Spherical Constitution

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ihavefivehat's picture
SCScreenShot2.png

Made by Claire Carré, Longxiao Li, and me (ihavefivehat AKA Dennis Carr).

Hold space or the left mouse button and move the mouse to tilt the level. Get the ball into the glowing hole.

Author: 
Claire Carré, Longxiao Li, and me (ihavefivehat AKA Dennis Carr)
Event Created For: 
Made For: 
An event

Comments

mkapolk's picture

the premise is really

the premise is really compelling. i enjoy the process of figuring out how the figures are going to writhe around in response to my mouse movements when i enter a new level, and how the glowing holes are put in sensitive places on the figures.

i had a bit of trouble figuring out how to move on my own. I don't understand why you need to click to move, it seems like it could just follow the mouse all the time.

ihavefivehat's picture

Thanks for playing! I

Thanks for playing! I suppose the fact that you have to hold the mouse button to move is a remnant from when the game was more of a traditional marble rolling game. So you'd want an easy way to 'reset' the level to a flat position, ie by letting go of the mouse. You're right, it's useless now.

Great Spin

I enjoyed the (literal) twist on Marble Madness here. Lots of challenging levels. Watching the bodies wriggling around along with the background soundscape made me think of creepy enemies in Silent Hill, but the vibrant colour scheme made me think of a dance club instead. And beyond the Marble Madness comparison, it's actually more like those wooden tabletop labyrinth games. Futuristic atmosphere meets antique entertainment...It's a winning combo.

Made it through all the levels, and it was satisfying. Well done! :D

ihavefivehat's picture

thanks!

thanks!

clyde's picture

Like mkapolk, I enjoyed

Like mkapolk, I enjoyed finding rewarding contortions and the use of sensitive areas of the body when they were used as goals. Additional to that, I find myself preferring the levels where I am searching for one static pose rather than the ones where I have to manipulate the bead on its way down.
I like how the use of reflections varies. Sometimes I feel that the body is contorting in front of a mirror as I do when trying to find a pimple on my back; sometimes the reflection seems to be a partner; sometimes the reflection provides a proxy for proprioception; sometimes the reflection makes me think that a group is synchronized.
I'm curious about how the actual puppeteering is done if it is a simple relationship. I was never able to really figure it out so I was very much feeling around rather than thinking of what to do ( which I find to be an interesting experience for me to explore with the help of the game). There's a lot of little touches that help like how the poses are lerped towards their coordinates rather than having the movement be immediately tied to the mouse-position.
The music communicated a lot of how I thought the experience was supposed to feel thematically.
I enjoyed this a lot, I think it is very well made and novel.

ihavefivehat's picture

The puppeteering is

The puppeteering is relatively simple. If you've used Unity's blend tree feature, we have five poses for each animation: tilted back, forward, left, right, and centered. Then the mouse's relative coordinates coordinates are fed into the blend tree which tweens between the 5 poses.

The game began as more of a traditional marble tilting game, but as it became more about contorting the figures the poses stopped mapping neatly to the cardinal directions. So yeah in most levels the game is more about feeling out each pose and its relationship to the mouse position. Interesting that you preferred the levels that were more about finding a particular position than the ones that were about skillful manipulation.

I think that if I were to revisit the game, level design would be a bit more rhythmic. You would tilt have to tilt the mouse in certain directions to move from save zone to safe zone, so the game would be more about finding the correct sequence of mouse movements / contorted positions which would lead the ball to the goal rather than making gentle movements to keep the ball on a narrow platform.

ihavefivehat's picture

please ignore

oops wrong spot

quasiotter's picture

J. Pigs, Mice, Sharks, Cards, everything

Hot dang, that was one of the coolest things I've played! I'm so lucky to be alive on this planet where something like this is possible and I'm able to find and play it. The movements are uncanny and I love that slots and paths are carved into the bodies. That would suck to have those kinds of manipulations on my body just for the sake of rolling a ball around? Thank y'all for this.

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