Plane View by Lucas Tiridath

[raw]
made by Lucas Tiridath for LD26 (COMPO)
If you have a moment, why not allow your conciousness to be transferred into a 2D nano particle so that you seek for the valuable shiny particles your employer needs/wants?

The aim of the game is simple. Move to and touch the particle of the type you're shown at the start of each level, whilst avoiding the large round dangerous particles that will kill you. There are only five levels as well. How hard can it be?

The slight snag is that as you are a 2D being, you essentially view the world in 1D, that is, a single line of pixels. If you hadn't guessed yet, that is how this game links to the theme. How much more minimalist can you get that throwing out two of the three spacial dimensions??

You can move around using the arrow keys or WASD. You have two different views on the game (I advise using the top one). See the screenshots for my hand drawn explanation of what the different views in the game are.

This game was written in Dart and deployed to Javascript so it runs in HTML5. It works far and away the best in Chrome so if you have Chrome installed, please use that. I've seen it work in modern versions of Firefox, Opera and IE (I know for a fact it falls over in Safari). However only the Chrome version has sound and due to how much faster it runs, the Chrome version also does collision detections better and gives you a considerably longer field of vision in first person view which will make the game easier.

Anyhow there you have it! I hope you enjoy playing it :). It's been a great weekend as always and I look forwards to trying out all your games over the coming weeks. I'll probably get around to doing a post mortem some time tomorrow in which I'll no doubt have a few things to say about working in Dart (both good and bad!).

Ratings

Coolness 63% 3
Overall 3.00 721
Audio 2.31 781
Fun 2.50 980
Graphics 2.68 830
Humor 2.54 364
Innovation 4.00 53
Mood 2.73 713
Theme 3.97 181

Feedback

jerrre
29. Apr 2013 · 11:02 UTC
Nice concept, did not fully understand what I was doing tho'
Split82
29. Apr 2013 · 11:04 UTC
Very interesting. A little too hard in the beginning.
cmayhem
29. Apr 2013 · 11:08 UTC
Very interesting concept and quite fun once you get the hang of it. It is rather repetive though and soon enough gets boring.
The graphics and audio could use some sprucing up to give it better mood.
timtipgames
29. Apr 2013 · 12:49 UTC
This was a really interesting game to play :) I can see the effort you put into your explanations, the introduction and the game itself. It get's a bit repetitive after a while, but the time I spent wrapping my head around the concept was well spent :)
Kiwiboi
29. Apr 2013 · 16:29 UTC
Cool game, I liked the feel and atmosphere even though the sound got annoying pretty fast ;D
Merkoth
29. Apr 2013 · 16:36 UTC
Cool idea, but a little confusing. Really fits the theme and the concept is very interesting.
orangepascal
29. Apr 2013 · 17:52 UTC
interesting concept, altho I didn't get very far in the game ;(
CMaster
29. Apr 2013 · 19:42 UTC
Quite liked it, really clever idea.

Only real problem is that the starting view really is too small. You just have to flail around randomly for the first couple of minutes on every level hoping to hit some other particles.

Also, after a few levels the game stopped responding to W and S, and no clicking on things or tabbing fixed it.
🎤 Lucas Tiridath
29. Apr 2013 · 20:10 UTC
Hey thanks for the comments everyone.

@CMaster: The issue is probably not that the keys are not responding but rather that you simply just can't see that you are moving. The first level is so small that the camera remains static and therefore you appear to be moving about the screen. However as the later levels are larger than the game window, once you get far enough from the sides, the camera will start moving with you to keep to centred. If you keep them held down, you will eventually each and edge.
MartianWatts
30. Apr 2013 · 07:02 UTC
Very hard to understand
comrad_gremlin
30. Apr 2013 · 16:26 UTC
At first I thought "Wtf, how is it possible to find something", but I glad I kept going and eventually it turned out pretty fun :) Great idea.
rwos
30. Apr 2013 · 16:54 UTC
Wow, this is fantastic! Not that it matters, but I think you got the first-person perspective slightly wrong. What you have is the first person view in a two-dimensional world (dimension one is left <-> right, dimension two is into-screen <-> out-of-screen). The particle in this game would have a single pixel as its first-person view (i.e. the only axis goes "into" the screen). Then, when you team up with other particles, the first person view would get wider.

Nonetheless, this is one of my absolute favorites so far. Nice visuals, nice backstory, well-fitting sound effects - great work!
Ofursnati
30. Apr 2013 · 21:55 UTC
Good game. Hard to get the little pixel increasing pixels but that really makes a difference.
KunoNoOni
01. May 2013 · 02:37 UTC
That was wickedly interesting. Good use of theme.
vgcharlienash
01. May 2013 · 16:19 UTC
Quite hard! But interesting concept. :)
Salamander3
02. May 2013 · 14:01 UTC
Very original idea, difficult but rewarding gameplay. Found myself several times saying 'jeez, I can't see a god damn thi-THERE IT IS GET IT'. Not sure the first person view helped much though. I enjoyed playing, however.
Per
04. May 2013 · 19:01 UTC
Very good idea!
At first I thought that it was to much text but when I understood the idea it was great.
DaveDobson
06. May 2013 · 00:25 UTC
Really interesting idea. I found the bottom (perspective view) pretty hard to use, and I had trouble meeting up with companion particles and widening my field of view. I did enjoy wandering around, although many of my deaths seemed random (although a few times I saw what killed me and tried to run away). For the areas that are bigger than the main screen, it's pretty hard to get your bearings as far as where you are in the world. The backstory/legal disclaimer and your drawings are very fun.
Xanjos
11. May 2013 · 17:05 UTC
A rather interesting game concept. I like how the 1D view in the bottom acts like some sort of radar.
oskardevelopment
12. May 2013 · 07:45 UTC
Fun and interesting touch to introduce "science" in a game! Was a bit hard to understand that the goal was to find the stuff with spikes rather than avoiding them. Spikes usually are scary in games. :)
Brassawiking
19. May 2013 · 15:44 UTC
Nice graphics with the energy readings!