COLORS ! MUCH MORE TO COME !

I’ll be in again with Flash or Unity blablabla

GOGOGO !

NO GAMEPLAY BUT SOME COLORZ

LILL’ GIF AOW

About Data Stains

About Data Stains !

Hey ! Before reading this, you should play the game here. More than a post-mortem, this post will try to explain what were my intentions in making Data Stains, and explain what the fuck is happening in the game. So It’ll contain some informations that can spoil the experiment, since the game is a lot about understanding what is happening !

^^

é_è

These are two representative exemples of how the players react to the game. Often affected by the visual aspect and the atmosphere, but unable to understand what’s happening. And because of that, sometimes people conclude that there is absolutely nothing to do, nothing to discover, nothing to understand, nothing to think about. Obviously I made a system too complex to touch players with what I wanted them to experiment. Perhaps I was too selfish in my approach, not thinking enough to future players who would fall on this stuff.

COLORZ SPERMS THAT DON’T MAKE SENSE

Data Stains talks about reincarnation. Someone is dead, and your role is to delete his memories so he’ll not remember anything from his previous existance in his next life he’s about to begin. So you play as a “cosmic computer janitor” whose job is to maintain the illusion that you have only one life.

So, the “goal” is to disable as much memories as possible. Each memory disabled will give you one sentence in the final part, after you press ENTER, just like the cosmic computer janitor you’re playing would do once he considers his job done. The “reward” for the player is the possibility to discover or interpret the whole story of the recently dead entity through the 25 unlockable sentences. But to do so, the player will have to understand how the 3D space and the navigation work, and I think it’s where I asked too much.

“But I’m pretty, right ?” éwè

The “game” is to learn how the whole system works. Moving through the memories in a dead brain is not an easy task, and I wanted to express this fact by a unconventional visual system. However, the main principle is not that hard. In fact, it’s simply a “Donjon Crawler” where you can only walk forward, turn left and turn right, in a 25×25 rooms map :

The map

You begin in the room in the middle, facing the one just above. What you see then is the pattern, the “door” to the room you are facing. You can move forward into that room by pressing UP, or you can “rotate” by pressing LEFT or RIGHT, to face another room. Each time, the spermatozoid/cubes/binary-data will fly away before forming a new pattern. When you are facing an all-white pattern, it means you’re facing one of the walls (represented in dark red on the map). When you’re facing an all-black pattern, it means you are facing the edge of the map (represented in black on the map). You can’t pass through the walls nor over the edges of the map.

You’re facing a wall !

You can disable/enable each room (= each memory) by pressing SPACE. A disabled memory will appear dark, when an enabled one will appear light (light it’s the normal state of each room when the game start). The screen will fade between the state of the room you’re coming from and the state of the room you’re walking to. For example, if you walk from an enabled memory to a disabled memory, the color of the screen will fade from light to dark.

You are in an enable memory !

So, to finish the game 100%, you must fly to each of the 25 rooms and delete the memory they represent by pressing SPACE, and then press ENTER to finish the game. Not a big deal eh ? That’s why I asked you to play the game before reading this post, that could spoil most of the experiment. Because, even if it’s ridiculously incomprehensible and hard, learning what’s happening, how it works and think about what could it means IS the game. You can also be simply plaised by all the colorful shapes in motion, that was one of my intentions, too !

I suppose that some people will always keep thinking that this kind of approach/process/experiment is pretentious and meaningless, and I can’t force everyone to have the same sensitivity about this kind of stuff. But I keep thinking that the Ludum Dare is a good place to experiment and share the result, whether it’s terribly classical or ridiculously insane.

Anyway, It was a pretty good Ludum Dare for me ! Let’s keep making stuff, have a good end of year, and see you in April !

COLORZ SPERM THAT MAKE A LITTLE MORE SENSE MAYBE

I’ll use -well nobody care. See you this weekend, people !

I like the theme ! Beneath the Surface is not too obviously mechanic oriented, and I hope it’ll allow more original stuff to be created.

I aim to find an interesting aesthetic to fit my idea, and some meaning to what will happen in the game.

Of course, shapes, colors and motion !

I’m streaming here : http://www.twitch.tv/titoulion

OK I’m back with a most clear (but not totally concrete) idea of what I’m gonna do !

I’m streaming here : http://www.twitch.tv/titoulion

I’m still alive, and worked on the aesthetic of the game…

Now I should add some gameplay ah !

At least, I know what the game is about. After some sleep, I’ll code the actions and prepare the stage for the player.

It should be fine !

I slept more than I wanted but now I’m back, and streaming here http://www.twitch.tv/titoulion

Let’s do this again!

I’M IN

BUT PLEASE ONE DAY GIVE LOVE A CHANCE

é_è

Taking a good picture of a lightning is not easy!

Here is what I’m working on.

As usual I don’t really know where I’m going. It’s part of the process!

Working on these dudes

Tags: gif