We're Making Something New

Lately, our releases have been looking backwards. TetriNET is a faithful port of a 1997 classic. Cave Glider is The Descent, reborn the way we dreamt it in 2014. Both are labors of love, but both are old ideas.

This one is different. We’re working on a brand-new game, our first original IP in a very long time. It isn’t a remake or a port, and there are no paper planes.

We’re not going to say much about it yet. We’d rather you discover it by playing it. But here’s what we can tell you.

It’s a puzzle game about gravity

Every level is a small puzzle with its own idea, and all of them revolve around one force: gravity. Reading it, using it and, every now and then, being humbled by it.

The controls fit in a single sentence. Mastering them is another story.

That’s all the hint you’re getting.

Right now, we’re building the editor

Here’s the surprising part: most of our time isn’t going into the game itself. It’s going into the level editor.

If you’ve been following our Game Engines series, you know our history with building our own tools. This time we’re not writing an engine. The game runs on Godot. But a puzzle game lives or dies by its levels, so the one tool worth building ourselves is the one that makes levels quick to create, tweak and replay. When moving one piece and trying again takes seconds, you try a lot more ideas, and most of the fun is hiding in those ideas.

Every puzzle has to earn its place

This is how a level gets into the game:

One sentence first. Before we build anything, we write down the trick: what is this puzzle about? What choice does it give you? If we can’t say it in one sentence, the level is filler, and it doesn’t get built.
Build it, play it, again and again. On a real phone, the way you’ll play it.
Rate it honestly. Good, OK or bad, with a note about why. The bad ones get rebuilt or cut.
Let the machine check our work. An automated checker tries the shots in every level to make sure it can be solved, and that nothing on screen is decoration. If an obstacle doesn’t change how you play, it doesn’t belong there.

We’re also testing each mechanic on its own, to see whether it’s actually fun in your hands and not just clever on paper. Many ideas don’t survive that test. The ones that do are the game.

What’s next

We’re keeping the name and the look under wraps for now. We’ll share more when there’s something worth showing, and we’ll try not to take ten years this time.

If you want to hear about it first, follow the dev log RSS feed, or write to us. We love talking about puzzles.