Recursio by loyance
💡 Idea:
After the Singularity's expansion in Abstractio and the assumed end of space and reality that were just being built, perhaps the end was just a beginning? A beginning of something greater, that would reach incredible depths?
The expansion resulted in an implosion, which produced unstable blobs of matter that will shape the new reality. The blobs seemingly have a possibility to continuously split themselves and the space around them, resulting in the 2^n expansion. To become stable, the blobs must all converge at a single point in space. And this convergence should happen not just at one level of expansion but on all of them - at the infinity depths.
Your goal is to guide the blobs to the points of convergence by moving them and the space around them. I wish I took Physics in University besides 4 classes of Real Analysis to throw in some quantum mechanics into this...
✏️ Theme: Deeper and deeper
🏅 Features: - A unique puzzle gimmick, unleash the powers of shifting space - 5 challenging levels, but in reality there are a lot more because I have... - 2^0 + 2^1 + 2^2 + 2^3 + 2^4 puzzle sections, if I were to continue this series, then I would have reached the end of the stack sooner than the Compo timer would reach 0! - Assume ∞ = 4. Then 2^n creates a new reality as n -> ∞, * the proof is left as an exercise to the player* - Replay value, tons of it. You can play with your eyes closed, or maybe with your monitor upside down. Possibilities are endless, really - Abstractio sequel, that's a stretch, but don't tell anyone. Otherwise they'll take away my Abstractio GOTY award - Sick out-of-this-reality (literally) tunes, press F for jukedeck, (F stands for FL Studio :sunglasses:)
🎮 Controls: - WASD/Arrows to move blobs around - Click and drag to swap puzzle sections - Escape to close the game - PageUp to go to the next level (cheats!)
🎥 Timelapse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeiCWff0tk8
NOTE 1: HTML5 version of the game might have issues with audio levels and performance, as GameMaker:Studio's HTML5 export is pretty trash. Specifically, upon loading the HTML5 version of the game be sure to click somewhere on the page before the game loads as otherwise the audio will not play.
Ratings
| Overall | 388th | 3.543⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 400th | 3.391⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 100th | 3.935⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 697th | 3.109⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 457th | 3.435⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 525th | 2.978⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 183th | 3.705⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 48🗳️ | 22🗨️ |
overall nice game! :)
- good art
- great game mechanic
- good feel to the interface
Improvements:
- The difficulty progress from the 2x2 to the 4x2 map was massive; a 3x3 or 3x2 in between would have really helped with the difficulty curve progression.
Bugs:
- didn't encounter any
I wasn't a fan of critters dying when they go into the edge, especially with the larger count. It just made things feel overwhelming and I had to spend way too much time looking at each of them. Either a wrap-around grid or just not letting things go past the edge would have felt fine.
Graphics and audio were simple but pleasant. I really liked the victory/credits screen :^)
Innovation-wise, you combined the "drag and drop the world" mechanics with the "you control everything" mechanics. I hadn't read the controls, so it was an enjoyable discovery. I was taking so long on the last level that my spectating girlfriend decided to steer the wheel and take over, she especially enjoyed it!
Ultimately I quite enjoyed the game. Maybe investing time into procedural generation would have been nice to keep the game going.
Visually, I really like the style that you were going for here! Everything feels very cohesive and polished, and the subtle shifting of the maze lines really help tie everything together. I also really liked the subtle details - The fact that your blobs and the maze tiles all swayed slightly out of sync with each other added some nice visual interest, and helped very subtly distinguish the various elements making up each level. My only real feedback here is that the goal looks very similar to your controllable blobs, and it can be difficult to locate at a glance.
I did run into one strange mechanic that felt odd to me, and might have been a bug - When I had multiple blobs lined up next to one another, they did not all move as a cohesive group. You can see in the attached gif that when I step left, only one of the two adjacent blobs moves left, and the other was still stuck until its neighbor was two spaces away.
Overall though, this is a really well polished game - Great job!