I wish that I could have had time to add a few more levels, there is a lot of untapped potential in the core gameplay, but too tired now.

I don't understand what happens on screen LoL. I even don't know how I reach the second level. But anyway visual and audio is really cool. I like it!

I don't understand what is going on in this game. Some better instructions for the user would be really helpful. Maybe you can add some more instructions to the description?

Thank you for trying it out! Small hint: items combine when they touch!

I played 2 levels. Really weird abstract vibe. I don't know if the audio was glitching to me or if it was intentional but I loved it. All those beautiful octaves and other big bold intervals - really cool. I would not have known what to do if I had not read the above comment though. Some instructions would go a long way! Loved the abstract visuals. Procedurally generated I assume? The movement of the various bodies was well done too - in a swirl. I had a very quick look at the source code but there's thousands of lines there! How was the look and movement achieved? What engine did you start with? Very curious about this!!

@tim77 Thanks for trying it out!! I really appreciate the comments.

The audio is generated by overlaying sine and saw waves based off of the movement of the entities, so what you heard was probably the intended sound. The sound of the lightning when the beacons are activate is a generated white noise.

For the movement of the bodies, you can look at "update_newtonian_physics" and "update_string_physics" functions. Basically, there are two physics simulations running: simple "classical mechanics" (well, a cartoon version of it) with collision detection and response; and a spring physics simulation between interconnected parts of an entity.

The look of the game is all just solid color rectangles. The rest is some math to simulate some form of lighting/shading.

No engine; I use SDL for rendering the rectangles, writing to audio buffer, and handling input. Everything was written from scratch for this competition; well, I reused my old algorithms for collision detection I wrote for a previous Ludum Dare (find_intersection_between_lines, test_collision_against_line, test_collision_against_box) and the set of basic colors used is something I have reused for many years now.

The game has a very mystical and eerie atmosphere thanks to the sounds and I really love it, it really connected with me for some reason ! The sound of the small blue blocks going up the "tunnel" really transported me (I know, it's very weird). I don't know why ahah.

Anyways, I'm very impressed on what you achieved, some of you guys really are on a completely other level.. Maybe understanding how to combine block is a bit hard to grasp but it might play with the experience as well and get you more immersed, no unecessary noise. It makes it quite contemplative honestly, great job ! I'd give you a 10 for mood if I could !

@fdk Thank you so much for the kind words and for taking the time to play it! I am touched by the way you described the experience, I was hoping to achieve such an effect reminiscent of what I have personally felt from some old games from my childhood!

I wish the instructions were more clear although I managed to get to level 2. I like how the sound changes when your are moving something.

Nice abstract game!

Thank you everyone for trying out the game!

I have added short hints to each level following your feedback. My initial idea was for the player to have to figure everything out on their own, but perhaps not suitable for this format were people just want to quickly try something out for a few minutes.

Very abstract and experimental, bold entry. Visuals are intersting and tripy. @omid-ghavami It's still really hard to understand what game wants you to do even with the hints

Also I think our games have a slight similarity in visuals

I'm not smart enough for this game, I got to level 4 without having any idea what was going on. But nonetheless I enjoyed the aesthetic and the sounds of the squares. Very nice visuals.

I beat it! I liked figuring how what to do, but my biggest feedback was to give players a bit more time - this is especially true in the last level with the worm eating my stuff. I think since you can get into states where you can't really fix it (at least after the first two levels), you kind of want a quick restart. As the end the controls get easier, but there's actually too little drag, making the time to push the remaining blocks a bit more stressful. The audio was very cool especially pushing on the water blocks. I like how you start to think of the squares as animals (yellow cubes I think of as some kind of plant cows that are paired together). Anyway nice job!

@ariorick Thank you for playing the game! I didn't find a good balance between the "action"-part and the puzzle-solving: the game is a bit too fast to match the difficulty of figuring out the puzzles. It needs a lot more polish to be a good game. I agree about the similarity of visuals between our games! I tried your game, very nice game!

@manan Thank you for playing it! Good job getting to level 4 still, that is not easy! As I mentioned in above comment, I think the game got a bit too hard due to
bad balance and lack of polish on the game design.

@aeveis Thank you for playing it until the end, and for the spot-on feedback! I agree with all your points. As I mentioned in another comment above, I failed on getting the balance right between the "actiony" physics part of the game and the puzzle solving, mostly due to not having a concrete idea of what the game was going to be until late during the process. A quick restart button seems obvious in retrospect, at the time I was so focused on automatic detection of fail state (which I never had time to complete) that I completely overlooked the simpler solution of just giving the player ability to manually restart the level! :)

Really glad to hear that you started thinking of them as animals, that was my hope! The "cow" was initially a chain of 6 pieces, which is why it is still a "worm" in my head. But the gameplay was way too advanced with 6 symbol patterns to feed it, so I eventually simplified it down to 2 but then it didn't look like a worm any longer.

Visuals were cool, but too abstract for me to intuitively figure out the puzzles. I completed levels just by trial and error. Sounds that played when moving things were a great touch. Well done.

Cool game. I liked the visuals and audio. It is very important to visually communicate what player needs to do. Worm could have moving mouth. Moving stuff around was sometimes annoying and it wasn't clear when gameplay starts and you can interact with the world.

This felt like visiting old-school demoscene event. Nice to see games that are not just made in unity or godot!

That was a little too esoteric for me. If I didn't that I was supposed to push stuff I would not not finish a single level. May the psychiatrist help the poor soul that has figured it out on their own.

I feel like there should be more communication of the games mechanics. A level that just teaches you to push stuff and shows how blocks change. Or just hand out a complimentary dose of acid. I'd take that as well.