Splines 'n Shapes by SharkWithLasers
Adjust the loop to get all the shapes in this abstract puzzle game!
Make sure to gather the shapes in order (triangle -> square -> pentagon -> etc)! And make sure to return back to the starting triangle (in the same loop cycle!)
Hope you all enjoy! And I'd definitely appreciate your feedback!
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builds: https://sharkwithlasers.itch.io/splines-n-shapes
source code: https://github.com/SharkWithLasers/ld47_stuckinaloop
Blog Post!!! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/splines-n-shapes/the-making-of-splines-n-shapes-big-ol-post-1
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Controls:
Click and Drag control points to adjust the loop!
(Esc to exit the application)
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PUZZLE SOLUTION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieoemXV6vnc
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Tools Used:
- Unity (Shapes, ScriptableObjectArchitecture, DOTween)
- Reaper (Synth1, Stock Plugins)
Extra shoutouts to the Shapes Unity asset. Really carried me here.
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macOS instructions:
If you get a "This Application can't be opened" error message, go to terminal and type in:
chmod +x /path/to/macsplinenshapesvx_xx.app/Contents/MacOS/*
(where /path/to/ is the path to the downloaded application)
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Changelog:
2020-10-05: - linux version is up (with some audio balancing) - Mac build is up (with a bit more support for thinner aspect ratios)
2010-10-09: - Fixed an issue where targets would sometimes fail to trigger when touched by the orb in low FPS scenarios.
2020-10-17 (v1.02): - Fixed an issue where control points would be hard to click when overlapping a target shape.
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Ratings
| Overall | 6th | 4.31⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 4th | 4.29⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 7th | 4.5⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 11th | 4.49⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 41th | 4.21⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 3th | 4.41⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 299th | 2.543⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 19th | 4.115⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 70🗳️ | 47🗨️ |
Nice to see someone using Shapes, I was just thinking about getting it soon myself. :slight_smile:
And Shapes is awesome! Definitely couldn't have made this game without it!
Very nice
Thank you for this entry! :-)
- great use of simple graphics
- good color choices
- audio works well
- improvements needed: [] (programmer joke for can't find anything to improve)
@hermitao - Thanks for the feedback! The order of the shapes is based on the number of sides the shape has (so triangle -> square -> pentagon -> etc ...). It seems that there needs to be more indication of the order. (perhaps I could use color, or dots/numbers?)
@ everyoneelse - Thanks for the feedback! It means a lot!
very cool idea
The levels themselves were surprisingly tricky and puzzely and very satisfying to play.
Totally fits a theme.
Thank you for the Linux version!
Soooo beautiful, amazing audio, genuinely fun puzzle, perfectly on-theme, really well executed!
I like how I became more aware of the symmetry properties of the Bezier curve, as I could always just start solving each puzzle at any point in the curve. I also liked how my conceptualization of the directionality of the curve evolved over the game--at first it seemed like an important thing to be aware of, while at the end it was closer to, "put the point that's first in the loop at the first shape". :smile: I suppose the game sort of makes you think about how curves work. The nice properties that curves have become more obvious as you begin to develop systematic ways to solve the puzzles.
I think looping the game instead of ending it makes sense, although I thought it made have been a nice "final moment" to have the game end after it goes back to three dots and you send them through the single triangle again.
The only other thing is that, sometimes it seemed like the dot should have connected with the shapes and it didn't? It seemed like maybe the extra speed the dot got would sometimes slightly affect its range where it would hit the shapes? But I could be wrong. It only seemed to happen on one puzzle so my perception might just be tripping me up.
Overall I'd say this is the best entry I've seen so far. Takes a good, simple concept and executes it beautifully. :smile:
@honey-pony - thanks for the feedback! One thing I noticed about this game is that people were able to get a very good intuition of how control points affect a curve pretty quickly! I hope that it could be applied to situations outside this game (not sure what all the other real world use cases of splines are though lol).
Also, glad you made it to the end! It looping back to the start is kind of a joke on theme (the levels themselves loop hah). But yes, I agree that some payoff at the end would have been nice.
As for the dot missing, the two things I can think of are:
1. the dot travelled past the whole shape between two frames (this could especially be the case if the fps is low...and if the dot is moving fast)
2. the loop invalidates itself after one revolution. So there might be the case that you nudged the loop so that the triangle is placed after its original spot.
It's probably both hahah.
@ everyoneelse - Thank you for all the feedback and kind words. It's much appreciated
realy cool consept.
@duke - thanks! Totally reasonable that the game got stale for you. I hoped to add more mechanics but ran out of time. I'm hoping that exploring new mechanics can help keep engagement up.
@overlook-studios - thank you! It's much appreciated!
@lombax - glad you made it to the end! It does reset to the beginning (a bit of a metajoke on the "Stuck in a Loop" theme :sweat_smile:)
I was going to say a have a pretty decent laptop, so I don't think I was generally having a low framerate.
I honestly only encountered that bug once so I'm not sure I could recreate it even on the original version... if there was some specific thing you thought I should try I would be happy to do so.
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/767497194?t=3h44m41s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
This one activated all of my pleasure centers. The colors, the sounds, the satisfying puzzles, it's the whole package. Very nicely done with this one. It's easily one of my favorites!
One of the best Compo entry!
Minor quality of life thing would be to have some way of visually associating the control points with their order. I found it pretty difficult in the later puzzles to figure out whether orangey point would go to greenish point or the other way around. A minor hindrance, to be sure, but still worth noting. I understand that the muted colors are sort of part of the aesthetic though, so I am not sure what the best way to handle this would be. Perhaps just a way to reset the curve (to a known ordering a position) would suffice, or even automatically doing that between levels. Not sure...
I think that resetting the curve would be a good addition. And I agree that it isn't the most intuitive to know how colors are ordered, I think difficulty arises from the fact that we are dealing with a loop.
If it were just a curve going in one direction, then a 2 color gradient could be used to show order. But because of the loop, the gradient needs to loop back to the starting color as well. A 2 color gradient would be especially bad in this case because the colors on the loop would be mirror (e.g. red -> blue -> red). Because of this, I decided to use a 3-color gradient. (found this one online: https://uigradients.com/#Atlas ).
I think that perhaps numbering the control points, (and perhaps numbering the target shapes) would be the most direct way of showing ordering. (Though I still think I'd need to figure out the best way to show that the last control points connects to the first). Perhaps there's a way to number these shapes that doesn't detract from the aesthetic I'm going for?
So I would try to find and/or create a gradient where hue is monotonically increasing.
OR just do the simple thing and simply cycle the hue itself rather than use a gradient between arbitrary fixed colors. There's a chance that may appear a bit too "rainbow"-y, though. You can play around with it.
Or maybe the control points themselves could just have small "tails" and "heads" that point to the previous and next one, instead of simply being circles.
I like these sorts of ideas better than placing numbers on the points, as that sort of goes against the minimalist aesthetic you have.
And I also agree that there should be multiple things can signify order (instead of color alone). Controls points pointing to other control points could be a solution. Another idea is to have a faint line from the control point to the place on the loop it most affects.
So many options... seems like the best way to go about is to implement them all and see which works best!
- A reverse direction button, for those times when you accidentally placed your nodes in the wrong order.
- Have lines to show which point is "closest" to the same colored node, also because I lose my nodes super often.
Oh and not sure if that's the way you're meant to do it, but I liked the fact the player was forced to use movement on further levels rather than just statically place points in the right places.