The Connection is a first-person puzzle game set in a strange world. Connect all the loose ends of three-dimentional puzzles to open up gates and travel further into the chaotic landscape. – [Author’s Description]
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The Connection (BK-TN)
Posted by Terry
on March 16, 2013
[Download for Windows, Mac, Linux]
I’m so confused. This is clearly – and well – inspired by Antichamber, but I have no idea what the criteria are for a solved puzzle, and I refuse to just randomly flip around cubes, because that will get me nowhere in the long run. Still, it’s awesome!
lol, that didn’t work! I don’t think I can delete that nonsense…
Anyway: Just make sure that each of the small faces on the pieces is facing another small face. Once they’re all ‘connected’, the puzzle is solved.
So for the first puzzle you just need to make a cube.
Oh, no, I didn’t mean that one. That was fine. I mean the very first puzzle after you hit the ground, with only 2 3-pieces. I managed to solve the fourth puzzle, too, but I’m not sure what the red cube does.
The first one after you fall doesn’t have 8 pieces? Maybe the path splits somewhere really early?
I’ve done 5 or 6 now, but no colored blocks so far. Just the all-black puzzles getting more and more complex. I’m on one with 17 pieces right now and I’m pulling my hair out.
Oh, I see, red cube. I’d imagine that something in the city powers it up. Or maybe there are multiple red cubes?
Who knows, but what a cool little game.
Never mind, I’ve got it now. Having got a bit further, I’d say that the things that set it apart from Antichamber that made it great would have to be easy access to any room, clear lessons learned, an ability to fail, and no penalty – in fact, occasional benefit – for that failure.
Heh, nice try though 🙂 I deleted your comment, but just installed a plugin to allow you to leave spoilers in the comments. Let’s try it out!
OH NOOOOOOOOOOO
Looks like he took the Unity version down.
Well, that was certainly enjoyable.
I don’t think it ties in very well with the theme at all- I read the developer’s comments on that, but I don’t really see where they’re coming from. A game world is always structured, really; if not by delimiting boundaries, then at least by the rules of the system, without which you wouldn’t have a game at all. So maybe the very outermost boundaries of the play area were created by (mathematically) chaotically placing cubes; I can’t tell, and I didn’t try to, because it’s not really relevant since I didn’t see them and think “oh hey chaos” but rather “oh hey boundaries”. Their only salience consisted in what they were not. The rest of the play area was well-structured and orderly- there were clear paths, goals and obstacles. Even the puzzle-solving was rigidly inflexible and consistent in its rule system.
Which is a good thing- can you imagine trying to solve a puzzle without any internal logic? Chaos can certainly be evoked by a game, but this one simply doesn’t do it, and this kind of game probably shouldn’t. (Maybe a future version could have urban textures and fog and Slenderman chasing you around. That’d immediately make it a lot more chaotic. 😛 ) Basically what I’m trying to say is I liked it a lot, I’m just at a loss as to why it was submitted to this particular game jam, though I’m glad it was.
Maybe sometimes, the release of a game and a game jam just happen to be on the same weekend.. 😀
However, the concept of chaos is a very broad one, as maybe the puzzles ARE in chaos and it’s your job to put them in order again.
So if you use your imagination a little bit, it fits the theme ! 😉
Yes except the title screen specifically says “Chaos jam”. 😛
Of course there’s space for interpretation, but do you see chaos when you look at those puzzles? I see a system that has a certain degree of disorder and I realize my goal is to reduce that disorder to a minimum. That’s not the same as chaos (regardless of whether or not you’re using a mathematical definition thereof).
Well, I haven’t done too many of these jams (I did something for that one, but … never mind!), but in those I entered I found that it’s rather hard to make something really fitting the theme. And later, when you look at peoples games, you sometimes wonder were the theme is hiding.
But that is because it’s not that easy to do, and also, most jams encourage you to take a “creative” look on the theme… So as long as the game is fun to play, why complain ?!? 😉
If you read my post carefully you’ll find that I am not, in point of fact, complaining. But even if I was, aren’t games in a jam (partly) judged on how well they execute the theme? Seems to me that that makes it valid criticism.