Lock
This game is from ldjam.com, which is currently unavailable.
You can try viewing the original page on Web Archive (may not load correctly).
You can try viewing the original page on Web Archive (may not load correctly).
You’ve brought the artifact to the confluence of signals: beams from distant stars, aimed with unimaginable precision, bearing secrets from ancient civilizations. It senses their presence in this place, illuminates, invites you to align it and feed the dark mechanisms hidden within. Can you?
Lock is my 19th compo entry, and as always it was a bit of a scramble—got a late start, then lost more hours than I’d like to admit on fighting with quaternions. I’m happy with the result, though! My games are usually more arcade-y than puzzle-y, since I’m not much of a puzzle designer… but this one turned out to be both challenging and (I think) fun, and amenable to procedural generation. There’s still lots of polish I wish I’d gotten to, and I like this enough to consider doing a post-jam version, which may or may not be coming in the next week or so as my brain recovers.
Thanks for reading this far, and I hope you enjoy playing Lock!
- Your goal is to line up the correct corners with the incoming signal lasers.
- After level 1, floating lenses will appear (the gray cylinders) which change the color of signals that pass through them. You can rotate each layer of lenses independently of the artifact; the currently selected rotatable-thing is marked with a white outline.
- Rotate current object: WASD or arrow keys
- Switch object: Space or Enter
- Rotate: right stick or D-pad
- Switch object: any face button (ABXO, etc.)
- Rotate: buttons at bottom right
- Switch object: button at bottom left
Lock is built in Godot, like my two previous games Lepidopterology Extreme (LD58) and Happy Circle (another jam). I’m really starting to appreciate it after using Unreal for most of my previous games—it’s lightweight, thoroughly documented, works well on macOS, and exports to the web. Highly recommend it for anyone who’s currently working in a larger engine.
Other tools used:
- Houdini (modeling, generating VFX assets)
- Blender (setting up light rig to render the IBL from)
- my phone and Voice Memos (recording sound effects, mostly of buttons on a DualSense and tapping an old silicone phone case with my finger)
- GarageBand (music)
- Fork (Git)
I do not use generative AI—should go without saying for the compo, but it seems worth being explicit.
Lock is my 19th compo entry, and as always it was a bit of a scramble—got a late start, then lost more hours than I’d like to admit on fighting with quaternions. I’m happy with the result, though! My games are usually more arcade-y than puzzle-y, since I’m not much of a puzzle designer… but this one turned out to be both challenging and (I think) fun, and amenable to procedural generation. There’s still lots of polish I wish I’d gotten to, and I like this enough to consider doing a post-jam version, which may or may not be coming in the next week or so as my brain recovers.
Thanks for reading this far, and I hope you enjoy playing Lock!
How to play
- The artifact (cuboid) has markings around its corners which indicate the color of signal which that corner responds to.- Your goal is to line up the correct corners with the incoming signal lasers.
- After level 1, floating lenses will appear (the gray cylinders) which change the color of signals that pass through them. You can rotate each layer of lenses independently of the artifact; the currently selected rotatable-thing is marked with a white outline.
Controls
Mouse / keyboard
- Look around: click and drag- Rotate current object: WASD or arrow keys
- Switch object: Space or Enter
Gamepad (desktop only)
- Look around: left stick- Rotate: right stick or D-pad
- Switch object: any face button (ABXO, etc.)
Touch (mobile only—doesn’t work on the LD site, use the Itch.io link below)
- Look around: tap and drag- Rotate: buttons at bottom right
- Switch object: button at bottom left
Development
Lock is built in Godot, like my two previous games Lepidopterology Extreme (LD58) and Happy Circle (another jam). I’m really starting to appreciate it after using Unreal for most of my previous games—it’s lightweight, thoroughly documented, works well on macOS, and exports to the web. Highly recommend it for anyone who’s currently working in a larger engine.
Other tools used:
- Houdini (modeling, generating VFX assets)
- Blender (setting up light rig to render the IBL from)
- my phone and Voice Memos (recording sound effects, mostly of buttons on a DualSense and tapping an old silicone phone case with my finger)
- GarageBand (music)
- Fork (Git)
I do not use generative AI—should go without saying for the compo, but it seems worth being explicit.