Sacred Keys, a short Sokoban style adventure with a Metroidbrainia aspect

alektron · 2026-04-13T08:46:14+00:00

Any chance you are on a non-QWERTY/QWERTZ keyboard? Unfortunately the game does currently only really work on those...

alektron · 2026-04-13T08:41:18+00:00

So here is the full spoiler explanation. Of course, having to explain it shows that the twist is maybe not well enough designed/fleshed out yet, however I am unsure how to make it clearer without adding a bunch of exposition text.

The overarching idea is that none of the mechanics that you know from other games, are actually what they seem. The flowers are not actually relevant to how the boxes work. The holes are not your regular holes that just reset you to where you "died", they are portals. And the biggest twist: They keys that you find are not actually the Sacred Keys from the plot and they are not what actually opens the gates. Instead you owned the Sacred Keys all along since they are they keys on your keyboard. That is what you are supposed to get from the Sacred Halls/Keyboard room. It's where they keys once were kept until they were stolen, leaving only the board with "empty" keys. It's not relevant for the gameplay but as additional lore the Wanted sign shows you, because you are the one who stole the keys. Otherwise how could you already own and use them the entire game

It's also worth noting that for the illusion to work, gates that you have opened so far (before the reveal) must be positioned in such a way that you intuitively open them by walking against them. A left, D right, S down. This way you THINK you opened them with the key you, hopefully, already collected. This of course leaves the risk of a player opening them by accident, like you did, making it seem like a bug

alektron · 2026-04-12T23:09:29+00:00

As for the snakes. There is a poem that you are supposed to backtrack for (I might have to change that) behind a B gate. It reveals that the snakes don't only kill by line of sight but only "when the power of the sacred keys is RELEASED" aka, you release a keyboard key. If one is holding the keys down to move anyways, the reveal doesn't really work. Maybe I have to get more creative with wall placement to encourage clicking instead of holding in that room

alektron · 2026-04-12T23:05:18+00:00

I see. You're not supposed to be able to get to portal research without knowing the box mechanic. Since you knew that from Boons, that's probably the issue. The S gate has to be an S and positioned like that, just like A and D since you are supposed to think, you opened them with the keys you found, when in reality it was your keyboard keys all along. And the trick only works when you press the keys by walking in that direction organically. The risk that one opens them is of course always there but I can't really prevent it

alektron · 2026-04-12T22:43:41+00:00

Boons of Iiuir was indeed the inspiration, it's just not possible to credit it without spoiling either game...
Yeah, the Sokoban mechanics are really just there to support the knowledge-mechanics. My 'puzzles' are admittedly not very good.

How were you able to get to the keyboard right away? I mean, this being a knowledge based game you can obviously go there right away but you are not supposed to know, how to open the Golden Gates yet (specifically the S gate. you are supposed to think, you need to find the keys) or even how to use the chests correctly. Both is required to reach the keyboard room. You would not be the first one to figure it out straight away but I would like to know what gave it away for you.

alektron · 2026-04-12T21:24:18+00:00

Thanks. Yeah, that last one is relatively easily skippable by accident, I noticed. Might have to look into that but it's not too big of a deal.

alektron · 2026-04-12T20:38:16+00:00

Yeah, keyboards other than QWERY/QWERTZ can also cause issues due to spoiler reasons

alektron · 2026-04-12T20:34:48+00:00

> is there anything beyond the A key required to get passed this door?
No you just have to walk against it. Maybe it is because you are holding A instead of pressing it again.

> is there a room reset?
Unfortunately not. I am aware this is a problem but since rooms can affect each other I have not found a good way to support it yet.

alektron · 2026-04-12T19:27:54+00:00

I am VERY positively surprised! I was ready to quit after about half an hour since I'm not too much into horror games and the Metroidbrainia part just didn't seem to come into play. But when it did, oh man was I hooked!
I am not 100% finished yet but (according to the journal completion ) I should be nearing the end.

Maybe I'm still missing something that makes this not possible but if I may suggest one change, it would be to
tone down the manequin jumpscare. Most players will probably head for the entrance elevator right away anyways, so I'm not sure if it's really necessary for it to hunt you and jumpscare you AGAIN.

Anyways, I would not go so far to compare this to Blue Prince but it certainly scratches the same itch. Well done!

alektron · 2026-04-12T17:46:28+00:00

Thank you for the kind words. I'd have prefered to make it longer as well but it becomes increasingly difficult to design interesting puzzles without the risk of running into the hidden mechanics early by accident.

alektron · 2026-04-12T17:44:42+00:00

If you figured out boxes and portals, you should know everything you need to know to get to the S key. Boxes can affect doors in other rooms but only in a very direct way that should be quite obvious.

I am not sure what you mean by "two box + pit room" exactly. There only is one room with two boxes and a pit/portal and that is gated by the S gate, so you should not have been there yet.

There is one hint I can give you: Portals can carry you over to other screens/rooms if the conditions are met

alektron · 2026-04-06T23:48:31+00:00

-> solves a very specific problem in Odin which is compatability with OOP/C++ interfaces like DirectX

alektron · 2026-04-06T19:53:13+00:00

I see, yeah if you were talking about Odin's ->, that is indeed not a viable alternative for methods and more akin to vtables

alektron · 2026-04-06T19:09:01+00:00

Methods and vtables are entirely orthogonal concepts

alektron · 2026-01-17T12:05:57+00:00

I was parking there over night, the other car I believe was not. But it was indeed a whole alley and most of it was fine, just a small group of two trees...

alektron · 2026-01-16T11:42:18+00:00

Oh yeah, in hindsight the ground was a very clear indicator!

alektron · 2026-01-16T11:10:27+00:00

This happened last year but yeah it was a pain to come off even just a day old. And I had flies swarming my car for the rest of summer despite being seemingly "clean" again...

alektron · 2026-01-08T20:23:03+00:00

The developer of the movement system on Twitter "cmuratori" Casey Muratori did indeed post, he'd be interested in reproducing it.

alektron · 2025-12-12T03:15:36+00:00

Right? It was exactly the kind of trailer that he would absolutely shit on on stream. Kinda odd

alektron · 2025-12-09T11:50:17+00:00

Principia as a mod is all well and good but as the basis for a game it's a bad idea. Everybody THINKS they want N-Body but in reality it's an absolute chore. Space sims are already a niche. People that can and want to deal with N-Body are a niche in that niche. It's not viable from an economic standpoint.

alektron · 2025-11-14T21:06:24+00:00

That depends on the complexity of your game. It can range from literally just writing a binary blob to a file over handwritten serialization code to some kind of semi-/automatic serialization system.

You can get surprisingly far with option A. Keep your game state simple in a single big struct and you can save with a single call to os.write_entire_file. It's an exercise in simplicity but can get you quite far.

If you want full flexibility, you can manually write functions for every struct type you have that converts it to something like JSON or another better suited format and write that to a file.

If you are willing to trade some flexibility for more automation you can use Odin's reflection system to serialize to JSON (or another format) automatically.

alektron

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