When I was in highschool I found a demo for a driving game that had a 3D engine based on splines (so all of it vector).
The aesthetics were amazing. This reminds me of them.
I recently spent a whole night googling and eventually traced it to a guy called Zotoaster based on some old gamedevboards.net forum posts, but I contacted him and he says it's all long gone. Not even a screenshot left :-(
Developer of the game here! It's actually not cell shading. That usually has a threshold with the colors so that it looks more like a comic here.
There's a few things going on: edge detection, screen space gradient, and lack of textures. The lack of textures is what makes it feel like cell shading, but I'm not actually thresholding any of the colors.
I've played development versions of the game. Hopefully I'm not spoiling too much, but there are certainly puzzles. They are super mind-bending and _different_. Definitely gave me the "now you're thinking in portals" feeling.
The other thing the puzzles reminded me of were the mechanics of Braid, where solving the puzzles requires a lot of un-learning about the way video games are supposed to work.
"Inception like" gravity inside rooms - switching gravity between different walls to move puzzle elements around + taking advantage of wraparound to move between levels on the map (the "outside")
Hey, developer of Manifold Garden here. The teaser was released quite a while ago when I changed the name of the game. A lot of the game wasn't finished then, but I needed to get something out, so focused on the architecture.
I also gave a talk at GDC about the level design in the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed2zmmcEryw&t It doesn't go over specific puzzles, but it gives you a sense of the kind of thinking you can expect to do in the game.
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[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 44.8 ms ] threadThe aesthetics were amazing. This reminds me of them.
I recently spent a whole night googling and eventually traced it to a guy called Zotoaster based on some old gamedevboards.net forum posts, but I contacted him and he says it's all long gone. Not even a screenshot left :-(
There's a few things going on: edge detection, screen space gradient, and lack of textures. The lack of textures is what makes it feel like cell shading, but I'm not actually thresholding any of the colors.
Also, I only see "impossible architecture" as in very large structures, and floating elements, nothing that plays with perspective like Escher.
I appreciate that a teaser is going to hold back on some information, but I reserve the right to consider being teased a frustrating experience.
In the meanwhile, seems like the Steam page has some more info?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/473950/Manifold_Garden/
The other thing the puzzles reminded me of were the mechanics of Braid, where solving the puzzles requires a lot of un-learning about the way video games are supposed to work.
Puzzle gameplay demo: https://youtu.be/InqcFGj51y8?t=12s
Here is a development update video I did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfDay02tqXw&t The first minute goes over the kinds of puzzles that you can expect in the game.
I also gave a talk at GDC about the level design in the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed2zmmcEryw&t It doesn't go over specific puzzles, but it gives you a sense of the kind of thinking you can expect to do in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbLhw_zJiFo
I wonder if this game will have a similar degree of simple mechanics...