Lingo
Minor Update - Additional Performance Settings
View Clip - Added options for clipped distances of 50 and 125. Was 75 or none.
Use SSAO - Added a new environment setting that gives a little bit of a shadow effect to corners. This actually improves my FPS a little, but your results may vary.
I hope this helps improve your experience. As always, please reach out to me via Discord if you have any questions or concerns. Thanks and if I don't get another update out tomorrow, happy new year!
Minor Update
- New type of sign/panel component for use in customs.
- Bugfix, answer label auto size.
- Level 1 Legacy is available on the website. Custom Map HQ
A bigger announcement regarding player made maps will be coming soon.
The Groundwork Update
Hi all! Today's update incorporates a lot of small changes, and a few bigger changes. Big news first:
- Length Hinting now also displays as placeholder text. No more typing a bunch of random letters just to see how long something is! Unless you really like that sort of thing; in that case, feel free.
- Settings menu overhauled. New Level Select setting added, as groundwork for custom maps and Level 2.
- Custom maps are currently in development from some of the members of our community. If you're interested in creating your own map, please reach out to me via Discord for more information.
- False walls have been made more obvious, without the use of cheats. The cheat is likely to be removed. You've been warned!
And then the smaller things. If you're still mid-playthrough you may want to avoid some of these, as they're a bit spoilery.
- Added Welcome to Wonderland sign.
- Switched HI in the synonym room to its "correct" location, forward-left as you enter.
- Split Runt:Turn and Runt:Return to separate cubes.
- Replaced Teacher:Substitute with Spoon:Fork.
- Replaced You:Ewe with Ewe:You.
- Replaced Toucan:Bird, Two:Toucan, Primate:Mammal, and Mate:Primate in the blue room.
- Removed unused snowman painting from extending blue hallway area.
- Scaled GUI to better fit extra wide screens. 1920x1080 is my default, but it should degrade more elegantly for extra wide screens now.
- Moved several panels slightly higher to maintain consistency throughout the map. LIES, HIDDEN, TRACE, STEADY, TENACIOUS, and both of the panels outside the purple room.
- Fixed a bug where getting an answer wrong would keep your answer displayed until you started your next guess.
- Switched OBSERVANT *non* achievement panel past Wonderland to SHARP.
- Reduced size of text in the text entry fields on very large answers.
- Added shortcut from Pilgrim Room to heteronym room (The Seeker).
I think that's it for now! I know it's been a bit since the last update; I am full speed ahead on Level 2. Never ask a programmer how long something will take - we're always wrong - but I'm happy at how it's coming together, and I'm looking forward to getting it in front of everyone.
Thanks!
Brenton
Update - A Better Player Experience
Hi all! Excited to bring you some improvements to the player experience, focused mainly on the early game.
- Bulldozed and rebuilt the Crossroads area, what I call internally the Shuffle Room, near yellow. Now if you turn left, it's not totally pointless!
- Fixed that ugly jump issue. I think. If there's still problems with it, now they're different problems.
- Added something for the end game. Not much of a reward for it yet though, so be prepared for that. The journey is its own reward!
- Removed some more hidden backside puzzles that gate progression.
- Couple changes to a couple of purples in and near the gemstones room.
- Couple changes to the LOOK room to make one of its worst puzzles more bearable.
- Updated our trusty game engine to its newest stable version. Ironically, this is the biggest potential cause for instability. Let me know if you have problems!
- Added some more signs, to help players find their way.
- Added a challenge room puzzle, see if you can do it without the hints on the back!
- Rubikium was the first to solve the Giant Floating Cubes puzzle, nicely done! They've been immortalized in Champion's Rest.
- Edited end game credits to reflect work done by some of our guest puzzle designers.
That's it for now! I'm feeling pretty good about the current place the game is in and will be slowing down on updates to Level 1. Aside from bugfixes, I'll be shifting attention to Level 2.
Thanks for playing!
Leaderboards! And! Loading Screens!
- Implemented Steam Leaderboards for Levels 1 and 2. Obviously, Level 2's leaderboard is hidden right now. Steam rate limits leaderboard score uploads so your score will only upload once you leave the level, and should only keep your highest.
- Added a Load Screen! Finally! This was the oldest requested change for the game, except for deleting all traces of it.
Thanks everyone!
Content Update - October 2022
Hi all! Pleased to announce a substantial set of updates and additions to Lingo - Level 1. Many thanks to our awesome community for their input, efforts, and energy. It's been an AMAZING month for Lingo!
*New Stuff*
- New mid-sized midgame room, codename Ceiling Room. You'll know it when you see it.
- New small-sized endgame room, codename Smiley Room.
- New small-sized endgame room, codename Hangry Room.
- New large-sized endgame room, codename The Lab. Getting here is a little painful.
- Expanded Challenge Room. If you ace the test, you're not properly tested.
- Nine New Achievements. Go for it, you overachievers!
- New Mastery Panels. Still not sure how many!
*Updated Stuff*
- Performance tweaks. Performance continues to be a source of much pain and frustration, but the fixes here should help.
- Persistent settings. Settings now save to disk so you don't need to update them every time you play.
- False walls mode is now properly referred to as a cheat.
- Clip View will reduce the distance you can see, but doesn't seem to make any difference on my machine. I'd leave it off unless you have a weaker GPU.
- Discord button in the main menu.
To celebrate the new achievements, I'm starting a new leaderboard for this "season." Once you've gotten all challenges completed, send a screenshot of your complete achievement list from Steam to Verifications Screenshots to get added to the leaderboard.
Thanks all and happy puzzling!
Content Update
Changes:
- Game price permanently reduced. Thanks to everyone for their support!
- Added the Hall of Fame to the Champion's Room, immortalizing the first three players to earn the title of The Master.
- Added a few signs to help players locate some obscure content.
- Added a new hint mode: show false walls. This will recolor hidden passages in the game so they are easier to find. I actually strongly recommend not playing with this mode enabled unless you've made it decently far into the game and have gotten stuck. This mode breaks immersion in a couple of places and is probably not necessary with the signs but, you know, I had already built it, so, might as well let you decide that! You'll need to enable the first hint mode and then reload the settings screen to see it. Even the options menu in this game is sneaky.
- Added a new midgame-tier blue room.
- Added a new midgame-tier black room, with special thanks to my new friend Naps. Search near the hedge maze for these new areas.
- Added two new puzzles in the early game black room. If you have already completed this room and the associated achievement panel, it should stay completed (for purposes of mastery), but will display a 2 until you solve them both.
- Added another endgame panel or two. Or three. I'm not good at keeping track of them!
- Fixed issues where some of the labels were too long for their panels.
- Fixed a bug where panels that were correctly solved with letters ending in WAS or D would move you in that direction after they triggered completion. Some puzzles were just too exciting for the keyboard to handle!
Thanks everyone for the kind words, the positive reviews, and the support for the game. There's still space for another area or two and I intend to fill it out once I land on a good use for it.
Update
- Scoreboard puzzle was sometimes unsolvable. That one hurt.
- Visual jumps in two sections of hallway. This was actually something I fixed before, but in the wrong place, causing two problems instead of one. #development
- The clock room had lost one of its blocks. It made the rest of us lose one of our marbles.
- The paneled room allowed you to escape before completing the game. That's literally the opposite of what a paneled room should be doing.
- Rainbow hallway achievement pre-emptively achievable by excessive jumping. Not anymore, excessive jumpers.
- Scoreboard was duplicating your solved count when loading, dropping to the menu, and reloading. So people were seeing scores that exceeded the numbers of puzzles in the game, and thinking I had made way more game than I had. But don't worry, there's still a lot of game.
- That paneled room? Now it saves your progress. It's like I barely tested that one at all.
- The gallery was brick-able. Should be fully de-bricked.
If you encountered any of these issues, I apologize, but I'm also a little proud of you. None of these are easy to get to, and this game is pretty tough. If you encounter any other problems during your playthrough, please reach out.
Twelve Days of Christmas
It only comes once a year - the Winter Sale kicks off today! Lingo is too new to participate, but I still want to get in on the festivities.
To celebrate, I am giving away one free key each day until Dec 31. Anyone interested should email giveaway@lingothegame.com - one entry per person per day. Duplicate entries (from the same day) will be deleted and blacklisted, sorry.
Lingo Grandmasters
I also want to take a moment to introduce the Lingo Grandmasters contest.
I will immortalize within the game the first ten people or teams who earn the title of The Master, as well as the first who solve a few secret challenges I've sprinkled throughout. If you think you've solved a secret challenge, please send me a picture of your solution. Happy hunting!
Update
Move with WASD
Overwhelmingly the greatest dislike in Lingo (besides the infamous Hedge Maze) involved the control structure. Controls have been revamped, and the new controls are reflected in the Controls page under the New Game menu. Here's a breakdown:
1. Walk with WASD, look with Mouse
2. When you light up a puzzle panel, press ENTER to begin Solve Mode (it adds a little border to tell you when you're in solve mode).
3. If you want to move on, just press ENTER again to exit solve mode. Solve mode automatically closes when you get the answer right.
Assistance Mode - Length Hinting
Assistance Modes are disabled by default, but you can go to the Settings page to enable them. This assistance mode will tell you if you're wrong when you've entered the number of letters of the correct answer. For example, if you typed in "BW" into the first puzzle panel you encounter, the BW would flash red and then clear itself. As with all puzzles, spaces are irrelevant to Length Hinting.
Thanks for reading and happy puzzling!