Universal Fates and Constellations - Line Splitting Puzzle Game

Discussion in 'Upcoming iOS Games' started by chinykian, Nov 16, 2016.

  1. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    HI!

    My team and I at Rotten Mage are currently working on a side project while still porting our prior project, Spacejacked, to PS4 and Vita. While the new project is still pretty early in development, we've gotten it to the point where the gameplay is more or less functional and we can start showing it and get some much needed feedback. We present...

    Fates and Constellations

    That's the title we're going with for now. Said game is a puzzle game where you cut "rogue" constellations out of the night skies by splitting lines, like so:

    [​IMG]


    How does it work?

    For every puzzle presented in the form of a constellation, the player is given a limited number of splits. The idea is to split the line and cut the connections between the stars without actually touching the stars themselves. Bonus points if you touch the golden star though ;)

    A major part of the game is how exponentially complex it gets each time the player splits the lines. We intend to fully explore this by introducing some asymmetrical splitting patterns some time down the line.

    There are still a lot to be done, feature-wise. The following are just some of the stuff we need to do:

    - Different splitting patterns
    - More themes (visuals)
    - Design Levels
    - Title and menus
    - Polish
     
  2. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    Level Creation

    Here's a quick look into the level creation process:



    We procedurally generate the splitting lines, choose the pattern that we like, then build the level based off the lines in our crude but functional editor.
     
  3. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    Got it working on iPhone!

    Here's a quick look at the game running on the iPhone!



    One issue we noticed is that we tend to make our levels far too close to the bottom of the screen, resulting in part of the levels constantly getting obscured by our thumbs. Time to fix that!
     
  4. coolpepper43

    coolpepper43 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Aug 31, 2012
    4,615
    7
    38
    On the toilet
    This looks pretty fun. :)
     
  5. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    Thanks mate!
     
  6. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    Visual theme mockup

    We thought it's about time to figure out other visual themes so here's a rough mock-up we managed to whip out.

    [​IMG]
     
  7. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    iPad footage

    Got the game running on the iPad only recently.



    Had to account for aspect ratio differences between devices, and the only way we could think of at the moment to keep puzzles the same across various displays is to do letterboxing. Not too big a fan of it, honestly, so we fade it out whenever we can - like during level transition, for instance.
     
  8. coolpepper43

    coolpepper43 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Aug 31, 2012
    4,615
    7
    38
    On the toilet
    please make the black areas on the letterbox touchable
     
  9. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    It is! =D
     
  10. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    New Mechanic - red line

    We've recently added a new mechanic. Don't touch the red line(s)!

    [​IMG]
     
  11. coolpepper43

    coolpepper43 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Aug 31, 2012
    4,615
    7
    38
    On the toilet
    I am so into this! Is this going to be a premium or f2p game?
     
  12. FFarabi

    FFarabi Active Member

    Mar 17, 2016
    25
    0
    0
    The Commonwealth
    Really clever concept :)
     
  13. unexpect3rd

    unexpect3rd Well-Known Member

    Dec 7, 2011
    369
    2
    18
    Mobile Game Developer (Fulltime as well as indie)
    Singapore
    Great concept! Looking forward to this! Spacejacked is fantastic too! Keep up the great work
     
  14. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    Thanks mate! Sorry for the late reply. At the moment we're leaning towards making this a premium title =)

    Thanks!

    Thanks Edmund! =)
     
  15. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    Quick update!

    After attending our first local indie get-together and showing a bunch of people the game, it became quite obvious that the level-restart transition is confusing to a lot of people. Here's how it looked:

    [​IMG]
    (Terrain rotates to the right on restart)


    Here's the updated version:

    [​IMG]
    (Swipe right to restart)

    Hopefully it's now a lot clearer and doesn't look like it's going to a previous level.
     
  16. coolpepper43

    coolpepper43 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Aug 31, 2012
    4,615
    7
    38
    On the toilet
    Lol, the original version was not only obvious to me but also very creative.
     
  17. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    Yay thanks! At least one person got it! X'D
    Many people didn't get it though, so we ended up having to try a different animation. Will have to test this current one too!
     
  18. coolpepper43

    coolpepper43 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Aug 31, 2012
    4,615
    7
    38
    On the toilet
    Do you yet have a release date?
     
  19. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    Not yet, but it will be in the second quarter of this year =)
     
  20. chinykian

    chinykian Well-Known Member

    Sep 1, 2016
    78
    7
    8
    Indie Game Dev
    Singapore
    Work-in-progress level selection screen. Here's a look at some of the levels we've made!

    [​IMG]
     

Share This Page