Dear friends, we hope you're doing well, and you're also playing our game to relieve some stress and have fun. There is some important news we are excited to share with you today. In the last several months, we have been working on Masters of Puzzle II. While we can't share a specific release date yet, we are happy to tell you that we're progressing at a steady rate. The sequel will have all the features from the original game, albeit much improved, and new features that we planned for but never got to develop. What is more, all owners of the original Masters of Puzzle game at the time of release will receive the sequel for free on Steam! So, there is no need to wait for it - you can get the original now to play while ensuring you'll also get the sequel later on.
That's our announcement in a nutshell. If you want to get into the details and learn more, you can read on.
As you've probably noticed, we created the original Masters of Puzzle game in the Unity engine. It worked for us for a while, but then Unity introduced some changes to their licensing and toolset options in the last couple of years. These changes are not optimal for us as they introduced additional costs and complexity in our work. At the same time, Epic Games announced the new Unreal 5 engine, which is truly the next-gen tool we've been waiting for. And best of all, its licensing policy is extremely friendly to indie developers. Therefore, we decided to switch our toolset entirely and proceed with our plans for Masters of Puzzle and our other games in conception with the Unreal 5 engine.
Long story short, this boils down to two significant results. First, we will not make any more improvements to Masters of Puzzle unless it's absolutely necessary. And second, you will be able to enjoy Masters of Puzzle II on a genuinely next-gen engine with all the cool features it can grant us.
If you got that far, then you are probably curious about our plans for the sequel. So let's dive into that topic.
While we wanted to maintain the core experience of the game, which is an ultra-realistic puzzle-building simulator, we also wanted to make something new and utilize the full power of the Unreal 5 engine. Therefore, you should expect a completely different user experience in all other aspects. The general plan for the game is to be fully interactable at all levels. The menus, the items, the environment are all going to be interactable 3D assets. For example, selecting a puzzle box to start a new game will require you to choose it and pull it out of your puzzle collection shelf. The achievements you earn will no longer be simple icons in a scrolling list but various items that you can put on a display shelf. Since we always wanted to make Masters of Puzzle a VR-compatible game, we feel this is the direction for the best user experience.
In terms of gameplay improvements, there are many things we wanted to do but never managed to create in the original game. One of the most significant features we wanted to introduce is the completely variable shape of the puzzle pieces. Think of popular physical puzzles like the ones from WENTWORTH. They look incredible but are extremely difficult to create in 3D. However, with our new algorithms, the reality of having something similar draws ever closer. Even the traditional puzzle slicing now looks significantly better in the sequel than it ever did in the original game:
This time we changed our development process and started creating various in-engine tools that will help us make the best puzzle shapes possible. Like this tool for customizing the puzzle link section of the edges:
Remember, every slicing of a puzzle in our game is procedurally done based on a random seed, and all the 3D puzzle pieces are procedurally generated and textured. This makes it very different from any other jigsaw puzzle game out there and hopefully much more enjoyable.
As of now, Masters of Puzzle II is still in the early stages of development. We focus first on all the inner workings of the game - slicing and assembly algorithms, 3D object generation, collisions, sub-systems, etc. Once we complete the majority of these, we will proceed with the actual visualization of the game. This approach should help us minimize the effort necessary to deliver a playable demo for you as soon as possible. We will keep you posted as we progress and post spicy screenshots once we have new things to share.
So that's it for now. As always, we will be happy to read your comments and suggestions. Stay safe and have a lot of fun!