Adventures in Spacetime! by TheFuntastic

[raw]
made by TheFuntastic for LD32 (JAM)
Mess with gravity by shooting Gravity distortion fields!

Made With Monster Love by @thefuntastic (creator of the music puzzle game Cadence) in 36 hours, with help from @elyaradine on the gun model. Pretty happy with it considering time spent. :)

Goal:
Press the switch by any means! There are five levels - most of the them have multiple ways to solve it.

Left-click: Either captures a box, or grows a gravity field in the direction of the surface it's aimed at.
Right-click: Shrink gravity field
Space: Jump

Esc or P: Menu
- Sensitivity
- Invert Y
- Restart (when you fall off or lose a box)
- Next Level
- Quit

On windows an xbox controller should also work:
Right Trigger : Grow field
Left Trigger : Shrink field
Left Shoulder : Jump

Ratings

Coolness 26% 2090
Overall(Jam) 3.63 181
Audio(Jam) 3.73 110
Fun(Jam) 3.25 369
Graphics(Jam) 4.06 159
Innovation(Jam) 3.94 61
Mood(Jam) 3.50 206
Theme(Jam) 3.44 452

Feedback

Zielak
20. Apr 2015 · 15:31 UTC
Nice FPS puzzle is always welcome in my hands, sweet idea with gravity-changing bubbles :) (played to the end)
Not even mad for mentioning other puzzle games with good music. I love the music in this game and would love to hear more!

The only thing I disliked was movement, I kept running forward even when I let go of the key.
jk5000
20. Apr 2015 · 15:40 UTC
A super puzzle game, with nice clean graphics. The player is a bit difficult to control.
Tuism
21. Apr 2015 · 13:01 UTC
Gorgeous, designed look, great track, but that's to be expected from the Cadence creator :)

I really like the idea of gravity manipulation, it's just not very intuitive, maybe the juice in the bubble could be a bit more obvious, or maybe it's just a tutorialing thing that noone should have to worry about in jams :P

The platforming controller was *the worst*. I'm guessing it's the standard unity FPS controller or something. There's so much slipping that made dumb jumps practically impossible half the time. I would perhaps had designed the levels that were more forgiving on the jumps.

The mouse cursor wasn't locked on my standalone build... So my pointer kept going into my second screen, and that really made it super irritating too.

Overall a great FPS puzzle proof of concept :)
Evergreen Games
21. Apr 2015 · 20:11 UTC
Very cool puzzler! it took me awhile to figure out what was happening, but when i did, it was fun. the movement was bad until i figured out that you could use shift to slow down. (maybe put that in the description?)
Pixel_Reaper
22. Apr 2015 · 18:09 UTC
Well done. Music was cool and the look was slick. the movement was a bit off though.
francoisvn
22. Apr 2015 · 22:28 UTC
Great game. Nice aesthetic and I really like the design elegance and depth.

I found the controls a bit off though - it was difficult to move slowly and carefully, and carrying the block around was also a bit awkward.

Love the easter egg :)
DonovanWu
23. Apr 2015 · 22:42 UTC
Control is a bit difficult and it is not very obvious what the unconventional weapon does at first. But after figuring out how things work it is quite fun to play. I am entertained. The music is really good.
TheScopelessOne
24. Apr 2015 · 19:32 UTC
The FoV was a bit small for me but and I think the movment speed was to fast/the delay before you stoped was to slow. Otherwise there was not alot of things wrong, except ofcourse the mouse pointer.
Octopus Melange
25. Apr 2015 · 22:48 UTC
O.3
I.3
F.3
T.4
G.4
A.5
H.0
M.3
xtty
25. Apr 2015 · 22:52 UTC
Wow, I really liked the game, It's a great idea. The jump was a bit strange and I couldn't correclty use two spheres at the same time on the object. Congrats!
🎤 TheFuntastic
26. Apr 2015 · 09:41 UTC
Thanks everyone who's played so far. I think we can safely conclude the default Unity Character controller isn't up to muster!
CriticalMammal
26. Apr 2015 · 09:59 UTC
Hm, seems like other people also had a bit of trouble with the movement also. It felt really... stiff, like rather than slowly coming to a halt, it would continue to move at the normal movement speed a split second after you stop. I understand the effect is to try and get a little bit of a feel like you can't stop on a dime, but it ends up being rather annoying. I was constantly falling off platforms at first, the movement just really threw me off quite a bit. I seemed to always overshoot where I was actually trying to move to.

Visually this game is a stunner. It really goes to show what some good lighting, a nice color scheme, and simple geometry can do. The gun (and puzzle gameplay) was obviously inspired by Portal, but it was pulled off well and the gun's curvy aesthetic gives nice contrast to the rectangular world.

The audio of course is also a standout, both the background music and the footstep/jump sound effects really help give the game weight and round the experience up some. Having appropriate sounds for the gun/bubbles and whatnot would have been a nice touch.

It took me a little bit of time to understand the mechanics of the puzzle. I saw that I could grow/shrink the orb but was confused at first what property was causing the example cube to stick to the wall. A little while later I noticed the white lines (thank goodness for those) pointing in the direction of the gravity pull and it clicked. From there the puzzles were generally pretty easy to get through. Actually they became a bit lackluster all considering, but I understand how hard it is to make the puzzles (much less everything else) in such a tight timeframe.
GarethIW
26. Apr 2015 · 10:00 UTC
Yeah, you really needed to play with the settings on the controller there :) Nice idea though, and some interesting level design. Good luck with Cadence - played it at EGX Rezzed, it's cool!
Miltage
26. Apr 2015 · 13:20 UTC
The game didn't lock my cursor as I would expect a fps to, so my cursor would go onto my second screen and the game would lose focus.

Besides that and awkward controls, the game definitely has some promise. Pleasing aesthetic, enjoyable audio and puzzle designs that make you think. I wonder if Portal was an inspiration, considering the gun, levels and mechanics?