SWITCH

A heuristic exploration within the field of enigmatic diversions.

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Run instructions:

Download from the itch.io link given. Unzip and run SWITCH.exe You should run in 1366x768 or 1280x720 It maaaay freak out at some points if run on a computer that's not mine. Especially on levels with lasers, and maybe with completing a level. Hopefully it doesn't. :/ If you should have beat a level, but it didn't let you, just use X to skip.

Rules

Bases are red, and are on the lower level. Platforms are blue, and are on the upper level. When space is pressed, light squares swap color, and dark squares do not. The player is moved with the arrow keys. It can only stay on the same level by its own movement (but may switch levels if space is pressed and it is on a light square.) R resets levels, and X skips them.

Blocks are purple. They can be pushed. They also can be walked on. Lasers are yellow. They can be blocked by platforms, blocks and other laser pointers. They can't be walked through. Switches are green. They can be pressed. They toggle a blocker, which can't be walked on or through.

My Opinions

3D Graphics:

Aaaah. Blender is too complicated. I ended up not using it at all. Simple geometric shapes are all I could use. I think it didn't significantly decrease the quality of the game, and made it a sort of "colors and shapes" kind of feel, but it would be nice to learn what literally any of the billions of buttons in Blender do for next time.

2D Graphics:

Wow. I really like how that logo came out, actually. I enjoy graphic design, but usually I'm not too good at it, but I just really am happy with the look of it. I've been looking at it too long, so I'm not actually a good judge at all of its aesthetic or readability though....(also the sleep deprivation probably isn't helping.) I did that in MS Paint, because I don't have Illustrator or anything. I also was having fun with the red/blue lighting on the sprites, so I might have gone a bit crazy with gradients.

Level Design:

I really enjoy puzzles, so it was important to me that the non-tutorial-y levels were designed well. I think that there are some very fun ones and some very hard ones too. I don't know how long you're going to look over the submission and play all the levels, but know that the level design is probably what I'm most proud of. Each non-tutorial level is intended around giving the solver some sort of discovery or moment of sudden understanding, and that's really nice if you can do it well. Again, I designed all the levels, so I already knew their solutions, and might not be a great judge of how fun solving them would be, but I like to make logic puzzles a bunch, so I think I've gotten better at seeing it from both a constructor and a solvers perspective. Anyway, yeah, you can see it for yourself. Hope you like them. (n_n)

Other:

Uh... the main menu is.... well.. yeah. The "beating a level" animation is so awesome. I kind of accidentally stumbled upon it, but I think it was a good find. I also like the goal cube and background animation. It just makes the atmosphere better than static in my opinion. In terms of code, please don't look in there. It's really awful spaghetti code with random bad cases and stuff. I just kind of randomly hacked stuff together until it worked, instead of thinking of the best way of doing things...

What's next

I actually am probably going to keep this game and keep working on it. I might start a bunch from scratch, so that I can redo some of the awful code, but I can still keep the base everything, and definitely those levels! There's a lot of potential here not yet explored, especially with switch/block and switch/laser interaction, so after getting some sleep and studying for the econ test on Monday that I was supposed to be studying for this weekend, I'll definitely look into expanding it more.

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