Thanks for all the feedback folks! Sorry for the silence, I'm terrible at keeping up with async communication. This response is long-winded and full of design questions/comments, no pressure to humor me, but I definitely welcome any additional insight.
mitch3a, I'm a big fan of Chicken of the Farm btw. Thanks for reviewing! Regarding the color-only block differences, I totally agree. After finishing the demo, I bought a 5" NTSC/PAL CRT with a B/W toggle, and I was sad to see all of the palette options of the same brightness look identical. Whether or not it is unlikely to be played in B/W, I still feel compelled to make it work to account for color similarities and any visual accessibility reasons. The level number is a good idea too, especially as I continue to add more content. The demo is built for NROM, but I've also been working with INL's UNROM512 to enable saving best scores, so sometime in the future that will be in the final game.
Your comments about cycling through levels brings up a conundrum I had. I didn't originally want to have all levels skippable, especially earlier ones where they are simpler or just used as a means of introducing a new concept, whether a new block or a new latch type mechanism etc. I wanted a progress requirement, but I didn't want to hold people back if one particular level was too difficult. While watching testers, I noticed puzzles some folks found very easy, and others found extremely hard. One idea was to possibly group the levels, so one page of 16 could have a minimum amount to complete to proceed to the next page, maybe 12-14/16. If I were to add several pages of levels, does that seem like a decent means of encouraging level completion without being too lenient?
Erockbrox & dink, thanks for the kind words. I'm glad the music was acceptable, those were my first two tracks on Famitracker, two takes on the same concept in D dorian.
BdR -- This is very cool to see. I notice yours was also from 2016, that's actually when I made the Javascript prototype that turned into this game. I spent quite a while googling to make sure it wasn't out there already, but hadn't really looked around since. I'm kinda glad I didn't find it though, because I probably would have abandoned the project out of fear of being unoriginal.
I really like the additional types of pieces, and I see you also have no qualms about introducing irreversible moves, especially with the sticky blocks
I also like that you were able to build non-rectangular shapes--something that I don't think I can do on the NES, as I have to move one piece at a time to animate the background tiles, and concave pieces create a problem there.
The quantum blocks are especially compelling--I hadn't considered that idea when trying to add new mechanics. Before the fixed-axis blocks, I had only considered some sort of top-down Gyromite style pillars that can be raised from the ground to temporarily impede blocks. Or a lock-and-key type mechanic, but I worried that would only engender backtracking.
Although I like the idea of adding new mechanics, I would like to spend some more months with just the four to see if there's anything else out there though. Some sorts of mechanisms that can be built with them, or other personal goals I may have, like an attempt to have a very small level requiring a very large number of moves. I created a level editor for quickly building and testing levels that outputs to the format for my builds, and I have far more in my "incomplete/impossible" list than my "complete" list.
Thanks again for all the valuable feedback folks. Despite many prototypes on many platforms over the years, this is the first game I've submitted to the public, hence my many design questions and rambling thoughts. I hope to take all the insight and advice into account on what I would consider a full version of Blockage, and I'll bear it all in mind when working on subsequent projects.
Scott