
Perspective - 2D/3D puzzle platformer - olegp
http://www.seewithperspective.com/
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arriu
This looks very similar to "Shadow Physics". If you have not seen the game, it
was shown off at GDC 2009 (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb5DjyoDObA>). It
got a lot of attention and then 3 years later was canceled. Here is a video of
the Failure Workshop from GDC 2012 describing what went wrong (click on ->
What Happend With Shadow Physics Intro):
<http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015751/The-Failure>

I hope the developers can get past the initial "Wow" factor and actually make
the game fun to play.

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tuananh
that Shadow Physics demo looks much more impressive than Perspective.

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noamsml
I dunno. Shadow physics had much more visual and gameplay polish when demoed,
but Perspective has a simple idea that, without any additional gameplay
mechanics, makes for many interesting puzzle mechanics. To me, at least, that
is very impressive.

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delinka
Being more free than Fez ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fez_(video_game)> )
to rotate the world to line up traveling lines is somewhat neat. But I suspect
this makes level design a Real Challenge. It'll be nice to see that they
managed to create nice challenging levels that don't devolve into boringly
simple solutions after the for dozen or so puzzles.

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gurkendoktor
I think this is too "analogue" to be fun and has too many degrees of freedom.
I found that the more "discrete" and clear a puzzler is, the more I enjoy it.
Is there a proper word for what I'm trying to say? Think a chess board with
clearly defined squares and moves, vs. a WarHammer-style world where you can
freely move anywhere within 5cm. Fez is the former, this is the latter.

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Impossible
I strongly agree with this and mentioned it in my Shadow Physics failure
workshop talk (even though it might not have come across as strongly as I
wanted it to). It was, I think, one of the strongest shortcomings of the game,
and if I was to revisit it I'd make everything (projection, lighting,
physics), far more discreet so player's can predict the consequences of their
actions instead of guessing through trial and error.

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TeMPOraL
> so player's can predict the consequences of their actions instead of
> guessing through trial and error.

Is this really what people want? Serious question. I am surprised to see it,
because personally I always prefer more freedom and "trial and error" to
discreet options and predictability. I hate when there's only "one right way"
to do things, enforced by design. But right now I feel like minority.

~~~
gurkendoktor
I think that Angry Birds and World of Goo only work because of their freedom.
Chess, Tetris and DROD work because they are beautifully simple and discrete.
Minecraft took a "mathy" world to the extreme while AAA games seem to explode
in organic freedom. Cut the Rope uses a physics engine but enforces "one right
way" through its level design.

Maybe it's not so black and white, but rather designers make parts of a game
discrete until it becomes simple enough to be fun. Whatever it is, the
complexity of this game concept feels overwhelming to me. It's a bit like this
physics-based Tetris, I would try it for fun but only for free and for five
minutes.

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egypturnash
This doesn't actually look _fun_ to play, but it looks _interesting_. It's a
toy, that could maybe have a game built around it.

Stuff that might make it interesting off the top of my head:

\- moving things for the 2D guy to avoid/collect \- moving things for the 3D
viewpoint to avoid/collect \- switches for 2D to throw that remove
obstructions for 3D, and vice-versa \- sometimes you having to move 2D and 3D
at the same time

The biggest thing for me that I can't think of a workaround for offhand is the
constant breaking of flow. The video shows you doing like 3 seconds of
platforming followed by a context shift into 3 seconds of FPSing.

Hopefully the students behind this have thought of all of these things and
many more. Because the idea of "running around imagining Megaman doing his
thing across the walls" is a nice adaptation of a thing a lot of people
probably did growing up.

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georgemcbay
"This doesn't actually look fun to play, but it looks interesting. It's a toy,
that could maybe have a game built around it."

I agree. Of course, Narbacular Drop wasn't that fun to play either and with
Valve's involvement that became Portal. So this could have some potential.

OTOH, what is up with the screenshots link being a zip file you download? What
a terrible web page.

~~~
egypturnash
Hah, both comments on mine mention Portal. I never played ND but Portal was a
blast; we'll see if someone picks this team up and help them make this a full
game the way Valve did with ND/Portal.

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zaptheimpaler
This is almost a clone of a game called Crush on the PSP:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_(video_game)>. Crush was a lot of fun to
play, but they've evolved this a little bit more by making it an FPS. I agree
with a lot of posts here that say this degree of freedom might actually make
the levels boring and predictable.

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neverm0re
So someone blatantly ripped off Mega Man down to the actual look of the
character during the jumping animation and decided to stuff their rip-off into
the game Echochrome, minus the artistic sensibilities.

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poppysan
They refaced the exact mega-man sprites. The "borrowing" of the mega man
sprite animations so blatant that, as the authors, I'd be worried.

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needle0
Reminds me of Fez, Echochrome, & Super Paper Mario. The zoom in/out to
shrink/grow mechanic seems interesting.

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scottw
Everything is a mashup; Perspective was taken from Percepto:

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/percepto/id419502225?mt=8>

It's a fun little puzzle game that operates on rotating the perspective 90°
(my kids have been playing it for over a year and seem to keep enjoying it,
though I got tired of it after a few levels).

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jeffool
I really regret not going to DigiPen, rather than Full Sail. I met a few great
people at FS, but wow at the games that come out of DP.

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Tycho
I recently watched the documentary 'Indie Game: the Movie.' While it was great
to see small teams make games that sold tens of thousands of copies, some of
the devs seemed to have an unwarranted superiority complex about their games
vs. mainstream productions. Sure, the big companies often churn out sequels
based on the same formulas, but most of these indie games were just riding the
coat-tails of 90s platformers. Slapping an edgy theme on a basic platformer
and throwing in a couple new gimmicks doesn't make something a transcendent
work of art, or competitive with large scale productions. The only game they
talked about that seemed genuinely groundbreaking was Minecraft (no pun
intended).

~~~
jblow
How many of these games have you actually played? It sounds like you don't
know what you are talking about.

~~~
Tycho
I played Fez for a bit. And Braid. None of others. Care to explain what makes
them so special?

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jhund
Definitely takes some getting used to it, and maybe too many degrees of
freedom? What excites me though is to see how the medium "Computer Game"
starts to break out of the familiar concepts and stops emulating what has
existed before.

The medium emancipates itself from [what?] like photography did from painting
with Henry Cartier Bresson and his "decisive moment". At that time photography
stopped doing what had been done with painting before (elaborate portraits
that required the models to sit still for a long time), and started doing
things that painting could not do: freeze the decisive moment in time.

I'm very excited to see all the new things computer games will start doing
that we can't even imagine today.

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agravier
Nice concept. I would like to see a similar 2d projection game integrated in
an augmented reality game world, probably in a mobile app. It would require
the app to have a basic understanding of the 3D structure of the world, but
that is not impossible.

~~~
opminion
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_localization_and_m...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_localization_and_mapping)

~~~
agravier
Yeah, I'm not sure what you want to tell, but regarding monocular SLAM, I
attended a thesis defense in my lab (LAAS-CNRS) in 2007 with impressive
results on a mobile robot. So I think there are chances that good monocular
SLAM algorithms get implemented into mobile libraries in some years.

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djbender
I'll be impressed if this sort of freeform perspective mechanic translates
into entertaining gameplay. Seems like that sort of mechanic would be too
flexible in a manner that would be detrimental to gameplay.

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Ryan_Shmotkin
A very cool idea, but I get an 'uncomfortable' feeling from just watching the
video. Going to be very hard mentally to play.

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asurma
Slightly related: stabyourself.net/orthorobot/

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prezjordan
Seems very awkward to play - lots of stalling.

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RBerenguel
It kind of reminds me of 1-bit ninja ([http://www.whatsoniphone.com/1-bit-
ninja-review-a-very-odd-g...](http://www.whatsoniphone.com/1-bit-ninja-review-
a-very-odd-good-old-school-platformer/)) but with more 3D-ishness.
Interesting, but... could it be fun, too?

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chris_engel
Haha, watched the video for 8 seconds, then: MEGAMAN! :D

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daemeh
Reminds me of Echochrome <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLJiv9Aeo2c>

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tux1968
Clicked the headline link expecting to be uninterested, but this is an
impressive student effort; I think it's quite brilliant.

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coder42
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned "Paper Mario" as a 2D plat former with 3D
perspective at times.

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morenoh149
reminds me of sky island [http://games.adultswim.com/sky-island-puzzle-online-
game.htm...](http://games.adultswim.com/sky-island-puzzle-online-game.html)

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dktbs
unrelated to the game itself: Why does "screenshots" link to a zip file with 5
reasonably small png files in it? I mean, sure it works, but that is weak.

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siasia
Be careful with these megaman sprites.

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celalo
mind tickling and attractive.

