Cosmic Layers by Snowflower

[raw]
made by Snowflower for LD29 (JAM)
'Cosmic Layers'

Story:
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You have been placed in the cosmic layers simulation to test your ability to spatially navigate an unstable environment under low lighting conditions and collect the 44 designated blue bits for reallocation.

Please proceed to the red sys admin bit if you wish to reboot the time trial simulation for a fresh start if you wish to test your speed at completing the task at hand.

Teleporters are available to expedite travel, and exiting through the bottom on the simulation to teleport is a valid option.

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Controls: WASD+Mouse+ Spacebar to jump, for navigation, ESC to undo mouse cursor lock in the application, you can click on the screen to lock and hide the cursor again.

If you click and hold the right mouse button you can fps style zoom to get a better look at distant areas before you take the leap or decide to navigate your way there

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Dev Notes:
This is my first attempt at making a first person world navigation 'freerunning' type game.

Instead of having elevators or vertically moving platforms I limited myself to building an environment with a limited number of frictionless object types that scaled horizontally or had a vertical passage that interlocked closed that you could run over quickly, or fall through intentionally to find the 'blue bit' items.
I gave the player mid-air movement to an extent to make some of the more vertical section more fluid to navigate and give the player some feeling they could course correct and exit some of the layered 'interlocking donut' platform stacks.

I totally blew off most of the 1st day doing pixel art for something else I cancelled before I decided to make this instead, so this is a 'jam' only game.

And lastly,
All feedback is appreciated, thanks for taking time to play it !
You can leave feedback to me directly on twitter at @christinacoffin , or here in the comments section.
Thanks!
-Christina 'Snow Flower' Coffin

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Hardware Note: This is a graphically intensive game since it uses alot of dynamic lighting+physics for visual cues + particles to create a certain style and mood. Looking at doing a post-jam version and optimizing it a bit more.
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Platform Release Notes:
Web player version tested on chrome on PC+MAC, most accessible and playable version, may be slightly slower than native version.

If you have an issue or bug, please specify the platform version you tried.

Made a Linux version release, I have no way to test this, please let me know if it works or not. I can look into setting up a linux test machine and make this a future build target for jam games in the future.

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Known Bugs im looking at:

One of my test PC machines loses mouse input control and the player can longer turn and freelook.

A weird issue with windowed mode on the standalone mac version, so the workaround is the current mac version release is fullscreen mode only

Ratings

Coolness 40% 1692
Overall(Jam) 3.70 92
Audio(Jam) 2.39 572
Fun(Jam) 3.30 193
Graphics(Jam) 4.22 90
Humor(Jam) 1.93 594
Innovation(Jam) 3.13 316
Mood(Jam) 3.75 100
Theme(Jam) 2.86 511

Feedback

CrackedP0t
28. Apr 2014 路 21:38 UTC
Linux verision please?
vilya
28. Apr 2014 路 21:59 UTC
Beautiful looking game!
Split82
28. Apr 2014 路 22:20 UTC
Looks really nice and well polished. Good job.
馃帳 Snowflower
28. Apr 2014 路 22:48 UTC
CrackedP0t: Linux build zipped up here for you, let me know if it works since I cant test it . https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14939389/CosmicLayers_Linux/CosmicLayers_LinuxVersion_0.zip
CrackedP0t
29. Apr 2014 路 00:12 UTC
This is an excellent game!
I would say that it would benefit from music.
Definately a candidate for the win, in my opinon.

P.S. Linux works fine, so far as I can tell.
DeathBread
29. Apr 2014 路 01:47 UTC
Wow. Just wow.
olkeencole
29. Apr 2014 路 04:28 UTC
Beautiful game. I want it to last longer!
asotelo94
29. Apr 2014 路 14:23 UTC
You should switch the point lights render mode to important, I had some trouble because they turn off when I moved.
馃帳 Snowflower
29. Apr 2014 路 18:41 UTC
asotelo94: thanks, recently upgraded unity version and didnt realize the pointlights were set to auto and caused this behavior for some people.

Updated all the builds with the fix so you shouldnt have any lighting bugs (uses deferred lighting and 4 lights per pixel in the quality settings)
Clavus
29. Apr 2014 路 20:00 UTC
The visuals are quite nice. The gameplay is ok, but it did feel like it was missing some interesting mechanic to use for moving around.
archaeometrician
29. Apr 2014 路 23:40 UTC
Very beautiful, the graphics are amazing !
benmcnelly
30. Apr 2014 路 16:47 UTC
I really had fun with and probably spent way to long trying to see if I could get to places I wasn't supposed to, lol!
Simon@LD
30. Apr 2014 路 16:49 UTC
Wow, really cool level design and lighting!
perfect victim
01. May 2014 路 16:15 UTC
love the graphics!
GamerTaters
03. May 2014 路 09:37 UTC
Wow! Such a nice looking game. Loved all the shifting geometry. Loved the lighting and particle effects. It all contributed to great mood. I didn't initially realize red was a reset orb, which was unfortunate. Also, music of some kind would have been great addition too. Really impressive work. Very much enjoyed this one. Well done!
SimianLogic
11. May 2014 路 03:26 UTC
Very nice looking, interesting level. Doesn't seem to fit the theme at all, though...

I had to turn my mouse sensitivity way down to play it. Would be nice to have an in-game setting to adjust that.
elefantopia
17. May 2014 路 05:10 UTC
Incredible graphics! Fun to play and enjoyed the floating effect to get to the more difficult spaces.