April 26th-29th 2013 :: Theme: Minimalism
Ludum Dare 26 — April 26-29th, 2013
[ Results: Top 100 Compo, Jam | Top 25 Categories | View My Entry ]
[ View All 2346 Games (Compo Only, Jam Only) | Warmup ]
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you want to place in the final results, you NEED votes. The easiest way to get votes is by rating other games. Judging lasts for 3 weeks following the end of Ludum Dare. For best effect, rate 20 games as soon as possible. Rating more games is encouraged.
MORE TIPS AND DETAILS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE
A soothing and relaxing puzzle game. Find the optimal route to drag your rake across the zen garden between the rocks.
Uses HTML5, CSS3 and canvas. Best played in Chrome; known to work in Firefox but more slowly.
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 69% |
| #32 | Innovation(Jam) | 3.90 |
| #62 | Graphics(Jam) | 4.10 |
| #75 | Overall(Jam) | 3.67 |
| #91 | Mood(Jam) | 3.57 |
| #116 | Theme(Jam) | 3.71 |
| #141 | Audio(Jam) | 3.37 |
| #187 | Fun(Jam) | 3.12 |
| #385 | Humor(Jam) | 1.67 |
Comments
Very nice! If it moves a little faster it would be even better.
Very cool, love the style. I could see playing this on a tablet for quite a while.
Really nice! The mechanic flows naturally from the elements involved, and ends up being challenging but relaxing, very in the spirit of the theme. BTW -- I fixed the Linux build of my game if you want to try it. :)
I almost didn't want to solve it. I was having such a nice time making pretty patterns in the sand. Great job!
Beautiful game! I like how its tranquility encourages the player to sit back and think about a path before drawing it. At least that's what I experienced.
Very soothing game. Superbly done!
As others have said, it would be great on a tablet or something. You should definitely continue to develop this prototype into a bigger game. Think about how the gameplay could be expanded a bit.
Very well done!
Absolutely gorgeous. Amazing what can be done with an extra 24 hours & a collaborator or two!
I updated my project page with a hint for RED. Cheers.
Great game! The idea is perfect and the graphics are one of the best i've seen!
Awesome job!
Great game, loved the music and the concept.
Really well polished graphics, love the effect of the lines on the sand.
Awesome job!
Beautiful, relaxing game. The difficulty curve was manageable but challenging. Some of the best art I've seen thus far, and the music fit the mood perfectly.
Original and hard. It's nice to play this game for a while and just relax, very smooth.
Very calming entry! It fits the theme in many different levels!
All I wanted was a "undo" button, that allowed me to cancel my last move.
Also a "sandbox" (heh) mode, where I can place stones at will and play with the rack would be welcome :-D
Thanks for the game!
Brilliant game! Unique and very challenging. Fits 100% the theme and still unbelievable good! Good job!
Wow, that was a great game. Looks really good, and I'm super excited that you guys are going to be releasing it on the Andriod. Good Luck :D
pretty interesting -- like the style -- got a good thing there -- great job!
Great progression! Without a tutorial, the design communicates the techniques to move the rake most efficiently but leaves room for players to experiment on their own.
Sand patterns are wonderful. Very zen and poetic game.
- SEPHY (@sephyka)
Great game! Love the art and the mechanics! Challenging and fun
Cool entry, nice level design, though I think the music is too energetic. I liked drawing on the sand!
Rotating the rake and watching the zen garden unfold between the rocks focused me.
Very novel concept, so graphics, i a zen atmosphere. Very nice !
I liked the graphics and the idea. Pretty slow movement though.
5/5 mood. Very relaxing, great concept, gorgeous.
Although, the collision box frustrated me sometimes as I wasn't sure if I collided or not. Also, I was stuck for countless movements sometimes when some unfortunate collisions occured, so I think the scoring system isn't really fit.
Polish thingies tho. :)
Very impressive! Fits perfectly with the theme both in terms of mechanics and presentation. The sand effect is extremely satisfying. How did you achieve that?
This belongs on mobile/tablets!
@namuol: It *is* coming to mobile/tablets! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/05/06/aranami-is-going-mobile/
The sand is basically a bump map, done in software JavaScript (CoffeScript). A height map indicates the level of the sand at that point, 0-255 with 128 being the initial value. We can easily draw arbitrary things into the height map, because it's just a regular (albeit invisible) canvas element.
To show the rake's trail, we draw a series of "dent" sprites, which are small circles that are black in the centre (the trough), white around the outside (the little wall around the trough, where the sand was pushed out), and then fade out to transparency (so the wall slopes gently outwards). To prevent dents overwriting each other, each dent is actually a semicircle, rotated so the round side faces the direction of movement of the rake.
We then calculate the lightness of a pixel based on the dot product of the normal with the light vector, as in regular Phong shading.
To this we add some random noise based on the normal and the pixel's location, which means that every small change in the height map results in some noisy change to the colour. This gives the impression of grains of sand rolling around.
All this would have been much easier and faster in GLSL shaders, but as we started out with 2d canvas, it had to be all software rendering. Which, in spite of several optimizations, is why it's still a bit slow on Firefox.
Source code for the sand, among other things: https://github.com/ttencate/aranami/blob/master/100-model.coffee (warning, LD-quality code, horrible hacks, etc. etc.)
A great idea that fits the theme very well. I like the calming effect of the game.
I had a feeling you were calculating the lighting in real time, but didn't expect you to do it with software; bravo!
I'm no stranger to needless software rendering: http://namuol.github.io/earf-html5/
;)
You must sign in to comment.
TEAMS: Teams entering the Jam should pick a single representative to submit your game, or create a team specific account you can share. We currently do not support Team Voting, but sharing an account and together playing and rating games is acceptable.
NOT LOGGED IN?: If you get a message about not being logged in, even though you are, it’s because your web browser cached the non-logged in page. You can fix this by either refreshing your cache or clearing your cache. CTRL+F5 in many browsers. Chrome is a bit more work. Press F12 to enable Developer Mode, then you can right click on the refresh button and select “Empty Cache and Hard Reload”. This option is unavailable if you are not in Developer Mode.
PORTS: Ports to other platforms can be done after the deadline. That said, the sooner you finish your port, the sooner people can play your game, improving your chances of placing in the final results. For best results, provide a Web version of your game, or a Windows version with no dependencies. Also be sure to rate about 20 games to improve your visibility.
MY GAME DOESN’T SHOW UP: If you can’t find your game, it’s usually because the URL to your downloads are missing ‘http://‘. Fix your URLs (http://mysite.com/mygame.zip) and you will show up.
MY GAME CRASHES, IS UNBEATABLE, OR I MADE A TYPO: We allow you to fix crash or win condition bugs after the deadline (in a sense, like “porting” to support more players). We also allow “typo” bugs. I.e. A true that should have been a false, a word that should have been a different word, very tiny changes that you would have caught if you had more sleep. We leave this open to interpretation, but generally speaking your game should be identical to the game you submitted. No new features, just things you messed up last minute. Typos.
This game is awesome! I just wanted to play it quick and rate it, but I ended up playing through all of it! Great work!