Tricone Lab has a built-in puzzle editor. Not only that but you can share your custom puzzles using a dedicated online service, and of course download and play puzzles made by other players.
The puzzle editor is super easy to use but just to make the process as straightforward as possible I've created this series of 3 tutorial videos demonstrating from start to finish how to create and share puzzles.









https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSmVgwBqGKU

So, hope you enjoy these and I would love to see some new custom puzzles created soon!

Josh S.

Tricone Lab final release date on Steam July 27th 2017!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/392610/Tricone_Lab/

http://www.triconelab.com

Assuming you have done all your development, theoretically you should price your game to maximise your profit.

<profit> = (<units sold> * (<price per unit> - <cost to support sale>) )

Costs to support a sale would be an average per unit cost for things like tech support, community management, increased server load etc. Usually fairly negligible for simple games with many units sold, but for complex games with fewer units sold it might be a factor in choosing the price.

Of course, <units sold> is closely related to <price per unit>, because fewer consumers will buy your game if it's overpriced, and more will buy it if it's a bargain.

Theoretically there's a <price per unit> point which will maximize <profit>. The problem is that you don't know the details of the relationship. So how do you know where that point is? There are many factors at play:

• Many consumers are attached to the idea that a game's price should somehow relate to <average play time>. If a typical consumer spends 20 hours in total on your game, and it costs $20, then we can reason that they spent $1 per hour of entertainment. So that's why replay value comes in to the equation, it extends <average play time> sometimes by a lot. I've probably played hundreds of hours of Spelunky and it cost me only £11.99, so I guess it was a good purchase.
• Theoretically, consumers should also factor in <play quality>. That is <game value> = <average play time> * <play quality>. OK so you played a game for 20 hours but how much fun was each of those hours? If the game made you grind repetitively then not much fun. If each minute of the game was a unique enlightening experience then <play quality> is high.
• There are threshold effects, for example some consumers will simply buy straight away if they like the trailer and the game is less than say $2. Whereas once you go over $10 consumers will need more convincing.
• Sometimes a slightly higher price works in your favour if your product appears to be high-quality (e.g. snazzy trailer, awards, good reviews)  -- the higher price will confirm this in the consumer's mind
• Certain types of game have a "maximum" price which has been established over time. For example The Witness attracted criticism for its $40 price tag because it's "only a puzzle game". Similar maximum prices may apply to games with the "indie" tag, 2D games etc.

So overall, I guess you should try to estimate the game value in terms of play time and play quality, then price it relative to games of similar game value but be aware of consumer expectations, costs to support sales and threshold effects.

Have you considered letting people set their own pallet for the levels they make? Or some kind of pallet unlocking like in Luftrausers?

I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with your art direction but if it's something your players are looking for it might be worth considering.

Yes good idea -- if I go down the multicoloured path I would probably make this configurable in the editor.

Generally, I need to think of ways to encourage more community authoring of levels. The standard maps are taking people 15-30 hours to complete but I think the custom map functionality is one of the major selling points of the game.

Something I've just added is that screenshots and play statistics of approved custom maps get published on the web:
http://www.triconelab.com/index.php/online/custom-level-stats/

As you can see there are only 2 custom maps at present, and hardly anyone is downloading / playing them. Shame because Cyclical in particular has some excellent puzzles.

Other ideas I am thinking about to encourage more custom maps:

• YouTube tutorial video explaining how to design custom maps, upload them, and submit them for approval.
• Allow players to download custom maps without logging in (currently you have to create a Tricone Lab Online account before you can download)
• When the game starts, a message box pops up which gives you a summary of how many custom maps you could download and play
• Running one or more custom map design competitions
• Give some free copies of the game to universities who run gamedev courses, so the students can try designing custom maps

Any other ideas?

josh

v0.18-beta released on Steam.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/triconelab/announcements/detail/807635219745590158

Now available to buy on Steam Early Access!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/392610/

I have had a review!

4/5 stars from FictiveTruism at IndieGameReviewer.com

http://indiegamereviewer.com/review-tricone-lab/

"a fantastic, well-balanced puzzle game thanks to its great level design and fun mechanics"

Very happy with this. They didn't like the monochromaticity either but you can't please everyone.

Watching the video, this looks really neat, it looks great in motion. Can I ask why you chose grey as the predominant colour? The screenshots, in comparison to the video, look a bit dull, and I would have thought an abstract puzzle game like this would have been perfect to apply some nice colour schemes to different levels. Is that something you've considered? A mostly grey game might be a bit of a hard sell to customers otherwise. I had to design my abstract puzzler around cats to get interest.

Hello fellow abstract puzzle game maker! I had a quick look at The Cat Machine and it looks great. I would like to give it a try! I'm always interested to find out about other abstract puzzlers out there, it seems like a fairly obscure genre these days, on PC anyway, which, if true, would be rather a shame.

I have received a bit of negative feedback about the greyness. But actually this was only in a couple of comments on the Greenlight page and one person at GameCity. In its very early stages, before this devlog started and before the "tricone" objective became central, the game had different coloured cells in. Not sure if I still have any screenshots from that era. But I just was not happy with the aesthetic, and after I tried the grey look I really liked it. I think it looks quite science-y and textbook-y. There's no accounting for taste I suppose. Perhaps I also thought the maths-y academic-y look emphasises the central point of the project which is that it is not a casual game, it is about some pretty hardcore topological reasoning. I also have a principle, which the game adheres to (99% anyway): you can see something in the game if and only if it has a gameplay consequence. So, adding different colours may dilute that principle a little.

I also found that lining up large numbers of different monochrome node types from the game has a rather pleasing effect (to me anyway):



I'm an avid board gamer, of course I play colourful board games which have back-stories and characters etc, but I think I may have been influenced by venerable board-game purist Kris Burm. He makes monochrome abstract 2-player strategy games, with no narratives, colours or characters and small, focused rule sets. This was quite a mainstream approach in the 1970s but then fell badly out of favour in the mid-late 80s and later. So I am following this design aesthetic both in gameplay and presentation terms I guess -- I am putting the abstractness front and centre. Maybe in a marketplace full of colours and cute characters, an aesthetic of hardcore monochrome abstractness can find a small niche?

Very nice let's play / beta review by SebastianSB aka Keith Ballard.

v 0.16-beta uploaded

-- some small fixes to the Steam integration.

For a bit of extra publicity, I've created a Tricone Lab kickstarter page.

Go have a look!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1272098334/tricone-lab-a-unique-lateral-thinking-puzzle-video

As well as previewing tricone lab, DeathByBeta have kindly agreed to distribute 50 Steam beta test keys, for Windows and Mac OSX.

They will be available from around 11am PDT (== 7pm UK time) on Monday 5th October.

Grab one!

Tricone Lab has now moved to Beta status!

version 0.15-beta:

Changelog

• A couple of new, larger screen resolutions. Default changed to 1366 x 768, based on Steam stats
• More fine grained settings available for update rate. Default changed to 50 fps
• Steam Mac support
• Other fixes and tweaks for Mac
• Fixed some graphical artifacts when border lines are selected
• Changed Breakers map so that BreakSlice has to be solved before BreakLock

In other news, I have completed the Steam integration for Tricone Lab on Mac. What a pain in the neck that was! But anyway, if you run Mac OSX and you would like a Steam key for testing, please do contact me!

Death by beta have done an in-depth write up of the game:

http://www.deathbybeta.com/2015/09/22/tricone-lab-alpha-hands-on/

I'll be distributing some Steam beta keys via DBB in a couple of weeks.

Updated trailer.

I'll be using this on the steam store page:

If anyone would like to do some beta testing, pm me your steam ID.

cheers,

josh

The v0.14 test build, as seen in my Steam library:

triconelab v0.14-alpha is done. From now on all builds will be on Steam, and I have taken down the direct downloads from the triconelab website.

Currently my Steam integration is Windows only, but I will be adding a Mac Steam version soon, and possibly a Linux Steam version if there is demand. If you would like a Steam key for testing please contact me.

v0.14-alpha changelog:

• Major rewriting of line drawing, now much smoother
• Some tweaks to existing levels
• 8 new levels on 2 new maps, including some quite hard ones
• Keys system simplified, clarified and reorganized.
• When loading / downloading a map, the required keys are clear
• Company branding at the start
• Steam integration: download and launch from Steam
• Steam integration: auto-cloud saving of progress and custom maps (whether you downloaded them or created them in the editor)
• Steam integration: Gaining a tricone lab key gains the corresponding achievement in Steam.

I've reached 100 levels!

http://www.triconelab.com/index.php/screenshots/

Now working on Steam integration.