HART
HART is a short puzzle game about rule discovery. Explore the HART program, learn its rules and uncover small fragments of the past.
The story, although short, deals with some kind of heavy topics; content warnings are available in-game if needed.
Development log
- 1.0.2 update15 days ago
- 1.0.1 update15 days ago
Comments
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Managed to get through the whole thing, though I don't think I picked up on several of the rules despite using every hint available. I'm pretty sure I'm just terrible at these kinda of puzzles though.
(for the benefit of avoiding spoilers I've rot13'd these, the Xes are wildcards)
For 0004 I ended up with pKqaKgneKKaf or possibly pKKfvgneKKaf, obviously neither of which are correct. I think by that point though I'd lost the plot thoroughly enough that it wasn't really recoverable anyway :p
Also I guessed 0000, but my decoding only came to KebKfKKq and I don't see which bit of the puzzle I'm misinterpreting. >w>;
Aside from that I just have a couple small quibbles with the UI. "Use the show command to inspect its contents." should probably include the number cause I did just "show" a couple times, assuming the command would take the just decoded sequence from context.
About the UI: that's understandable, but I wanted the whole thing to feel more like a real computer system than a game, and I think a little bit of friction and inconvenience (emphasis on "little"!) helps to sell that fantasy. Maybe the message could be worded a little better though, I dunno.
About the puzzles: if nothing else, I'm glad you could get through the story despite not fully getting the logic! I'll take that as a sign that the hint system is working properly.
I'll leave you the full logic for 0000, fully rot13'd:
Guvf bayl hfrf gjb pbqrf: ke, juvpu zrnaf ebgngr gur yrggre sbejneq va gur nycunorg, naq kq, juvpu zrnaf qhcyvpngr. Fb (keo)eb(kqf)(kej)e(kqq) -> pebffkeqq. Gur chmmyr vf nobhg ernyvmvat gung bapr qbar jvgu gung, lbh unir nabgure ke pbqr, fb vg orpbzrf pebffrq.
Also really amazing game and quite fun but it would make it so much easier if you could like edit your response without deleting letters so you could more easily visualize you changes if that makes sense
Yup, it makes sense. I would have LIKED to do that, but it's actually harder than it sounds the way I coded it. I wanted to get the game done and out instead of spending a lot of time on that. I might push an update if I find an easy way to do it, but I can't promise anything.
Thank you for playing, though!! I'm very glad you liked it!
Great game! super fun up until i got stuck trying to repair 0004. i have most of the rules but im not sure if yd is a logic pair, im very confused. i absolutely love the command line interface style of the game though
edit: i solved it! amazing game, for all those stuck, try starting from the back. absolutely loved the lore bits, beautiful way of making it loop back and deleting the memories. 10/10 no notes :D
Thank you so much!! I'm really happy to hear you liked the story!
Since several people seem to get stuck on 0004, I might go back and make `hint 0004` give you TWO hint keys instead of one. It's sort of the "final challenge" (0007 is more of a "test what you probably already know" puzzle) so I thought it would be good if it was more complicated than the rest, but at the very least it should be easier when asking for a hint. I don't want anyone getting properly stuck on it so close to the end!
A bit of a fun puzzle, although I'm still a bit confused on what `w` does, if anything (Given the 0007 hint, it feels like "w" might just form part of a command), but it made 0004 hard to figure out, eventually leading to me getting part of it then figuring out similar words that would fit!
Thanks for playing, and I'm glad you had fun with it!
w is not in fact anything, and 0004 is where I've seen a few people getting stuck, so I probably did not design it very well. It has a lot of overlapping rules and it's not that clear what order you're supposed to do them in, so maybe it would have been better if there was a previous lock that taught you about the solve order unambiguously.
"Finding part of the word and then guessing the rest" is very much intended though, as a sort of release valve for people who don't find the logic very clear!
Ohh, interesting! At first I thought it was a "rulechange", as in it overrode the existing rule in the 'command' it was part of, but then I wasn't quite sure when I saw it in some of the hints!
Hopefully this gives you some insight into how 'w' is being perceived and what's going on with it, but I know puzzle design can be really tricky
I'm still on 0004 but i got that w didn't mean anything but I am just going through having to guess the order of stuff
Got 0004 without hints
I was enjoying it, but must have done something to crash it (or soft-lock it or something) because it stopped responding. I would go back, but...the text is really slow. I wish the space bar would speed up its display in addition to going on to the next line.
Hi, thanks a lot for trying the game! Sorry about the technical issues.
I've now posted an update that speeds up the text if you hold Space, on top of making it slightly faster by default.
I haven't been able to reproduce any crashes, so I couldn't fix that, sorry. If you try the game again and it happens again, please let me know what it was doing when it happened. (Also, make sure to click on the game so it's actually focused and getting keyboard input.)