Hey everyone! After 3 days of work I finally got it finished, my second Ludum Dare game! :D Neural is my first puzzle game.

Controls, important!!!

Click on the box with the triangle to launch the simulation into action. Click and drag on dots to create connections between them. Right-click to remove connections

Development process

Day 1: The first idea I had was to make a game in which you had to organize a power grid connecting power nodes to keep a city "alive". After coding up nodes and connections I stopped and thought about the idea for a second and came to the conclusion that it was too big to create in 3 days without burning myself out completely.

Day 2: I came up with a second idea and it was to create some sort of neural connection between 2 points and have some sort of logic gates to complicate that. I continued work and liked the idea of the game being inside someone's brain. At the end of the second day I didn't like the gameplay that much so I scrapped that idea too.

Day 3: Final day, no real gameplay, what am I going to do? I was thinking some sort of physics game, because I had an entire engine worth of physics at my disposal. I came up with this. I scrapped a lot of code, created some gameplay and levels, stitched an intro and an outro to it and I kind of rushed the project in the end. That's why there are only a few levels :( I'm happy with the end result though!

The theme is incorporated in two ways Story-wise: The player is hooked up to this machine that gives control to one's neurons. If they cannot create connections, they will experience 'minor side effects'. Gameplay-wise: I didn't have time to create a destruction effect to the triangle :D but the point was to destroy it if it didn't reach the goal node.

What did I learn?

Good gameplay is extremely important. Before starting development, think about your gameplay thoroughly and whether it is entertaining. This time I struggled with creating good gameplay. Puzzle-games take quite a bit of time to create, especially good ones.