Neural

by rroni
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.65
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.60
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.00
Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.60
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.48
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.81
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.40
Hey everyone!
After 3 days of work I finally got it finished, my second Ludum Dare game! :D
Neural is my first puzzle game.

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Controls, important!!!

Click on the box with the triangle to launch the simulation into action.
Click and drag on dots to create connections between them.
_Right-click_ to remove connections


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*Development process*

*Day 1:*
The first idea I had was to make a game in which you had to organize a power grid connecting power nodes to keep a city "alive". After coding up nodes and connections I stopped and thought about the idea for a second and came to the conclusion that it was too big to create in 3 days without burning myself out completely.

*Day 2:*
I came up with a second idea and it was to create some sort of neural connection between 2 points and have some sort of logic gates to complicate that. I continued work and liked the idea of the game being inside someone's brain. At the end of the second day I didn't like the gameplay that much so I scrapped that idea too.

*Day 3:*
Final day, no real gameplay, what am I going to do? I was thinking some sort of physics game, because I had an entire engine worth of physics at my disposal. I came up with this. I scrapped a lot of code, created some gameplay and levels, stitched an intro and an outro to it and I kind of rushed the project in the end. That's why there are only a few levels :( I'm happy with the end result though!

The theme is incorporated in two ways
Story-wise: The player is hooked up to this machine that gives control to one's neurons. If they cannot create connections, they will experience 'minor side effects'.
Gameplay-wise: I didn't have time to create a destruction effect to the triangle :D but the point was to destroy it if it didn't reach the goal node.

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*What did I learn?*

Good gameplay is extremely important. Before starting development, think about your gameplay thoroughly and whether it is entertaining. This time I struggled with creating good gameplay. Puzzle-games take quite a bit of time to create, especially good ones.

screenshot
Genres: puzzle
Tools: Unity

Comments13

Tomssuli
Tomssuli21 Apr 2020, 16:45
Fun little puzzle.
Juliette26 Apr 2020, 13:29
Really nice, I just saw now that you need right click to remove connections, I was just running the game over and over from start haha
thank you for this game!
Hygon30 Apr 2020, 17:32
nice game ! the intro sequence was fun. the tutorial should have specified how to remove connections. the visuals are very nice and appropriate for an abstract puzzle game like this one.
Guntainment
Guntainment30 Apr 2020, 18:54
overall a pretty good game liked the intro with the info about braindamage(headache...) nice Idea and the music is so good it matches the game theme so good.
cirno
cirno1 May 2020, 04:14
Very solid gameplay and awesome graphic effects! The game mechanism is easy to understand and can be extended to even more levels. Great job!
AndideBob
AndideBob3 May 2020, 14:59
I have played this for a good bit now and I am still not quite sure how the mechanics work. I also wish the intro was skippable. Other than that you picked nice style for a puzzle game and the music fits too.

I wish I understood the game better, but that's all me. You made a solid game!
eva
eva6 May 2020, 07:46
Fun puzzle game! For some reason I didn't completely understand how the lines worked until the last puzzle, where I figured out it was mirroring the movement on the other side.
Poupi6 May 2020, 07:55
Very cool puzzle game with interesting concept and solid levels.
UltraBill6 May 2020, 08:12
Very interresting gameplay. The mechanic take time to fully understand, but the way taht the first levels are made help to understand it.
Rob Parker
Rob Parker6 May 2020, 09:21
This was a really neat puzzle game. I liked the aesthetics for it and the simple gameplay mechanic. Even though the premise was simple it got very challenging towards the end!

I would say the two things that i found:
1. It would be nice if the tutorials appeared without you having to fail/wait a while when you're learning the mechanics.
2. It would be good to have a button to press to reset if i realise i've messed up rather than have to wait for hte triangle to hit the edge of the screen.
Jorim6 May 2020, 19:08
Brilliant aesthetics and great polish. The mechanics were a bit unpredictable for me, so in the later levels I had to resort to brute forcing and eventually gave up.
Natwomb6 May 2020, 19:22
I was quite impressed with this game, it feels really polished. Nice glowing artstyle with suiting music, and also some quite interesting levels. Great job!

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