Picket Puzzle
Trailer
The picket line swells as factory after factory walk out on strike. For the exploited and the oppressed of the world, this is the moment -- but time is short. The arms of the state are mobilizing to halt your advance. Can you lead the workers to victory?
As strike captain, you must learn how to overcome obstacles, deal with police blockades, seize government buildings, and win the army over to your side. Brute force will not work here, instead you must think clearly and creatively to succeed.
Once you've started on the road of revolution, there's no turning back!
Gameplay
Unique snake+sokoban puzzler with lots of clever mechanics in the mix:
- Factories add workers to the picket line
- Soldiers can be won over to your side, but only when surrounded
- Police block your path unless you have enough workers to push them back
- Radio Towers take control of the enemy troops - for just one step
- ... and more!
- 40 levels that challenge your creative puzzle solving skills.
- Forgiving design: turn-based gameplay, play levels in any order, infinite undo.
Stuck or confused? Here's a manual explaining all the mechanics: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-xpxwokgk4aULF7_pv95NIb4ZjaCMkbPgcJhC0xAQh8
Amazing game! Glad to see it finally released :) It really opens up once the radio tower is introduced. Managed to get S rank on all the levels as I went through except for the last one, where I still haven't been able to find the optimal path after many tries.
I think I did come across a bug on level 37, where it was auto-selecting the factory when using the car instead of letting me choose. Resetting the cart fixed that though. Or maybe my cat was holding the X button down.
I love this game!
At first, it comes across as a "high-definition" PuzzleScript game, which by itself is cool with me. But as all the mechanics are introduced, it becomes more than that.
There are plenty of fun parts in this presentation. I'm particularly fond of the soldier expressions of "I don't know if I should trust this one weirdo" vs. "yeah, let's join your cause!" The screen transitions, level previews, music, and sound effects - they're all excellent.
The controls are clean, and all the mechanics are thematically tied and intuitive. Thank you for implementing a generous undo system. It respects the player's time if they misstep or miscalculate, which is especially appreciated since some of the later levels require quite a few moves.
I finished all the levels, but haven't S-ranked them all yet. I'll come back later to finish the job.
Great work, thank you for sharing!
This is amazing!
Great to see it fully realized from that WIP I played a while ago.
I'm surprised at how well the difficulty continued for me into the late game, normally I tend to struggle with puzzle games like this after a while but this was balanced perfectly for me and I was able to go through the game well challenged but never frustratingly stumped. The gameplay is really spiced up with the radio tower and the car which add whole new aspects to solving and looking at the board. It somehow never felt overwhelming despite all the bits and pieces, number of people in the "conga line", and moving entities with the radio tower and car.
I also love how there's a story with the workers rising up :)
Again, phenomenal job, I think this is my favorite pico8 puzzle game!
In level 16, if you press Left in the position shown in the image, there is a runtime error
What a great and nicely balanced collection of puzzles! One request that I would make is to let the player know what is the level number of a puzzle currently being played. If you're not going into the menu you have no idea how far in game you are.
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