LostBrick

LostBrick is the result of our workshop “3 dimensionale Grundlagen im medialen Raum”. Our assignment for two and a half weeks was to design an intuitive and appealing video game which is centered around gravity.

game idea and concept

The idea of this Jump ‘n’ Run game revolves around a cuboid which breaks loose from a corner of the in game world - a prism. The players task is to navigate the cuboid through and around the four sides of the prism to the place it broke loose from.
The difficult part is that the player is faced with a new challenge on each side, because the gravity changes the direction for each side. Therefor it could happen to the player that once he got around the corner of one side the cuboid fell up instead of down.

Changing sides occurs once the player moves on the lighter colored parts on a ledge. It is not shown to the player to which side the prism is going to turn. The alternation between a 2 dimensional view in parallel perspective and a 3 dimensional view while changing sides gives this game the appeal of a puzzle with an intellectual demand.
This video documents our development process:

development

The games code was written in Javascript with integration of the Box2D physic simulation library. To give the game world more dynamics and indicate the current gravity, rain is placed globally in the game simulated with functions of Box2D.

All the other graphical elements, except the game figure or the character, were created and animated in Cinema4D.
Here an exemplary view on the leveldesign of the first side from level 1:

controller

Our intentions for the design of the controller was to keep it as simple and sleek as possible with only the necessary control elements in place. The body was created in a 3D printer, in which a MakeyMakey receives impulses and gives it via USB to a computer. Those impulses are transferred through an aluminum steering cross from your hand to the MakeyMakey, where the circuit with a ground to the hand is closed and a command further given to a computer.