Here’s a list of common “avoider” components that are all really interesting but also we wanted to make a game without them:
Failure/death. In most avoiders, learning is cut short by death, so the best way to do well is to already be decent. We were curious what would happen if you had more time to futz around. Sea Salt City (as recommended by droqen) is an inspiration here.
Limited gamestate. Many avoiders are approximately “atomic” in the sense that the gamestate at 10sec could be identical to the gamestate at 100sec. Designing DJ Jimmy Shimmy plastered within us a permanent image of a larger-and-larger web of radial gradients, your character coasting along the intersections. (It is a verbose image.)
Short runs. We wanted an avoider you could play a single time and be satisfied with. Less emphasis on high score helps too.
i love the look and the sounds and the story/context at the beginning. i’m not sure i completely understand the game yet. i think i get the basics but it feels like a lot of details are eluding me. the spacebar/rewind thing is a mechanic i feel like i basically don’t understand at all.
if you want a nudge on how that mechanic works: try nudging the drill a teeny bit and then retracting.
explanation: the direction and amount you hop once retracting is the opposite of your drill’s final location (the drill hits the cube and the cube recoils). during the retraction, punctures begin to affect the density of the surrounding material (the actual fracking happens). since lower layers scroll faster, there is a 5 second penalty for retraction.
the mechanic is notable because: the density of the layer above influences your drill’s speed. to maximize predictability/reproducibility, try to minimize how far away your drill travels, such that you can utilize the lower density around prior punctures.
