I'm happy with how this one turned out. I haven't done puzzle games in the last few Pyweeks and I wanted to do one. The theme was tricky and it took me a while to get some puzzle mechanics that I was happy with. I wanted to embed the "dark matter" theme into the mechanics and the idea of moving through physical objects and pulling them came early. I really like how simple and mechanically connected to the theme they are, so I felt it was important to keep them.

Originally I considered an idea where you would have two worlds and you could only interact with the world that you're not in, but that turned out to be not only too complicated and but also too hard to express visually. My rule of thumb for Pyweek is to keep it simple, so I took a step back and discarded that. The tricky part was that phasing through blocks and pulling them by themselves were just "character skills" and didn't offer any challenge, so I needed to figure out what was the antagonist of the puzzle. The notion of a creature that phases through physical objects led me to consider some sort stealth mechanic, which was simplified into The Eye which detects you after two moves. The fact that this can be viewed as a metaphor for the search for dark matter is a happy coincidence. :) The destructible blocks as a resource came later, which take inspiration from falling platforms in other block puzzle games. When designing puzzle mechanics I always aim to maximize the depth-to-complexity ratio and I think this has a pretty good one.

Once I had those settled, everything went smoothly, since the mechanics are relatively simple to implement (though I was able to reserve a good amount of time this Pyweek and could afford a bit of extra polish). Designing puzzles was also a lot of fun. The game does get difficult towards the last few levels, which intentionally build around some unintuitive moves. There is a walkthrough in the game description if you're stuck, but there's no ending so the fun is to simply solve the puzzles. :).

I'm also happy how the graphics turned out, even if there's still some room for polish. Drawing and animating the octopus-spider-alien was quite fun. I like how it looks like it's dancing when it's pulling an object. :)

I'm glad that many people enjoyed it. Congratulations to the team winners and to everyone who finished a game this Pyweek! See you next time.

I really just wanted to try.  Being very ambitious having never finished a project, and didn't finish this one, we have the incomplete cosmic prowl.  The aim of the game was going to be using a "window"/"cone" in front of the player character to see the "invisible" particles representing scent (or dark matter).  But also all mobs/NPC's would also use this at "long range" to track targets.  I was going to add an element of the Wolf (you) needing to find special items (bones?) to progress to the next level.  Obviously an attack mechanic for mobs to attack each other also.

boring I know.

Posted a play through video here: https://youtu.be/E2hKCR4q7p8. 

Hope you have fun with the game.

Looking forward to playing all the cool games around.

Play it yourself: https://langa.pl/downthedrain/

Playthrough video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiaM_c-nWL4

I got really excited when Glyph pinged me to team up for PyWeek. I always admired PyWeek and people who managed to accomplish something in seven days when regular life can be a bit much on its own.

I made the theme for the game, and we had a funny little Zoom meeting where Glyph's daughter shared ideas with us that could easily turn into a few games. However, later in the week, life caught up to each one of us, and the ambitious plans went down the drain.

But I'm a stubborn guy, and I already had the music. I also gave a talk at EuroPython about generative graphics where the most well-received part was about 3D animation with PyScript. So, to salvage PyWeek #36, I decided to spend my Saturday hacking up something that's not much more than a tech demo to demonstrate this cool technology. I managed to complete just that, so this becomes our team's entry for this edition of PyWeek! Did I finish on Saturday or did I cheat a bit and only managed to get collision detection working on Sunday? Well, friends don't ask friends such questions.

Well, you're flying in a dark tube, the title's got somewhat negative connotations... you could say it fits the "Dark Matter" theme! If you squint right 😎

Let's talk about the tech, that's definitely a more pleasant topic!

I made a submission! I'm fairly happy with the concept and think I will work on it a little more. I already have a version that shows the positions of the dark matter at the end of the game but I wrote the couple of lines after the competition entry so I may upload it but not mark it final. It would be nice to be able to restart or have some progression of levels but it's currently a one and done and then you have to restart the game...

 

It shouldn't take long to check out the game as it's pretty short unless you just like watching the simulation.

Congratulations to everyone else that finished and thanks to the organisers.