LudumData

Lock by mahalis

[raw]
made by mahalis for Ludum Dare 59 (COMPO)

You’ve brought the artifact to the confluence of signals: beams from distant stars, aimed with unimaginable precision, bearing secrets from ancient civilizations. It senses their presence in this place, illuminates, invites you to align it and feed the dark mechanisms hidden within. Can you?

Lock is my 19th compo entry, and as always it was a bit of a scramble—got a late start, then lost more hours than I’d like to admit on fighting with quaternions. I’m happy with the result, though! My games are usually more arcade-y than puzzle-y, since I’m not much of a puzzle designer… but this one turned out to be both challenging and (I think) fun, and amenable to procedural generation. There’s still lots of polish I wish I’d gotten to, and I like this enough to consider doing a post-jam version, which may or may not be coming in the next week or so as my brain recovers.

Thanks for reading this far, and I hope you enjoy playing Lock!

How to play

  • The artifact (cuboid) has markings around its corners which indicate the color of signal which that corner responds to.
  • Your goal is to line up the correct corners with the incoming signal lasers.
  • After level 1, floating lenses will appear (the gray cylinders) which change the color of signals that pass through them. You can rotate each layer of lenses independently of the artifact; the currently selected rotatable-thing is marked with a white outline.

Controls

Mouse / keyboard

  • Look around: click and drag
  • Rotate current object: WASD or arrow keys
  • Switch object: Space or Enter

Gamepad (desktop only)

  • Look around: left stick
  • Rotate: right stick or D-pad
  • Switch object: any face button (ABXO, etc.)

Touch (mobile only—doesn’t work on the LD site, use the Itch.io link below)

  • Look around: tap and drag
  • Rotate: buttons at bottom right
  • Switch object: button at bottom left

Development

Lock is built in Godot, like my two previous games Lepidopterology Extreme (LD58) and Happy Circle (another jam). I’m really starting to appreciate it after using Unreal for most of my previous games—it’s lightweight, thoroughly documented, works well on macOS, and exports to the web. Highly recommend it for anyone who’s currently working in a larger engine.

Other tools used: - Houdini (modeling, generating VFX assets) - Blender (setting up light rig to render the IBL from) - my phone and Voice Memos (recording sound effects, mostly of buttons on a DualSense and tapping an old silicone phone case with my finger) - GarageBand (music) - Fork (Git)

I do not use generative AI—should go without saying for the compo, but it seems worth being explicit.

Link https://mahalis.itch.io/lock
Link https://mahalis.itch.io/lock
Link https://mahalis.itch.io/lock
Link https://codeberg.org/mahalis/ld59
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/lock

Ratings

Overall 71th 3.75⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Fun 79th 3.625⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 31th 3.938⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Theme 170th 3.542⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 65th 3.896⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Audio 81th 3.604⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Mood 84th 3.708⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Given 26🗳️ 23🗨️

Feedback

IndigoWolf
Apr 20th · 12:49 UTC
A really well executed idea, I'm not one for puzzle games really, but this has some real potential as a full game in my opinion. Also, looks like you got some very nice shader work going on here, will definitely take a look at them!
SteveOfStevesGames
Apr 20th · 13:05 UTC
Awesome music. Very cool puzzle game. level 13 was hard and i didnt do it in the end.
wo_ri_gou_le
Apr 20th · 13:25 UTC
Got my first couple levels hit by chance, spent some time reasoned the logical rules and ways to solve them, find it actually quite brilliant and interesting, then I beat till Level 12 and there's just too much to swallow, at this point I know how to do it but just too much calculation :cry:

The idea is actually great, if you spend more time adding smoother learning curve it can really become a nice puzzle game, like fixed and fewer axis to start, after people get the basics then offer them full control, then lense and double lense. I mean this is exactly what you've achieved and its good, but just less stiff I guess
goodwayman
Apr 20th · 13:33 UTC
I liked the game. It'd be perfect on mobile devices. It'd be nice if the game had in-game instructions on how to play.
LDJam user 428140
Apr 20th · 13:39 UTC
Really cool puzzle game. I love the idea and agree with others that this would be a great mobile game!
🎤 mahalis
Apr 20th · 13:43 UTC
@indigowolf I always end up doing a bunch of shader work to save myself from having to do UV mapping or animation :sweat_smile: A couple of the ones I’m using here depend on data baked into the mesh vertex colors and normals—for instance the artifact has the corner and “ring” areas marked in the red and green channels respectively, while the sort of ribbony mesh that bursts out of it when you solve one is a copy of the corner/ring geometry with “direction-to-move-while-bursting” baked into its normals. I’m planning to put up a development timelapse thing where you should be able to catch the Houdini graphs involved if you’re curious.

@steveofstevesgames That’s actually farther than I’ve ever gotten… once I verified that the mechanics worked I had to focus on getting the rest of it together. :slight_smile: Thanks for playing!

@wo-ri-gou-le Glad you liked it! Definitely does need more tutorialization—the progression stuff went in in the last ten minutes or so so it is super not tuned. I hope to add some better explanation in a post-jam version.

@goodwayman + @jpat Thanks! I’m amazed it works as well as it does on mobile, honestly. Didn’t have time to even add symbols to the buttons, but I hoped it would be clear enough just from poking at it.
wo_ri_gou_le
Apr 20th · 14:50 UTC
@mahalis You tell me all the levels were made in like ten minutes?! That'd be quite impresive even lol, totally understandable it is good enough as compo
🎤 mahalis
Apr 20th · 15:08 UTC
@wo-ri-gou-le They’re generated at run time from a fixed random seed value—that was working for a while, the last-minute logic was just for the rate at which it adds layers of lenses. I was originally planning to have a couple of curated ones as a tutorial before it handed you off to the randomization… but plans and the compo are always a bit at odds :upside_down:
wo_ri_gou_le
Apr 20th · 15:14 UTC
@mahalis hahaha I see, procedure generation always kind traps when doing compo, it is really black magic when time is so limited, Me personally tend to handcraft things as much as possiable, it's less fun but offers something more solid in the end, with that said you did really good job, it is compo anyway.
Zyertdox
Apr 20th · 16:21 UTC
A really cool idea. It took me a couple of levels to understand how the cube rotates, but once it clicked, everything started to flow really smoothly. The difficulty curve is tuned really well too - in the later levels, when multiple layers of lenses appear, the game becomes quite challenging.
Nordin
Apr 20th · 17:55 UTC
The visuals are very cool, and i like the mechanic
Mr. Flower
Apr 21st · 00:03 UTC
Very nice game, like the visuals, music is nice, very fitting. My brain felt like it was trying to rack a 400lb benchpress this got me thinking, lol. Great puzzle game with some very unique mechanics that didn't make me feel like the only options were to guess every possibility. Great job :D
poddub
Apr 21st · 07:53 UTC
love this end level animation and overall visual style ❤️💚💙
freamdev
Apr 22nd · 19:26 UTC
Really enjoyed this, I'm not sure what is a good solution but took my brain a long while to get used to how the cube work. Some puzzles I just had to spam rotate until it turned the right way even tough I knew what to do the controls fought me :smile:
🎤 mahalis
Apr 23rd · 12:58 UTC
Thanks, all! Glad to hear it’s the right amount of challenging; it’s always hard to gauge difficulty when you’ve been playing the game yourself all weekend. I appreciate that y’all liked the graphics too—that’s always the most fun part to work on so I’m happy that the results are appealing.
LDJam user 383013
Apr 23rd · 17:41 UTC
I give up
7 levels
Too hard...
bentglasstube
Apr 24th · 06:36 UTC
This is a fun little puzzle game. The music loop is a bit short but it fits the game well and didn't get annoying while playing. The levels are well made and the early difficult ramp seemed good. After level 7 it wasn't clear if there were going to be any new mechanics so it felt a little repetitive. The visuals are really nice. Great work.
Sharky3188
Apr 24th · 13:52 UTC
A fun puzzle game, really simple concept, but executed well. The visuals all look nice for the purpose of the game, I could imagine this being added as mini game for some sort of cyber hacking game. Great work.
CaptainDreamcast
Apr 24th · 15:14 UTC
Made it all the way to level 16! It gets super challenging once the second set of outer rings gets added, that really pumps up the difficulty. Super fun to figure out the solution, reminds me of a futuristic rubix cube.

![16.png](///raw/a71/9/z/7294d.png)

My best strat in the end was to break it into two steps to first get the colors into position of the signals, then rotate the outer layers until it fits, you can get pretty far with that as long as the initial position was correct (it wasn't on my level 13 and that took me a while to figure out). Super rewarding when it all spun into place after that!

Like I already mentioned, I love the feel of the game as a futuristic rubix cube. The signals were also a nice take on the theme, I liked the signal-changing devices and how they added challenge to the levels in a natural way, you could probably slap a third layer on top of that for some even harder turbo puzzle challenges, heh. I also like the sci-fi look of it with the bright beams and them pulsing in space, it really pops, especially when you play it in a bit of a darkened room. Very well done, great game!
CoastersPaul
Apr 24th · 15:35 UTC
Ah, procedural, that explains it - impressive on the one hand, but sometimes I'd really struggle with a level and then get a way easier seeming one right after, which felt weird. Got to Level 16! Pretty good puzzle, will say sometimes I couldn't figure out what to do and I "accidentally" solved it mid moving things around; other times I saw the solution but struggled rotating correctly. (Not sure if an additional control for rotating around the direction of the face you're looking at would help, instead of having to move the camera, rotate, and move back, or that'd end up taking away some of the point of the puzzle.)
Bumble
Apr 24th · 19:56 UTC
I just learned that my spacial awareness is not as good as I thought it was :sweat_smile:

Really short but sweet concept and well executed!
Kabbi
Apr 24th · 20:01 UTC
My brain hurts! It's an awesome puzzle!
DJTequila
Apr 24th · 22:04 UTC
Really cool spatial puzzle! The colors and design make it really intuitive to start playing without much instruction. I got to level 12 but I might have gotten lucky since it does become quite difficult. That said, it was a nice brain workout. Overall well done!
xotraz
Apr 25th · 13:30 UTC
Nice, you made a very intuitive puzzle game thanks to colors, even a none shape rotator like me was able to finish a few levels.
I see you used procedural generation, like my own puzzle game, which has some pitfalls, but mostly work.
vidarn
Apr 26th · 15:12 UTC
Very cool! Super polished and clean. It had a real "demoscene" vibe to me, which I really enjoyed.

I can understand getting knee deep in in quaternions making this, haha :laughing: But the end result was great. Tumbling the camera around and twisting the objects to solve the puzzles was very satisfying.

I'm color blind so I had difficulty with differentiating some of the colors. To my delight, it was still very playable and I enjoyed it a lot!

![Screenshot 2026-04-26 171042.png](///raw/ce7/z/72c23.png)
Shoalmuse
Apr 27th · 07:11 UTC
Holy, this is fantastic! A unique take on puzzle game with great graphics and music. Great to see a compo entry that uses Houdini; I'd love to hear how you use it and even see a timelapse if you end up putting one up!
Fupi
Apr 27th · 23:54 UTC
I agree with you that this is a game worth continuing! You had a very cohesive, intuitive idea for a puzzler and you just went with it. The idea and execution are both superb! I did start getting a little tired around level 10, I thought to myself how many levels are there??? xD I had to tap out at level 16 but I could have kept going. I'm glad I read the comments so I learned that the levels are procedurally generated, so I'm happy I didn't miss anything! If there's one single thing I can say, is that pressing space to cycle between objects felt a little weird, I always just clicked them out of instinct, but in the end it didn't bother me much. It's a really solid game all around!
deformhead
May 01st · 21:22 UTC
Very nice!

I'm also a puzzle game fan, so this game got my interest right away!

Great job! :clap: