will make a post if I have any updates!
I got a barrel stuck in a door, and can't get passed.
Feel free to refresh the page, the barrels will reset and your progress is saved! Thanks for the catch, I'll fix it soon™️
Really nice concept. I would love seeing it extended.
This is a nice idea. I'd like to play a full version of this and see what other rules you have in store.
This is great, and I can't wait for the full game! My only complaint about the demo is the ending. It should've been a puzzle where you end up spelling "arcana" instead of it just being at the door. That would've been a bit cooler in my opinion.
This is fantastic! I'd love to see you take it further. By the way, it works just fine in Chrome on Mac OS.
One possible refinement: a keystroke (perhaps up-arrow) to type the last attempt again.
Great game! would love to see a full release!
I managed to block one of the doors with a barrel
yoooooooooo this is really really cool!
I only realized it was a demo when finishing. I was so shocked because it was so clean that I thought it was already a full version. Really nice game! Gonna follow to see when it get extended
Quite fun!
This is awesome, please update this game I want to see how the other runes work
Awesome that you made this in a week, can't wait for more!
I NEED MORE OMG I LOVE THIS!!!! THE ART, THE PUZZLES, THE EVERYTHING!!!!!!!
I liked it. Seems like if you want to expand it though you'll have to add more complexity. I get a very "The Witness" vibe to this game, so maybe fitting with that theme you could add some puzzles that are affected by the environment in some way? You could also add some rune that splits the beam into two, maybe have some runes that have different effects based on which way the beam is traveling so that in the end you can feel like a wizard weaving different runes to control two beams with one set of instructions.
Also I liked that at the end you end up having to write an actual word, and think that would be a pretty cool idea for a puzzle. Like you're stuck trying to do this insanely complex series of tasks and every time you do one thing it breaks another, only to realize that the solution was right in front of you the entire time. Sort of like Gandalf's "Speak friend and enter" moment. Some players would probably derive the solution without ever realizing you spelt out an actual word, so it could be a cool moment regardless.
loved it! Very clever but simple mechanics. It feels really good when you manage to write the whole answer in the first try.
Since the game encourages optimization, I decided to do the opposite with a maximum input run (used private tab to avoid the statistic bug) and got 345. And for fun, I tried minimum R runes as well and narrowed down to 3.
Extra facts: You can go out of the screen then return to the goal and the doors don't count toward the runes used counter.
I'm not sure if it's a bug or not since the 54/18 kinda feel intentional to show how many run people have gone through in total. But it's hard to calculate how many rune you have used in this run total.
Oops I'll add that to my
bugfeature listWow such an amazing concept, took me a while to understand R but I got it eventually. I love the fact that you can solve the puzzles however you want but you can do it with less letters. Would love to see a continuation of this
I thought R stands for Reverse when it actually meant Repeat (3 times).
absolutely phenomenal for such a short game. really fun and interesting concept, along with excellent puzzle design to emphasise it. can't wait to see how this can expanded upon
Managed to get down to 81 runes used
You got 81? I was only able to get down to 99 runes.
I was also able to get 81.
I'm at 85, so 81 seems possible to do.
This very much reminds me of Imagine Logo. It was a drawing software with a cute turtle in the middle, and was used to teach programming back in my primary school.
You could definitely take inspirations from the Logo programming language. With a major ones, being obviously the ability to change color / line style, and the ability to allow/disallow drawing the line.