Some feedback

[asle]

A little feedback now that I've finished the first 120 levels.
I'm playing with the timed insane setup.
Some levels (pearl level 11 ?) are very very very difficult - whereas some other are strangely done smoothly (with like 3+ minutes left).

Sometimes, the games behaves strangely.
- It happened once that an entire column wouldn't populate anymore (!?). Had to leave the game and come back - and said column would populate again.
- some pearl, near the edge, simply swap their property (red ball becomes green).
- As in the first game, the counter keeps ticking until the "perfect" (or whatever) is displayed. 2 or 3 seconds are lost.

about an achievement:
Perfectionist : This strangely triggered only when leaving and opening again the game.
Note:
Perfectionist Decorator : there are exactly 3 extra amulets in the standard levels and 1 extra star - which is not exactly very much :) So that's indeed an achievement to get this one.

Last, about "Treasure Box Full". That's the message that gets displayed for about half the levels. Said treasure is supposedly used to buy decoration whereas the real currency are amulets. So, there's nothing to spend this treasure on because everything requires amulets - and there are NOT that many of them. It's a nice box, granted, but this message gets displayed in red as if the player does something wrong. However, there's nothing to be done. And yes, I bought all evols of them (8K for the big one).

There's no achievement for playing in insane mode. That's too bad :)

OK, this is a great game and it has to be said. I enjoyed it so far. Thank you to whoever wrote this game.

[Ludoor]

Thanks for the comments and congratulations for the 120 first levels in insane time mode :) !

-Yes there is quite some variations in difficulty between levels. Althought we tried to slightly build up difficulty, the 'latest' JM games (JMO,JMO2) are less progressive than older ones as we assume that experimented players already know the basics. Newcomers can discover most game mechanisms by playing the tutorial levels. Previous games have no tutorial levels.

- in some very rare condition, a gem can switch its color to avoid a deadlock case (no possible matches). However, this shall NOT happen in pearl levels where a deadlock case shall just complete the room. It would be interresting to know the pearl level number if you see it occuring again.

- counter keeps ticking in time mode : good catch ! This is indeed a bug ! It was fixed in JMO and I updated the code for JMO2... but I wanted to add a slight delay of one more second before the fx starts and this caused the issue. My bad, I always want to change something... ;-/ It will be fixed in the next udpate.

- achievments: yes sometimes the synchronisation with Steam achievments can fail (online issue... ?) but the game try to resynchronize them on a new start.

- Good comment about the chest, there is no need to display the red message when the user get the bigger chest.

- OK, I will add an achievment for playing in insane mode the whole 200 levels :)) Not sure it will be in the next update tough.

[SynthpopAddict]

Congrats Asle for playing in insane timed mode! It's great to find a colleague here. If you play in limited moves, which I think the game was originally designed to be played that way, the gem chest hardly fills at all because in insane mode you don't have enough moves to go crazy collecting gems.

Ludoor, yeah, that'd be awesome if you put in a Steam trophy for playing the whole game in insane. Some of the other achievements like buying all the hammers or enough things out of the shop seem lame.

[hazydistance]

Originally posted by Ludoor:

- OK, I will add an achievment for playing in insane mode the whole 200 levels :)) Not sure it will be in the next update tough.

Personally I'd rather you didn't, and furthermore I'd bet that would be the majority preference among the player base. Hardcore Skillz can be their own reward, while achievements for such feats tend to alienate many players otherwise drawn to a game in this genre, who would view achievements mostly as a way to track completion.

Also, there are no achievements for completing the game in your basic timed and limited moves modes, so why go all the way to the max with insane? And as for adding even more achievements post-release with no additional content, that strikes me as bad form. People move on from a game with a sense of completion, and find out later they are missing this, that and the other badge, bauble and trinket. It's disappointing, and many of us get enough of that in other pursuits.

[Ludoor]

I did not thought that far hazydistance but you have good points also. The game is not *that* old so a post-release achievment shall not hurt that much. Or will it ? Anyway I'm open to suggestions about possible achievments, if not for that game, some of them can be implemented for the next one...

[asle]

I Just finished it all now. 200 levels and the bonus levels + bonus material.
So to follow up on the exchanges, I first would like to thank you, Ludoor, for listening :)

About the pearl swapping properties, I meant the ones that are NOT on pearl levels - so, standard balls or whatever they are called. Sorry about the confusion.

The second part of levels (80 of them to reach 200) are a little bit harder, but quite doable. I saw only near the end the "treasure box full". I guess there's more to buy without amulets :).

I didn't get the achievement regarding 10.000 pearls while I'm pretty sure I did get more than that. I guess the achievement triggers when the amount in "bank" IS 10.000. Since I "bought" extra bonus screens, I guess I won't see it triggered any time soon :)

Finally, yes, I played timed/insane levels all the way. I don't like limited moves (and thus didn't like much all those bonus levels) as I find no fun to imagine whatever the dev team wants you to "click". That's just me :)

So thank again for this nice JMO2. looking forward to a JMO3 ;)

[SynthpopAddict]

@asle, I didn't get the Pearl Fisher trophy in one run through the game either even though I got a perfect on every level and collected all the balloons. It took me a few replays of random pearl levels to get the 10,000 cumulative pearls. Would recommend replaying pearl level 30 since that's the one with the biggest room and the most balloons to bump up your pearl amount faster, but I only had to replay 4-5 pearl levels total to get the achievement.

[Ludoor]

@asle, Pearl Fisher is indeed supposed to be cumulative althought it is hard to know 'when'.
If you tried all the bonus minigames of the first part, you spent 4800 pearls. And the same for CE bonus minigames. So you shall not be too far from 10000.

[SynthpopAddict]

@Ludoor, if all the minigames cost 9600 pearls total, the Pearl Fisher trophy must be for some number higher than 10,000 cumulative pearls. I "bought" all the minigames and by the time I got to the end of the game, I had about 2500 pearls left, but did not get the Pearl Fisher trophy until I'd earned about another 2500 pearls, so it must be 14,000 or 15,000 pearls you need?

[Ludoor]

10000 is the number of pearls actually included in a 'match'. Now that I check it, it does not count the pearls from balloons so it make sense that the numbers of pearls displayed is quite higher than what the achievement treshold trigger. I shall change that for the next games.

[hazydistance]

Just checked, I have 2680 pearls after buying everything, and I've got the achievement.

[SynthpopAddict]

@Ludoor, thanks!