Deminescent by Chronodrax

[raw]
made by Chronodrax for LD32 (JAM)
Deminescent is a sort of Minesweeper in 3D with Descent-like controls.

The objective it to find the exit, and collect as many Blue cores as possible while avoiding Red cores.

The weapon allows the player to dematerialize blocks (left click) or analyze blocks (right click).
Analyzing blocks can give hints on where bonuses and traps can be found (in a 2-block radius), but when analyzed a block cannot be dematerialized anymore.

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Unfortunately the game has only a half-finished tutorial and no other levels since I had to deal with GUI issues making the built versions of the game crash...
I lost the last 6 hours on fixing a bug, then those GUI crashes. In the end it still crashes so I removed the GUI entirely. I hope I'll find a way to put it back in a post-jam build.

Apart from that the gameplay works (though the GUI displaying the score is missing), and you can still find the exit of the 1st level though there's no level 2.
I'll probably make some levels in a post-jam version, at least to test the mechanics further.

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Edit : GUI corrected, but only in the post-jam version (that's the only change between the two versions for now)

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Music : B眉romaschinen - "Run" (http://freemusicarchive.org/tag/bromaschinen)
Everything else is from me (Sound effects made with bfxr, art with photoshop)

Ratings

Coolness 57% 3
Overall(Jam) 3.00 697
Audio(Jam) 2.77 511
Fun(Jam) 2.82 669
Graphics(Jam) 3.52 407
Humor(Jam) 1.95 897
Innovation(Jam) 3.21 432
Mood(Jam) 3.00 549
Theme(Jam) 2.97 770

Feedback

Hyoga-3D
21. Apr 2015 路 02:44 UTC
I really tryied but I could not understand the controls. But I really liked the concept, could very nice if the controls were easier.
GhostBomb
21. Apr 2015 路 02:46 UTC
Controls are buggy

Q and A seems to be switched. W doesn't seem to work at all.

Looks like a cool game, I'd love to play it and leave a rating once you've fixed this to make it playable.
馃帳 Chronodrax
21. Apr 2015 路 02:59 UTC
Sorry, with all the last hours bugs, I forgot to put the controls back to QWERTY (I'm french so my keyboard is AZERTY). It should be fixed now.
GenericTeamName
21. Apr 2015 路 03:12 UTC
Awesome, I found a glitch where your ray gets stuck to the orb and the controls die. But understanding that almost every one of these games will have some hiccups I really liked it!
馃帳 Chronodrax
21. Apr 2015 路 04:13 UTC
@GenericTeamName : When you trigger the red block, if you touch the resulting explosion, you die :) (but due to my GUI issue it's harder to understand). I've added an automatic respawn 3s after death for the jam version until I can solve the GUI issue for a post-jam version.
ohai1
21. Apr 2015 路 14:25 UTC
Very nice idea, has some potential for sure.
dyfer
21. Apr 2015 路 14:54 UTC
i liked the floating gameplay, the game ends quickly but it was nice to experiment
pk
21. Apr 2015 路 15:11 UTC
I like the concept and looks. Too bad there's no real levels or puzzles.
Azurency
21. Apr 2015 路 20:48 UTC
Nice concept, the art is great, too bad there's only the tutorial !
bossmojoman
22. Apr 2015 路 00:29 UTC
Very cool, controls are strange though.
F. Wiktora
22. Apr 2015 路 14:26 UTC
The controls feel good for me. I like the concept, you should really continue working on the game! :)
UnconventionalFusion
22. Apr 2015 路 14:34 UTC
Pretty good concept! Got potential! I love the control, it was good and fitting for the game!
natalye
22. Apr 2015 路 22:34 UTC
The floating in mid-air feeling made me dizzy really fast, and I think it's less intuitive than being on the ground and running+jumping. If you want to allow the cube to be walked in on all sides, perhaps you could achieve that by jumping to the wall and then the camera auto-rotating to show you're now on another plane? Just a suggestion.
I do think with the current controls and camera, there will be more than a few players that get dizzy/sick (look up simulation sickness if you haven't experience it :)).
Other than that I'm very curious to see this concept continued, and the game has a really nice aesthetic.
Minesweeper in 3D sounds like you might be on to something!
natalye
22. Apr 2015 路 22:42 UTC
To clarify, when I play certain first-person-camera games, like Portal for example, it takes about an hour for me to feel nausea/dizziness, and with your game it unfortunately happened much faster.
I think it's impossible to completely avoid simulation sickness when making this kind of game, some people suffer really badly from it and just can't play certain games, but there are design/camera techniques that can really help make it better for most players.
Good luck! :)
lochmann-apps
23. Apr 2015 路 08:34 UTC
I like the graphics of the game as well as the weapon! But I like the players movement most.
Simon
23. Apr 2015 路 11:49 UTC
This is really cool dude. Nice idea I wish there was more things I could do! I think the most interesting feature is the chain reaction from the red cores I wanted more of these ones to open passages and stuff :)
馃帳 Chronodrax
23. Apr 2015 路 21:23 UTC
Thanks for the feedbacks!
@natalye: yeah I tend to forget that some people even have motion sickness since none of my friends experienced that, either in racing games or space battle simulations. I'll look that up.
@Simon: the initial idea was to have enemies coming out of some cubes that you could destroy only with red cores' explosions :) (way too ambitious for a 48h LD...). Maybe with non-destroyable cubes and those explosions something interesting could have been done.
Geckoo1337
24. Apr 2015 路 06:12 UTC
I didn't understand that it is in fact a sort of minesweeper in 3D. The idea is good, but the gameplay seems to me too annoying. I prefer a 2d game minesweeper. But who dares wins. It's a good attempt for this LD32. Thank you ++