In the beginning there was NOTHING.

by palemek

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.82

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.12

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.17

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.28

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.71

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.96

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.85

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.83

"In the beginning there was NOTHING" is a word puzzle game. Create words and anagrams, collide and merge strings to produce EXISTENCE. One is not enough. You shall make it as many times as is the mysterious answer for the greatest question of all. Thank you Douglas Adams <3

(and for the ones that are too lazy to seek the answers - it's 42).

Let this exciting experience consume you!

(it's even better with headphones)

.. and one more thing. Don't get sad if you're not succeding at first. This puzzle is not that easy to solve.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Instructions:

help is located under the "x" sign at top right, you can also open it with "esc" key.

Anagram maker:
creates anagram (if it exist), from all the letters in incoming words

Letter-collider:
takes numerical values assigned to letters based on their position in alphabet(a=1,b=2,c=3 etc.) and outputs letter that has the numerical value of the sum. If the sum is larger than 26 it starts counting from 'a'.

You can build pipes with left mouse button, erase them with right mouse button.
You can place anagram maker with middle mouse button click, and letter-collider with two middle mouse button clicks*. You can also toggle them with middle mouse button.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Downloads:

For windows there is downloadable exe, for other platforms there is downloadable .love file which can be run by love engine:

https://kubutek.itch.io/in-the-beginning-there-was-nothing

Post-jam version with fixes:
https://kubutek.itch.io/in-the-beginning-there-was-nothing-001

FixList:
1. Zoom works to the middle of the screen now
2. All letters work in sync (no desyncronisation problems should occur now)
3. Fixed some misspelled achievements ;)
4. Screen can be resized, no fullscreen unfortunetly...
5. Added option to save (press 'a') and load games (press 'b' - only if you saved previously thou :D ), but it doesnt save achievements
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Made for LD45 with theme:"Start with nothing"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anna Orlińska: 2D art https://www.behance.net/anlewi47b2

https://www.instagram.com/l.ann.na/

Szymon Orliński: sounds and music

Jakub Orliński: idea, design and programming

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

made with LOVE2D

Genres: puzzle

Tools: LÖVE

Comments41

jaydubbyasee7 Oct 2019, 21:28

Really cool concept. Really digging the atmospheric audio and the art aesthetics. Also I listened to that full sound clip at at the intro :smile: Getting factorio vibes from the pipeline assembly of letters. Also really liked the goal / achievement system you built in.

Demuss8 Oct 2019, 12:47

Game looks great while zoomed in, and overall art style is intresting. The idea of smashing letters into other letters and words is really cool but i would like to see some kind of speed up on pressing something... now i am w8ing for my pipe-monster to work : D

karreg8 Oct 2019, 20:12

Waaww, the concept is very cool... but that atmosphere and music ! OoO
Thank you for this moment !

CaptAndrey8 Oct 2019, 20:23

Cool concept and style! But gameplay became borring at some time

Nisovin8 Oct 2019, 20:24

Interesting concept, though I wish there was a bit more direction given for what you are meant to do. I eventually figured it out, but this game would definitely benefit from a small tutorial level.

Jonas Michael8 Oct 2019, 20:28

So I don't know what I am doing wrong. I am able to place those simple nodes, but nothing else. I might have missed it, but there is very little information given in general, so I am lost. If you can help me, I will come back and vote on this game again.

Yaroslav Kravtsov8 Oct 2019, 20:32

It takes time to understand how it works and what possible combination can be. I like the concept of the factory of letters and words. Good work, nice game! You nailed the ludum dare theme!

Palemekauthor8 Oct 2019, 22:17

@jonas-michael under "x" sign at right top corner there is whole menu with achievements and help, you can move mouse over specific icons(like mouse) and get information about the controls. In simple words you can place other types of nodes([anagram maker]/[letter creator]) with middle mouse button, hope this helps :)

@demuss making time speed-up was on my todo list, but it didnt make it finally :)

@nisovin i know, there was just not enough time, LOVE2D is demanding and it took quite some time to work everything else in time:)

Taylor Reynolds9 Oct 2019, 04:36

This is a really neat concept, and I love the design elements and UI design!

Jonas Michael9 Oct 2019, 08:53

@palemek ah, okay, thank you :D I have to get a mouse then... Still an amazing concept, can't waut to try it in its intended version :D

Honey Pony9 Oct 2019, 21:10

Awesome concept. I love games like Opus Magnum and this is a great idea. Only problem is the game clearly doesn't want you to build a long add-a-to-everything pipe, as my a's were never arriving at the same time as my other letters. I think the combining pipes should just hold on to each letter they receive until another one shows up because otherwise I think timing it is pretty hard.

One tiny thing: please don't capture the mouse. That made it harder to write down some notes when planning my pipeline.

This one definitely deserves a 5 in theme though. One of the best uses of the theme I've seen.

Palemekauthor9 Oct 2019, 21:35

@honey-pony thanks for feedback! I will keep in mind for next GameJams to not capture the mouse, timing is indeed a little problematic, i make it disappear to avoid other problems with joining words/letters, and for forcing player to use other methods to create letters like x=o+i, but it would be one of the first things to repair

Honey Pony9 Oct 2019, 21:39

@palemek Forcing more interesting combinations is definitely a legitimate goal. Although one option if you go the Opus Magnum route is to just let the player choose what things to prioritize in their individual solution.

If you do want to force more interesting solutions I wonder if one option would be a cap on the number of combinations a single letter can go through, or maybe a cap on how many of a certain piece you can place on the board. The timing issue can be one way to do it but just seems too non-deterministic.

Palemekauthor9 Oct 2019, 21:47

@honey-pony yeah i know, you are completely right, i choose the simplest design solution to adress this problem and, as you say, it wasn't the right one. I think that cap on number of gates could be overkill, some solution could be that you cannot divide line into two, so every word/letter comes everywhere in the same time

shubart9 Oct 2019, 22:33

So crazy idea ! Beware, the scrolling made me several times loose my position in space. thank you for your game.

Palemekauthor9 Oct 2019, 22:57

@shubart actually this was one thing that costed me 3 hours and i couldnt make it to scroll to middle of the screen eventually(i was tired i think ;) ), also you can press backspace to center yourself again :)

velvetlobster10 Oct 2019, 21:13

wooow what a creative idea! Did you get to this concept intentionally or was it something that came about along the way? Random good ideas happen a lot in projects which you have such a shor ttime to develop something, so I wonder if this was intentional or whether it just happened.

Palemekauthor10 Oct 2019, 21:19

@velvetlobster Hi! That was my starting idea really, only small additions(letter collider-> turning letters into others) were made. Glad You liked it!

velvetlobster10 Oct 2019, 21:32

it was really clever, I love games that use letters and words, there is so much narrative potential that can still be explored in them

velvetlobster10 Oct 2019, 21:32

yours is quite a nice example of what can be done in this subgenre

CrubeYawne11 Oct 2019, 12:58

I liked how different this game was. Really cool use of abstract ideas.

Catie Jo12 Oct 2019, 08:54

As others have said, the concept is super original--great work! I also loved the "this sound took two hours to make" note on the load screen :laughing:

I struggled a lot to understand what was going on at the beginning. Once i figured it out, the minimal look and feel was really cool, though.

Overall, one of my favorite interpretations of the theme! Super cool :smiley:

Raivk12 Oct 2019, 12:31

Super original concept ! Really love this idea and love the execution ! Congrats :)

Dane Tesla12 Oct 2019, 21:51

Seeing letters + Douglas Adams + polish names all together made me play this entry instantly! The game was a fascinating experience but at first hard to interact and navigate (as someone else mentioned, it could use a small tutorial or something). A great idea, amazing audio and good graphic interpretation.

(No i oczywiście, gratuluję i pozdrawiam.)

gamefive14 Oct 2019, 12:58

It's an innovative concept. It's a shame that there's no help in the game. I didn't know why the player should do this now.

Palemekauthor14 Oct 2019, 17:02

@catie-jo Thanks! Glad you liked it, i know that small tutorial would make a HUUGE diffrence, but i struggled to make it in time anyway. I'm now starting to work on post-jam version, tutorial its one of main tasks.

@raivk Thank you for kind words!

@dane-tesla I know its hard to get it at first, my fault with not giving enough information in game... thank you very much for playing :) Dzięki ;)

Palemekauthor14 Oct 2019, 19:13

@gamefive Hi, there is help in he game under x sign in the rigjt top corner(or Esc key) i know that i should create tutorial, its game biggest problem...

JUSTCAMH17 Oct 2019, 06:52

I figured stuff out eventually, which was really cool! One thing I wish though was that I could speed stuff up, cos I'd often have the set up ready, and need to wait an extended period of time for the letters to go where they need to. Another issue was that things kept desyncronising! I'd have a setup that works for a bit, and over time pulls apart, or two parts that hit the machine at slightly the wrong times. I had an issue that I couldn't make the word 'CAN', not sure if that was a desync issue, or if that word isn't in the game's dictionary. I did everything I could think of, but unfortunately couldn't get that can working.

A logical issue that you may want to consider was that you could trap letters in an infinite loop, and hold them there until they are needed. When I was constructing my words, the systems weren't that complex, because I set up loops that held the parts I needed. It was a very interesting puzzle, and I would love to complete it, but it was all a bit too slow, with no speed up power, problems with things not merging, and systems desyncing. I really enjoyed it tho, and if this were to be polished up, I would seriously love to go for some of the harder challenges that the achievements put forth! :heart:

Palemekauthor17 Oct 2019, 13:18

@justcamh thank you very much for playing and critique! I am currently working on post jam version(started 2 days ago) and i have fixed up a lot of things already like desynchronization, camera zooming to origin not to center of the screen, few bugs in achievements and now i am working on save system and time speeding up. If you are interested i can keep you posted :)

adhesion19 Oct 2019, 21:24

Really cool concept! Great atmosphere too, audio & graphics work really well (though I really wanted it to be fullscreen). Pretty confusing without a tutorial though, and there are some aspects that make it difficult or frustrating to figure out the game on your own (slow speed, small screen size, zoom feels a little weird since it's not centered on the screen, difficulty in getting letters to line up in the right spot etc) Would love to see this expanded upon though. Nice work!

Palemekauthor21 Oct 2019, 16:06

@adhesion hey, thanks for comment :), i am currently working on postjam version because of all amazing feedback i received, i already repaired some of the major issues( zoom, desynchronization, some achievement problems, lack of save) and i plan to repair others(screen size and key bindings-for people without middle mouse button). I think i will post it on itchi soon :D. The biggest issue i think is lack of some tutorial, but i still struggle with how to wrap my head around it :)[not the technical part, but minimalistic UI not destroying this void feeling]. Thanks again!

Bungalow22 Oct 2019, 06:36

Awesome concept, nice take on the theme and super cute art. Amazing job! Best of luck!

dob22 Oct 2019, 18:39

This is such a cool idea. I really love it. I had a couple of issues - I would often place controls that didn't seem to do what they wree supposed to. I'm not sure if that's a timing issue, or something else but my anagram tools were particularly finicky. Also, I don't know how you could build the required goal words from the letters in NOTHING with only the two tools indicated. I see other people reference adding A's together, but I couldn't figure out any way to get to the earlier letters (E, A, etc) when all you can do is add. There's probably an undocumented feature I'm missing, which I could have used a hint to get to - it's frustrating not to be able to even see how to finish. But I really love this concept, and the art, sound, and execution are sooooo cool.

Palemekauthor23 Oct 2019, 20:36

@dob Thank you very much for the comment! The thing with getting those early letters is to add some higher ones together: to get 'a' you can add for example 'g' and 't' (7+20=27 => 27 % 26==1 = "a").
I know i should have add more explanation to that mechanic, and i know that there are some 'sync' problems(when letters/words are arriving not exactly when they should, so they do not create a anagram even if it exist).

I will post repaired version tomorrow or the day after as "post-jam", so propably you could play it a little while longer :D.

Thanks again for kind words!

FinnThePirate24 Oct 2019, 11:41

what an interesting experience and concept, I love the art style and music, by the way Did you use an analog synth for the music or just software? gameplay is a little confusing but all in all great job and great idea for the theme

Palemekauthor24 Oct 2019, 21:22

@FinnThePirate Thanks for comment! For music we used software synths and modified recorded sounds(aquarium for example :D).

ryjcio24 Oct 2019, 23:25

I cannot really understand how the mechanics work :

Rialgar24 Oct 2019, 23:26

I absolutely love the general concept. The execution was very solid and the sound track is just awesome. The entire theming around pipeworks works really well. There are 2 pieces you can improve, though.

The first is that it was very easy to create letters/words that can never reach a combination point at the same time. There are 2 ways to solve this, either the combination point can hold on to a word for a bit or you add the ability to speed-up or slow-down a segment.

The second was that it took me pretty long until I made progress in understanding it. Maybe add actual tasks, not only achievements. And make some tasks that actually build on each other.

See me puzzling for A WHOLE FRIGGING HOUR here: https://youtu.be/TarRXaPUVic

Palemekauthor25 Oct 2019, 00:19

@rialgar @dob @adhesion @justcamh @dane-tesla @velvetlobster @honey-pony @jaydubbyasee Thank you guys for all your comments! If you would like to give the game the second try i just uploaded post-jam version with little fixes(listed in description), nothing big just polished few most annoying (and easy to fix)things.
Because of all this incredibly warm welcome i have strength now to continue going down this path! Thank you and all others for your help!

I hope someone will win the game someday :)