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[richardeflanagan]

Hey everyone,

I'm Richard, and I've been working on a game called FRACT OSC for the past while (along with Henk Boom and my wife). It's an abstract, first person puzzle-adventure game inspired by electronic music.

I made a prototype (the not quite accurately named "FRACT beta") last year, but we've essentially scrapped that and started from scratch. It's still keeping with the same idea, but taking it in a slightly new direction. We made a quick video that gives an idea of what we've been doing, and would love to get any feedback from you guys. You can check it out here: http://fractgame.com/news/52-fract-osc-dev-diary-explore-rebuild-create

[Udderdude]

Just watched the video.

I can't see how this could be considered a puzzle game in any sense - any of the puzzles I saw in the video are extremely simplistic and not really puzzles at all.  It's more of a first person synthesizer program.

I can imagine it would be cool for getting people into (extremely simplistic) creative aspects of music, but unless you've got some puzzles planned that I haven't seen here, as a game it just doesn't have any substance.

[James Rossi]

I played FRACT and absolutely loved the style of it. Both the art and sound meshed so well together. I'm very glad to see that a more full game is still being worked on.

One issue of FRACT was that there were huge distances to traverse. It set up a nice atmosphere, but at times it was just too wide ranged, and it made the middle parts seem really empty. This seems to have been fixed.

It really is Myst meets Tron in all the best of ways. I really look forward to this, even though I have virtually no musical ability whatsoever.

Also will there be a FRACT OSC: OST?

[eigenbom]

Hey, I played the demo of this and said gday on facebook a couple of months back. Looks like some good updates, looking forward to the release..

[surrounded]

Really like the sounds in that trailer. Especially the part around 2:00 where he gets behind the control panel and creates the sequence. I'm a total music-n00b (don't play an instrument and can't read notes), so it was amazing to me how simple it looks to create something that actually sounds good.

[Udderdude]

I can't see how this could be considered a puzzle game in any sense - any of the puzzles I saw in the video are extremely simplistic and not really puzzles at all.

I'm not sure how you can make that kind of claim when all you've seen is a teaser video. Perhaps the only puzzles they are showing are the simple, introductory ones?

I did mention that as a possibility ..

unless you've got some puzzles planned that I haven't seen here

And it's less of a teaser video and more of a 7 minute long introduction and explanation of how it works .. >_>

I would be really interested in seeing any of the advanced puzzles for this game.

[Manuel Magalhães]

This looks pretty awesome and I like the premise of having puzzles, if there's lots of interesting and challenging puzzles this could be a Tron meets Myst game, which would be a killer combination.

[richardeflanagan]

Hi everyone, thanks for your comments. I'll do my best to answer any questions/concerns you might have raised:

I can't see how this could be considered a puzzle game in any sense - any of the puzzles I saw in the video are extremely simplistic and not really puzzles at all.  It's more of a first person synthesizer program.

Fair observation - but the video doesn't really represent the game accurately in terms of content - the studio plays more of a role much later in the game, after the player has explored the world and gone through all of the puzzles. And in terms of difficulty, we did choose a puzzle that would be pretty quick to get through for the sake of the demo. But everyone's different, and I'm sure there will be a wide range of perception of the difficulty of any given puzzle.

Really like the sounds in that trailer. Especially the part around 2:00 where he gets behind the control panel and creates the sequence. I'm a total music-n00b (don't play an instrument and can't read notes), so it was amazing to me how simple it looks to create something that actually sounds good.

I really look forward to this, even though I have virtually no musical ability whatsoever.

That's awesome to hear - that's exactly what we're hoping for! We want the studio and music making tools to be accessible to musicians and non-musicians alike, and we're going to try to introduce the tools progressively in the game.

One issue of FRACT was that there were huge distances to traverse. It set up a nice atmosphere, but at times it was just too wide ranged, and it made the middle parts seem really empty. This seems to have been fixed.

Also will there be a FRACT OSC: OST?

We're definitely trying our best to address the issue (and annoyance) of too much walking around, but still trying keep a sense of the scope of the world, hopefully we'll be able to find that balance. As for an original soundtrack - that would be awesome, we're definitely looking into collaborating with musicians/artists. For now we're just focused on finishing the game, but fingers crossed!

[ithamore]

I'm greatly looking forward to playing and front-paging this game as soon as I can get my hands on it. Do you have a tentative time frame for the release? And it'll be commercial, right?

The prototype was so awesome that I spent several play sessions on it just to experience the atmosphere again. Any improvement on the original will be great: especially if you can reproduce the "wow" I had after I first hit the play button on the final puzzle.

[JudahRoydes]

I have been waiting for a game like this! I am really excited that someone is using real-time synthesis as part of the player experience. Will there be puzzles that involve other elements such as wave forms, resonance, lpf cutoff?

[suggo]

This looks really exciting nice job