Hey everyone,
It's been 1 week since Lambda Enigma was released in Early Access. And I hope you've all had a great week!
I've been hard at work on the next release. In this short announcement, I'd like to briefly share some info and images with you regarding what I've been working on.
WARNING: This post may contain spoilers.
I'll also mention that I haven't received much feedback yet, so if you've already played the game then please let me know what you liked, or what you didn't like, about it. Your feedback is valuable to me!
In the meantime, I'm simply prioritizing what I had already planned to work on from the beginning. I have a ton of ideas, so I'll just continue working through my list.
Start Menu & Loading
On the initial start menu, when you press the button to start (or continue) your game, you may have noticed that sometimes the loading indicator is shown for several seconds. Actually, it's not loading at all, it's just waiting for the start screen video's frame to synchronize with the introduction video's frame, for a smooth transition.
You don't actually have to wait. If you just left click once, then you can skip directly to the intro video! Furthermore, after you've seen the intro video at least once, you can then left click to skip that too the next time that you startup the game.
In hindsight, I think it was a bad choice to show a loading indicator while the game waits for up to several seconds to sync two videos. It gives the misconception that the game's loading performance is really slow, when in fact it was already done loading before the start menu was displayed.
After the video frame syncs, you'll then watch a short video in which you'll fly toward the workshop, enter through a broken window, and eventually arrive at the workbench. You're not presented with any context about what's going on, or even a hint at the story.
I'm solving both of these issues by working on a better transition to start the game. Note that it's still going to be skippable by left clicking, after you've already watched it in full at least once before. This new transition will also introduce a bit more of the story's context. Here's a screenshot of work in progress:
(Mouse over for spoiler...)
Mazes
Maze puzzles are still under development. I'm continuing to work on their infrastructure to make them fully playable and stable. But I really like how they're coming along so far!
I'd like to share one teaser video with you that I think illustrates (or at least hints at) how the maze puzzles fit into the theme of the coding puzzles in Lambda Enigma, and how these mazes aren't just your typical "maze" puzzles that I'm sure you're all probably expecting. No, that would just be way too boring, and it wouldn't be unique at all! Lambda Enigma is all about, at least what I feel is, a unique approach to solving puzzles, via writing code of course!
(Mouse over for spoiler...)
NOTE: This is not in-game footage! It's a video that I rendered in Blender, but it does use the actual 3D models and animations that are currently in my development build of the game as I work on the maze puzzles.