Router Wilds by Brainoid
Dive into the wilds of a router, where signals twist through radial pathways and only a clean connection can power your weapon. Rotate and align the network on the fly, turning every path into a fight for survival.

This game was made through a Hot Potato Challenge! Five developers passed it between each other with zero communication. Because of scheduling chaos, we rotated frequently, and some of us ended up taking multiple shorter turns. We recorded the whole process and turned it into a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPMFWFSvN9E

CONTROLS
WASD : Move
LMB: Shoot
LMB: Pick up and drop objects
Scroll Wheel (or Q/E): Rotate picked up object
| Link | https://brainoid.itch.io/router-wilds |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/router-wilds |
Ratings
| Overall | 106th | 4.031⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 105th | 3.906⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 36th | 4.203⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 37th | 4.469⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 285th | 4.016⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 107th | 4.048⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 458th | 2.673⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 435th | 3.613⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 19🗨️ |
- Great music
- Good visual polish (give a raise to whoever made that level transition)
- Level design feels varied
- main mechanic is interesting
- level 2 felt harder than level 3
- the rotating levels are a bit awkward to control (100% skill issue, i just would have waited until later to avoid early frustration) Maybe both the player and the mouse should rotate together with the floor, in the spinning part of the level? Main issue is it made it awkward to position objects accurately, or to stay in the narrow beam of a signal to prepare for shooting.
- the lock icon on the signal source appearing before explaining that there can be unlocked signal sources gave me 2.5 seconds of confusion that i then moved past. no big deal who cares
- thanks for the self destruct button, preventing softlocks
- when strong signals overlap, the colors invert, which i assume was intended to be destructive interference cancelling out the signals? but signal strength appears to just add up. maybe i'm too much of a nerrrd
- putting a mirror right behind a signal source, to receive both the source signal and the reflection, doesnt seem to increase the maximum range of the signal, but it greatly improves signal strength. so it doesn't help with puzzle solving, but it lets you have faster than full firing speed in a large area far from the signal source. This feels fine to me, i can't tell if it was intended or not. Mirrors repeating a signal amplified like this also repeat the effect, which in the right context, can flood a level with large areas of high signal strength. If this was intentional, i would have made a level that teaches you this, and then levels that exploit it on purpose.
- some of the saws move/stop based on a receiver being powered. a way to visualize what they are connected to, or, just highlighting that they are starting and stopping with visuals would be nice. i found myself noticing very late "oh, those react", since it happens away from what i am currently doing. but this wasn't a big deal, your decisions dont change based on if the saw is moving or not, you're still just trying to avoid it.
- wow the enemies charge you at mach 10
- you can get noclipped out of the uwu level
- solving a puzzle and then getting oneshot by the enemies in the central room is a very *Fun* feeling
i am very impressed you managed to make a totally playable and quite polished game with no communication. if you didn't tell me, i would have assumed this is a "regular" jam entry. Good job

The main mechanics took me a bit to get used to, but it was really fun when I got the hang of it. Also, I loved the Outer Wilds spin you guys did with the game name lol.

one question, what do you mean by some other form of feedback on the signals?
Like we have the music getting muffled when you are far away from the signal source or completely out of the signal zone. But I'm confused about what you said "something to help with the reflections".
Thanks again!
Lots of innovative and unique ideas. I like being able to grad things around with the mouse while moving the character, and those objects dropping in place when line-of-sight breaks, but a ghosty version still following your ccursor is a super neat mechanic. The signal strengh idea is something I've also not seen before and adds an interesting aspect to the top-down shooter.
Thanks for the game!
Super nice! Loved the puzzles, the visuals, and the signal reflection mechanic is pleasantly working very well!
Challenging as should be, not too easy not too hard, good balance :thumbsup:
Haven't finished yet but had to pause to post this (I spent too much time trying to pass this level before noticing this)

Gotta say I agree with the sentiment of other players, this is a great entry, very polished. You all should do this hot potato challenge for more jams :) (says me, having no idea how hard it was to coordinate this)
There were only very few things I wasn't a fan, like having to wait the whole level to rotate to free me from my prison 😅
Again, jokes aside, it is incredible that y'all were able to get anything out the door with this strategy. Well done!

I definitely died a lot more than I probably should have but it was fun LOL
The last level took me a while.
I managed to push myself outside the wall so thank you for the self destruct.
Also i pushed the quit game in browser, Made me laugh a lot because i do it every time, at least 4 click usually.
My score was awful so i wont bother with the proof 25:32:43 its not even the worst score, thats how bad it is, it wins nothing.
The creation process video was awesome aswell.
Im glad the circle levels came back.
The core idea is great! The visuals felt polished, and music and SFX were great (although I didn't notice the muffling mentioned in the video, as I was too focused on clearing the levels I guess).
I don't feel like enemies brought much to the table - they were annoyances at best, but that's expected for a jam format.
Overall I liked the game and just wish there were more puzzle levels. Good job!
I was on the slow side, but I might have taken 10 minutes to read the "you can signals too" hint :smile: Very interesting concept to work create a game! I wished there was some checkpoint in the last level, but otherwise the levels have some great and creative ideas!

The hot potato challenge is an interesting idea but I feel the lack of cohesive game play really holds this project back. More thoughts are shared in the VOD.