Cubical Mayhem by pepnou
This is a puzzle game about managing resources and factory on a randomly rotating cubic island. You need to create a launch pad in order to excuse this place and finish the game.
Here is a few screens of the game, including the tutorial on the basic controls :

Made with: - Unity (game engine) - Krita (drawing), Paint.net (drawing, picture editing) - Voltage Modular (music & sfx), sfxr (sfx)
Voltage modular setups:

Cursor API in unity with webgl builds seems to be a huge mess, we could'nt manage to hide or change the cursor, works fine with windows build though. You'll have to bear your default OS cursor on top of ours.
| HTML link : | https://enderswype.itch.io/cubical-mayhem |
| Windows Download link : | https://drive.google.com/file/d/17umPs-Wp8RxtJovCpH25xgjywW3p0RpG/view?usp=sharing |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/cubical-mayhem |
Ratings
| Given | 42🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
I enjoyed this a lot - I love resource management games and this is a really well put together example of one. The art work is gorgeous, and the shifting cube is a really interesting take on things.
@okshirl As the game take place on a face of a rubik's cube, the map is the template of the cube, with the ressources produced by the building on the slot.
@jhax haha XD, i'm also 1% brain capacity. Glad you enjoyed the game
It was hard to work out what the rotations would do I think if you could've add in some kind of 3D effect so we could see what was happening better during the rotations that would be great, because it felt like my buildings were just disappearing. It also didn't feel like there was a way to lose, which isn't a terrible thing for a jam game, but in this case I had no sense of urgency. Would be nice if there was some mechanic where resources stores decay over time and if I run out of all resources I lose?
Overall I had a lot of fun with this one!
Awesome graphics great music and so many small animations and details. It just feels sooo polished.
The gameplay was a lot of fun and reminded me a bit of my absolute favorite game factorio (especially the animation when you launched the rocket) :D
One thing I realized is that I never really looked at the mini-cube-map in the corner but only on the currently active face and the indicator which side will be turned.
But this didn't make it any less fun! :D
Maybe when you can't afford to buy something you could color the missing resources in the price red to make it easier to see what you need more of. But this is the only idea I could come up with to improve the game.
Great game overall!
That's not the game's fault, the root of the evil is in my brain.
This game is a good combination of strategy and puzzle.
The graphics and sound also go very well with the gameplay.
I'm not a fan of resource management games, but this game has been a little time-killer for me.
Really enjoyed the graphic style and animations.
Love the art! Only issue was some times my dragging would not work and would be placed, but that also on me for trying to rush.
Good game!
It was a joy to play, keep it up!
The art and music are perfect. Overall well done.
I didn't feel that the flipping did that much later in the game and you ended up just waiting for the cube to flip to a position that gives you the resources you need - maybe letting the player choose which row/column rotates would make it more strategic?
Either way, loved it! Great game! (Music did get a little bit repetitive, though.)
@vipbasil Great idea! it would be nice to add this for upgrading building and requires only a few tweaks with the current build system.
@oadt Thanks for the feedback! I totally agree with the lack of visibility on ressource production. There is the tooltip to explain the building use, and the production/consumption counter at the top, but in 10s it's hard to pay attention to anything in our already cluttered UI. I'm gload you enjoyed the rocket sequence, i spend way too many time on it :)
@sash-a Thanks! Originally we argued on whether the game should be 2d or 3d but settled on 2 as our artist was more comfortable with 2d (that and i hate rotation stuff). It's intentionnal that you can't lose, the indestructible center building prevent you for falling into a deadlock. With the rotation every 10s, it would be very frustrating if you had to wait for it to come back. The game was designed more as a casual puzzle / resource management game, it wasn't meant to give you a feeling of urgency.
@blacklambert Thank you for playing! Sorry for the programmer music...
@cambryx Thanks! Drag & drop gameplay arent that difficult to build, so we could spend a lot of time on polish. The factorio comparison made me smile as we considered to have belts & inserters in a future very hypothetical version of the game, that would be total chaos. x)
Originally, the cube was supposed to be in water with only it's top face out of it. This would explain why only the top face is active. Somehow it ended up floating in the sky ... something was lost on the way.
Great idea to show missing ressources when trying to build something, we should have added that.
@xparker Thank you for playing! Wanna know a secret? dancing building arent animations !!!
@denvil @cookiera Thanks for the feedback! We could've added a slider to make the dragging more snappier. Also the tiles arent perfect (not nearly) squares so it's a bit weird at junction between them.
I won't complain a lot about unity but we ALWAYS had problems with resolution ... sorry for the broken menu ...
@x000000 Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the game. Sorry for the repetitiveness of the music, i tried my best. It was built as generative music (patch in the screenshots), i might post something to explain it a bit.
@thyoi Thank you for playing! Originally, the cube was supposed to be in water with only it’s top face out of it. This would explain why only the top face is active. Somehow it ended up floating in the sky … something was lost on the way.
@sleepymenace thanks! We should make more little puzzle game in the future if they are better received x)
I think choosing the cube's rotation would be overpowered as you can already choose to move (or not) building to decide which one will stay next rotation. Maybe a bigger cube (5x5x5) would be a nice solution & give more freedom to the player.
@zubspace Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the game & finished it (i spent a lot of time on the ending sequence).
I feel that balancing the difficulty is always the hardest part: that's one of the last thing to do, you sit in front of your mountain of difficulty variable, question life & get to work (repeat 3 in the process).
Maybe a bigger cube would help in endgame but balancing would need to be done again ... noooooooooooo !!!
Also very nice polishing! The visuals are pretty, and the music set up a nice mood too. I wouldn't have guess it was generated procedurally without your post, the result is very cohesive and charming! Congrats for making this great entry!
the graphics I find well done and the mechanics is great. makes fun
The music is also impressive, love what you did! That's what brought me here with your post from earlier ahah
À great entry, congrats
One thing that annoyed me was the random behavior of the movement. At some point I lost a few necessary factories, which did not came back for a long time...
Overall a really good and innovative game.
But I eventually realized the board is a cube and so it is ok to have building be rotated away and I just focused on producing lots of resources and made it to space. UI at the top indicating the production rates for each resource was helpful to determine bottlenecks.
Can't say that the cube concept adding something to the game itself, but the overall feeling and graphic is pretty nice. Love this entry, thank you guys!
The artstyle is beatiful and soothing.
Others have mentioned this as well... to start out the game feels a bit hectic ... but it really isn't.
And it impresses me how self-explanatory you guys (or girls) made this feel.
Loved the rocket at the end it really felt special !
The only thing I would add is some kind of "DESTROY EVERYTHING" button. When you make a bad start, it's quite annoying to wait for every tile to appear if you want a fresh start, and it's easier to re-load the game. And it does'nt feel nice imho.
That's a very good game, congratulations to the whole team!
(and loved the ending, having a nice ending animation is always great)
On one hand:
* The UI is relatively intuitive, and it is clear you spent a lot of time picking out little details, such as [clicking the Hammer button a second time cancels the destroy operation]. For every piece of text on the screen, it was easy to understand why it was there and what it meant.
* The graphics - wow! Very clean. I very much liked the touch in the ending animation where the rocket flew up, and you could see the top UI as you passed through it. That was a fun graphical twist.
* Great use of the theme! I don't think I've seen any game like this in the LD. Very innovative to use a Rubik's cube like that!
On the other:
* The transition between screens (the one where all the cubes scroll onto the screen) is graphically pretty, but made me feel a bit of nausea. There was a LOT of movement going on, and when movements like these don't at least have, say, a bit of motion blur, it really throws me off. Of course, motion blur can be a bit much to implement in the time one has for a game jam, but there are a bunch of other options that (I believe) might help combat this (at least, it helps me):
[1] Slower transitions can ease on motion sickness.
[2] If you could make it so that the transition doesn't cover the entire screen, that would be helpful
[3] Taking time between the inbound and outgoing transitions. (Say, the blocks fly in, and instead of immediately flying out, you wait a second or two with the blocks all staying in place)
* The rubik's cube mechanics sounded fun in theory, but I ended up not really using them at all. Buildings that left the playing field had a low chance of coming back anytime soon, and so it wasn't interesting to pay any attention to them. The game then effectively became the same as it would if whenever a Rubik's cube move happened, three completely random towers appeared in place of the three that left.
I'm not very sure about what could be done in place of this. I saw that in one of your replies above, you mentioned that giving the player control over which faces would turn could be a little overpowered. I agree. Although, maybe giving the user partial control would be helpful? For instance, if you decided the next face turn had to be from right to left, but the player gets to decide which of the three layers of the cube do the turn? Maybe that could be fun.
* I did have a couple issues with UI, where sometimes a building would appear, and it took more time than it should for me to understand what sort of building it is. In fact, I sometimes found myself having a lot less information than I would have liked. The UI on the top of the screen was useful, telling me how many of each material I'm creating per second. And the UI on the right was useful, because I could hover over a building and know what each one creates. But I very much would have liked to see that on-hover info on each of the buildings on the playing field. And you know what? If there was room for it, I would have liked to see all of that info at the same time. Like, I'd want to look at the playing field, and immediately know not only how many gold pieces I'm creating, but which buildings are making more, which could be making more but are dormant, and which are using gold pieces (and how many). I found myself wanting this information multiple times throughout the game, and had to resort to hovering over the UI on the right and memorizing many numbers in my head, which was not so fun.
Altogether, (even though I talked for days on end on the parts of the game I feel could have been improved upon) I very much enjoyed playing your game, and I'd most definitely come back if you ever upload a post-jam version!
I think the game is cool, but it's a pitty that you do not gave more instruction in the game description, because the 2 first minutes, I was like "What the f... am I doing :thinking:", and then, after a while I understood everything, and it was okay :sweat_smile:
My main complaint, was the music. It seemed okay, but felt like it was just a bunch of totally random notes played in a super short loop. Short loops like that aren't a problem, I use them in my game due to the time constraints we have haha however this one just never sounded right and got annoying pretty fast, which is a bit of an issue when the game can go on for a while.
Overall though, you got me to stick and play it until the end even with the music haha so really good job!!
The graphics and animation are top-notch. Props!
I really like the concept - probably because I'm partial to rubiks cubes already.
It could maybe have been explored a bit more. I really hoped that I would have been able to rotate the squares myself, and that their relative positions would have more importance than just what's visible to me.
On the first playthough, my run was ended by this bug: I dropped an engine factory on top of the item bar, and it just got stuck. I couldn't move it or pick up another engine factory (and I needed one to keep playing).

So I reset the game. about to go play another round.
The cursor was a little bit strange on fullscreen.

But anyway, nice job!
I did it! Yay!
I think the most interesting place for this game to go would be to integrate more rubiks cube stuff.
Allowing the user to make their own moves is a great state. Cube rotations would be nice.
Maybe factory could need to be directly adjacent to the resources they consume. Maybe there's a bonus to solving the cube, or to solving a single face? /shrug just ideas...
@maxds98 This goes away if you full-screen the application. Same thing happens on my device.
What I found confusing is, that obviously mines are producing alll the time, while factories seem to only produce while they are visible. This felt a bit weird.
After all a very good LD entry!
I had the same problem as @maxds98 with webGL, with the edges getting cut off.
I was a bit confused by the blocks in the bottom left. Not sure if I was meant to be trying to replicate them.
Nice work getting this together in such a short time!
I found the music a bit... intense, compared to the gameplay loop. Something more chill would probably suit the vibe of the artwork better.
But it is hard to balance things in such short time. In general, you made a good effort here, good job!