WaveForge by Enad96

[raw]
made by Enad96 for Ludum Dare 59 (JAM)

Its like the witness, but also an optics bench.

If you are a physicist, suspend your disbelief, if you are not, then good luck.

Controls:

World: WASD move, mouse look, left-click a panel to enter a puzzle, Esc to exit.

Puzzle: Left-click to place/select, R or right-click to rotate 45°, Delete to remove.

Core tiles:

Source — Emits a beam in a fixed direction. Click its knob to cycle colour presets (Black, Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Pink, White).

Finish (Receiver) — Lights up when a beam arrives matching its required colour/amplitude. Hit every receiver to win.

Mirror — Two-sided reflector with 4 glyphs. Rotate to bend beams; parallel beams pass straight through.

Frequency & colour:

Colour is an RGB bitmask — Red, Green and Blue are independent channels that mix additively:

R+G = Yellow, R+B = Pink, G+B = Cyan, R+G+B = White, none = Black (spooky). Combining or filtering beams operates on these channels individually.

Other tiles:

Splitter — Directional 1→3 RGB splitter: fans the input into left/centre/right, each carrying one R/G/B component.

Combiner — OR-mixes three input edges into one output (e.g. Red + Green → Yellow).

Filter — Bitwise AND with its lens colour; only matching channels pass, others are absorbed.

Modulator — Cycles channels R→B→G→R (or reverse), shifting the beam's colour.

Inverter — XORs with White: Red↔Cyan, Green↔Pink, Blue↔Yellow.

Block — Solid wall; absorbs any beam.

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Made by Tom, Adam, Liam, Daniel, Felix and Dane

Ratings

Overall 229th 3.85⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 182th 3.75⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 293th 3.575⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 239th 4.05⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 531th 3.525⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 269th 3.658⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 154th 3.65⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Mood 412th 3.65⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 19🗳️ 16🗨️

Feedback

Nathanial
Apr 20th · 18:05 UTC
Good atmosphere, cool puzzle mechanics. I think there are too many easy levels. The game pacing is pretty off, goes from really simple, to a ton of tutorials for individual mechanics back to back, then gets fairly complex immediately using those mechanics. I really like the XOR and splitter mechanics, but I got a bit overwhelmed adding those with the modulator and immediately having puzzles with all of the new mechanics.
xiyuan
Apr 21st · 13:07 UTC
做的真的很好但是我越到后面越玩不明白这个游戏到底是什么机制,这些光线到底要怎么才能过去,我确实不太适合这一类的游戏
rucksack
Apr 21st · 13:15 UTC
I like the game, I think it's a very novel idea for a puzzle game. The puzzle mechanic is really solid, I would love to play some more levels :)

I don't get the point of the 3D world outside of the puzzles though, it seems like a completely different game, but without any actual gameplay elements.
tatawanda
Apr 21st · 13:23 UTC
Funny. I would have loved to some interferometry as a physicist. A good twist on The Witness
Archaeognathus
Apr 21st · 13:32 UTC
I saw the thumbnail and had to try it. We had similar ideas for our games, but went in completely different directions.
That said, please get out of my head. The comments during the game were far too accurate xD
I love RGB, but I also got a bit overwhelmed with all the new mechanisms and concepts. But I can see many possibilities to create fun puzzles :)
LDJam user 260720
Apr 21st · 17:29 UTC
Cool mechanics and nice mood! I guess you already know but there seems to be a bug in the audio, sometimes voices start simultaneously
Blue Pin Studio
Apr 22nd · 03:36 UTC
Got over my head real quick. The first 10 or so puzzles were cool tho :D Nice entry!
bellicapelli
Apr 22nd · 15:59 UTC
Cool idea and presentation, I would definitely work on the pacing of the mechanics being introduced, it went from several mirror puzzles to one puzzle per component pretty quick and I forgot what the pieces did immediately (small brain)
LDJam user 342640
Apr 23rd · 02:00 UTC
Australian The Witness in space, 10/10
Myezko
Apr 23rd · 14:37 UTC
very cool. the music seems to be looping inconsistently but other than that its very cool and i like it
Bumble
Apr 24th · 20:09 UTC
What fresh... gameplay is this?

This really had charm while being a competent puzzle game!
atmospherium
Apr 26th · 03:08 UTC
Nice implementation of the theme. The Witness was one of my favorite games when it came out and this definitely draws some pretty deserving parallels. Nice design and structure. Everything felt well-paced and like the complexity ramped up intuitively. Voice acting is always a plus.

Some of the particular win conditions felt less clear, particularly when receivers required specific colors, until I realized about halfway through that additional info was available on hovering over certain nodes. In a perfect world, receiver icons could have used clearer visual indication, but for a jam game you gave the player all the info we could have needed and it was just up to me paying attention a bit better.

Excellent work. All of you should be proud of the results.
VenomousMouse
Apr 27th · 07:35 UTC
Nice puzzle game and very good idea of opening spacis with progression. I also like the voiceover. Well done!
dqso
Apr 28th · 23:35 UTC
Interesting puzzle that fits the theme well! The 3D movement feels like it was made for a different jam theme :grinning: Also the puzzle UI appeared very small on my screen for some reason
blubberquark
Apr 29th · 06:15 UTC
I think the puzzles are kind of uninspired, but that
!> "The Witness" style ending where there is a puzzle in the world

caught me by surprise.

constructive minor nitpicks:
- The puzzle UI is small and fiddly
- one puzzle right before the ending says it needs black but it needs white
- The station textures are grey and washed out
- I think I need a reticle to click on panels and for motion sickness

The big problem from my perspective is that the puzzles themselves aren't interesting. They just teach me how the pieces work together, and then I'm already at the ending. I understand why you wouldn't want to stump the players who are rating your game, but it's a missed opportunity. Unless you can show me an interesting puzzle, I won't tell you that this this is worth pursuing as a post-jam idea but that's no stars off your rating.
Saffwong
Apr 29th · 11:41 UTC
I love these kinda puzzles, love the music and voice clips too. AH i love this kinda game.
It just played another voice clip while I had it runnning in the background and loved it even more.
smilewood
Apr 29th · 13:12 UTC
Cool application of a beam/light puzzle. The setting was fun for background, and the ramping up of puzzle mechanics felt just about right. Some of the goals weren't that clear from the text (what does "off > 100" mean?) but for the most part the puzzles could be completed by just focusing beams onto goals. I could see the potential for more complex puzzles rising from this pretty effectively.

The voicelines as I interacted with the puzzle pieces cracked me up, and the background music was great for the game.
Stepan Rogozin
May 01st · 08:55 UTC
An interesting game about quantum physics. Graphics, sounds and design are very good. It's not entirely clear what color should be received before I start playing a level. It would also be great to make the final level require using all the tools from all previous levels.