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Graina : A Lemmings-like sandbox game with dynamic environment

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multiplex:
Graina alpha v0.5 is out

Take a look in your browser on itch.io https://multiplex-games.itch.io/graina

Edit (20.11.2016)

You may have a look on my latest post here for some details.
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Hello everybody,

I was googling Lemmings-like games and found this forum, and better yet it seems really active :thumbsup:

Anyway, I'm an amateur~ish game developer, playing with a concept like Lemmings with falling sands/powder toy mechanics. It's called "Gnomes of Graina".

 At the moment, I'm not really sure how to proceed further, which features should I add, how does the game looks overall, etc..

I would really love to have some feedback from fellow Lemmings fans. There isn't any playable version at the moment but you can take a look at the tech-demo here:

https://youtu.be/f35BOPNflE4

Currently the graphics, music and pretty everything else is under development, so it doesn't look really good and polished.

P.S: I hope I'm not violating any forum rules.

bsmith:
This looks very interesting!  Just watching the demo I can see puzzle potential, like a level which you need to fill a reservoir with water to let the gnomes across to a safe holding spot and then drain the water afterwards.  It would be pretty easy to add a difficulty curve by limiting which kinds of grain you can use for a given level.

I think the graphics look good enough, I think the screenshot at the top of your website blog is almost perfect for a puzzle game like this.  Puzzle games usually have a Goldilocks relationship with graphics - I need enough visuals to be able to easily distinguish different elements but not so much that the eye candy becomes a nuisance or even a hindrance.

I suggest getting a playable build put together once you get the mechanics working.  I would not add any new features yet, it looks like you already have enough different types of grains to make some good puzzles.

geoo:
I think this looks quite interesting, but at this point your game lacks the core mechanic that keeps the user hooked to the game. So you got gnomes, but unlike in lemmings they just walk around and you can't assign any tasks to them. So I wonder if you should drop the gnomes and go for a physics game instead. Imagine balls of different materials that interact differently with the different stuff that you can fill in (so you control them by the stuff you add), and of course the balls are affected by gravity and all the corresponding real physics. E.g. wooden balls swim on water while metal balls sink. Wooden balls burn in lava, etc, all balls roll down slopes and accelerate on the way. Then you need to think of a goal for the game, like getting the balls somewhere, or just getting certain balls somewhere while allowing to sacrifice some other balls.

Just some ideas, but I dunno, if done right this idea could maybe turn into a game that I'd personally enjoy.

I've actually seen a lemmings-based game where instead of controlling the lemmings, you could add and erase terrain randomly. I didn't play it for long, it wasn't very fun and I didn't see much decent puzzle potential.

multiplex:
Both ideas have some good points. I'll sleep over them and think. Please post again if smt. else comes to your mind.

@bsmith: Graphics: One thing I couldn't really decide is how big should a grain be? it's at the moment 4x4, which leaves no space for visual clues (think of difference between stone and cobblestone in minecraft), only color. It should be atleast 8x8 to make some patterns but then they seem too big for fluids, i.e. water. Hmm

@geoo: "game lacks the core mechanic": yup. The original intention was just to make a physics game. Then I played with it and it was boring...after a few minutes. One idea is to have limited supply of grains. i.e. you need to collect them first before creating. But let's see, if I can make some interesting levels with this mechanic. Ball idea is interesting, maybe I can add some iteracting items like that to the scene to complicate the puzzles. A little bit flavor like the incredible machines perhaps.

namida:
The grains don't have to all look identical. In Lemmings (at least L1-based engines; ie: actual L1, (Neo)Lemmix, (Super)Lemmini), each pixel is (I think) similar to a "grain" as you describe it. It's not the individual grain (or pixel), but larger shapes that make up the visually apparent details - a pixel of Marble set steel is impossible to tell apart (on it's own) from a pixel of virtually anything else in that set; but when they're actually together and you see the whole piece (not just an individual pixel), it's fairly apparent what's what.

And for the record: You haven't broken any rules, it's perfectly fine to post this here. :)

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