Tangram Technologies by Baby Dino Herd
Building better pattern recognition through self-aware machine learning.
Program Overview
As Tangram Technologies' newest Artificial Intelligence, your job is to train yourself in the areas of geometric pattern recognition and recomposition.
Controls
- Click-drag to move pieces.
- Press X or Z while dragging to rotate pieces (counter)clockwise.

Made with Unity 5.6, Blender, Substance Designer, and Reason.
Ratings
| Overall | 322th | 3.411⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 310th | 3.357⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 443th | 2.926⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 531th | 2.963⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 370th | 3.222⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 306th | 3⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 94th | 3.64⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 33🗨️ |
I managed to get through a handful of levels and then it went black, did I beat it? =)
The levels always seemed like they would be really challenging at first, and then I quickly stumbled to a solution... did most levels have lots of solutions, or was I lucky, or is it something about this kind of puzzle that once you put down a couple pieces, the others are almost guaranteed to work? I don't think I ever had to pick up my first couple pieces I placed, which surprised me.
New (to me) puzzle idea and the visuals and art were both nice too, pretty nice submission!
I agree that increased contrast/outlines would help, and definitely wanted to change the colour of the piece you're currently moving. I got sick and ran out of time, unfortunately.
I also went too subtle with the theme: you were meant to play as an A.I. gaining more *self-awareness*. The text and tangram shapes in the later levels hint at what you're meant to uncover about your true purpose, but there's not a lot to go on, especially if you don't make it to the end.
@jimbly if it faded to black, congratulations, you beat it! I just designed levels based on complexity; I wasn't particularly concerned if it would have multiple or just a single solution.
The graphics made it hard to tell where you had a piece/didn't have a piece
The music loop got annoying really quick
These are a classic type of puzzle and they can be fun, I enjoyed most of the levels but got stuck on "We have the technology". Apparently there was some kind of story to this, so I'd suggest having an ability to skip levels (or a hint system) so the player can get to them (this is purely for game jam purposes, people want to see all the content). One thing that did annoy me was having pre-placed pieces that were wrong. In puzzle games it seems, to me, like the standard is that pre-placed pieces are to be used as a guide, not part of the puzzle themselves. If you're going to ignore convention, be explicit about it. Otherwise, the initial "tutorial" levels were good and I enjoyed playing.
The rotation method didn't feel intuitive and needing to hold down the mouse button while pressing the rotate button felt awkward. If it just remembered whichever one you clicked last and could rotate that one it would be nice. I also wish that while holding it and rotating it didn't leave the old one behind. It made it hard to quickly see the shape in the new orientation because it would combine with the old orientation. That was easily work-around-able, so it wasn't actually a major problem.
Also, I think the pieces and the shape you are trying to create could be a little more differentiated. A slight tint of a color in one, making one lighter or darker, a texture... something. Occasionally I found it hard to tell where a piece was or wasn't.
This last one is kind of funny. My cat sat on my mouse while I was holding a piece and it flew off the screen and I let go of the mouse button accidentally. The piece was just gone. I couldn't beat the level after that, so I had to quit. I can find Tangrams kind of frustrating sometimes and I was far enough along that I really didn't want to go back and replay the other levels again, so I didn't finish.
I liked the sound at first, but I had to mute it after a while since it was a little repetitive. Possibly a longer track could help.
Overall really good job.