I am getting achievements inside the game, but they don't seem to synchronize with the achievements in Steam.

Do I wait for an update, or what's the idea?

The store page actually doesn't list achievements as a feature at all. I hope that's work in progress as it would be silly to not have Steam achievements at all.

Correct. Steam Achievements will likely be an addition sometime soon. No ETA on this yet.

UPDATE: Steam Achievements will be in the fixed version, coming in mid-March.

In leven 15 (Do Laundry) the bird cage sometimes gets tilted.

Originally posted by DavidBFox:

Correct. Steam Achievements will likely be an addition sometime soon. No ETA on this yet.

Thanks. Can't have an official game without 'chieves. ;-)

First off, game looks nice. Now three things, 1. Mouse recognition is beyond terrible, I have to click 20 times on a object in the hope of something happening and often only get hints when I instead want to pull or move it 2. No music? Silly music would make this so much more fun. 3. Game crashes after trying to leave it.

Originally posted by gnoerpf.gunther:

First off, game looks nice. Now three things, 1. Mouse recognition is beyond terrible, I have to click 20 times on a object in the hope of something happening and often only get hints when I instead want to pull or move it 2. No music? Silly music would make this so much more fun. 3. Game crashes after trying to leave it.

Thanks for the complement about the game looking nice. For your other issues:

1. You shouldn't have to click multiple times to get something to happen. Clicking on an object should bring up hints for that object. If you don't get hints, it would help to know which object you were having problems with. To pick up an object, though, you click and hold for about a second until the glow appears around the object, then drag it to where you want it to be. Note that when moving objects from the toolbox, you can just click and drag them upwards without having to click and hold (as a shortcut).

2. We had music running throughout the game at one point and 99.9% of everyone said "ENOUGH!" You must be in that 0.1% that would like it. If we get more comments from people saying they'd like music running throughout (maybe with an option to turn it off) we'll add it to our To Do list.

3. For this one, can you please give us more information? How are you trying to leave it? What's your system configuration (OS version, etc.)

UPDATE: We've tweaked the UI so picking up objects should be easier/faster, coming in mid-March.

Originally posted by DavidBFox:

1. You shouldn't have to click multiple times to get something to happen. Clicking on an object should bring up hints for that object. If you don't get hints, it would help to know which object you were having problems with. To pick up an object, though, you click and hold for about a second until the glow appears around the object, then drag it to where you want it to be. Note that when moving objects from the toolbox, you can just click and drag them upwards without having to click and hold (as a shortcut).

I have had problems with that as well, even inside the tutorial. Your explanation here is much clearer. Also, the "tap and hold"makes sense for tablets, but on a PC, the mouse pointer is usually accurate enough so the 1 second hold shouldn't be needed. Please consider eliminatiing it.

Re: the music, the tried method seems to be to allow the user to set the music volume (all the way to off) in the options. The music that does play from time to time is sufficiently silly. ;-)

Additionally PCs usually have two mouse buttons, so the two actions would probably be better off being mapped to separate buttons to eliminate the need to hold any mouse buttons all together.

Originally posted by flesk:

Additionally PCs usually have two mouse buttons, so the two actions would probably be better off being mapped to separate buttons to eliminate the need to hold any mouse buttons all together.

Right mouse button: Pan
Scroll wheel: Zoom
Left click: Hint
Left click&drag: move objects
The inventory has "arrows" to click on, the "swipe" mechanic isn't really needed for it (but right-mouse panning on the inventory could still move it).

Thanks mendel and flesk. There's a bug I'm aware of in the tutorial where clicking on the Albanian Ook's head to move him out of the toolbox doesn't seem to work, but doing so within the game does. Clicking on his body always works. That's on the list to be fixed. Are there any other places in the tutorial where clicking doesn't seem to work?

And yes, I've been thinking of an alternative to tap-hold for desktop. The issue is that there are three functions we have to support: Hints, moving the view of the room around, and moving objects. One of the main reasons we have tap-hold is so that if you try dragging the camera around and happen to click on an object, you'd inadvertently move that object instead of the view.

Open to suggestions here! We could let the player configure these. For example:

Left button - pick up and move objects
Right button - hint
Both buttons together - move camera view

But I think that would be even more awkward for most players.

Regarding the music, I'm adding that to our list for a future version.

EDIT: I see your suggestions, mendel, thanks. Could work.

Originally posted by DavidBFox:

One of the main reasons we have tap-hold is so that if you try dragging the camera around and happen to click on an object, you'd inadvertently move that object instead of the view.

Well, right now if I try moving an object and don't hold long enough, I inadvertantly drag the camera instead of the object, so you've traded one annoyance for another. ;-P

In many 3D games, holding the right mouse button enables "mouse look", so a lot of PC players will already be used to this mechanic. (Though you may wish to introduce an option to invert the mouse axis for this, because then dragging right would mean "look right". It's easy to get used to, though, and there's no real harm done since feedback is instant.)

I can say this game is really different, trying to reconstruct these Rube Goldberg devices from just the parts alone is a real brain-bender different from the more sandbox-like "incredible machine", and the puzzles have been well chosen (so far as I've played).

there also seems to be an issue with clicks not being registed for placeing string and belts when the center point of the highlight circle is behind another piece of the same object

mendel, true, though I'd rather be annoyed with a camera move than a carefully placed object. :-) Well, actually, I'd rather not be annoyed at all!

Good suggestion on "mouse look".

And thanks for your comment on Rube Works vs. sandbox-like games. I know that TIM-style games are pretty common, but that wasn't the experience I was going for. My background is creating graphic adventure games, so I wanted Rube Works to feel more like that type of puzzle solving rather than a pure physics puzzler. And since so many of the interactions rely on an animal responding to an event, physics puzzler gameplay wouldn't be appropriate. I wanted to go back to the source of all these games and take inspiration from Rube himself, and let that drive gameplay.

Originally posted by ComfortablyNumb:

there also seems to be an issue with clicks not being registed for placeing string and belts when the center point of the highlight circle is behind another piece of the same object

Yes, that's possible if the collider of an object is between the camera and its string attach point. We took pains to fix most of those issues, but if you have trouble with a specific string attach point, please let me know and I'll take a look. Knowing how the scene is positioned at the time would help too. Thanks!