Chrono Caverns by ryannielson
As a famous explorer in search of treasure, you one day come across a mysterious labyrinthine cavern. Surrounded by puzzles and traps, you explore deeper and deeper in search of a mysterious lost treasure. But something is not quite right about this cavern, time seems to flow both forward and backward under your control when you come into possession of the pendant.
Gameplay
Chrono Caverns is a puzzle game where you explore unexplored caverns, tile by tile. When you leave a tile, it turns into a pool of lava preventing you from retracing your steps. Once you discover the pendant you gain the ability to control the flow of time and undo your previous movements. Touching every floor tile will unveil a stairway to the next floor, bringing you one step closer to the mysterious treasure.
Controls
Move: Arrow keys
Undo: Z
Return to main menu: Escape
Fullscreen: F
Download Instructions
There are Windows and Mac builds available at the Itch.io links below. Just visit the page and choose the download for your platform of choice.
| Windows | https://ryannielson.itch.io/chrono-caverns |
| macOS | https://ryannielson.itch.io/chrono-caverns |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/chrono-caverns |
Ratings
| Given | 0🗳️ | 0🗨️ |
The "draw a non-overlapping path" puzzle is a kind of genre of topological puzzle, and its usual constraining factor is with entry and exit directions, e.g. the [7 Bridges of Königsberg problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K%C3%B6nigsberg). For an example of a recent game of this type that used some interesting constraint rules, [Galaxy Express](https://cosmicexpressgame.com/) is a good model. In this case, since you have a dungeon and lava there's an obvious incentive to add a bit of dungeon crawling stuff with keys and doors and monsters and lava being used to destroy stuff. Tons of things you could do with this scenario!
I went into this with the idea of making a super striped down puzzle game with very few mechanics. It turns out there's a reason most puzzle games are more complicated. It's not as hard as I would have liked, but I've learned a ton about puzzle game design while working on it and reading your comment. Thanks again!