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[Benjamming]

Semblance is a platformer where you deform a playdough world, and mould your character in order to solve puzzles. http://semblance-game.com/

On a planet where everything is soft and bouncy, an unwelcome invader appears, bringing with it hard and unmoving material.


Original Post

Semblance is a platformer where you deform a playdough world, and mould your character in order to solve puzzles.

On a planet where everything is soft and bouncy, an unwelcome invader appears, bringing with it hard and unmoving material.

You are Squish, a being made out of the very material of the world - willed into existence to protect the world from the unwelcome visitors.

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We're implementing the above art into the game now, but here are some gameplay gifs to show how it all works (with placeholder art).

Character Deforming:

World moulding

We'll upload a build real soon!


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We're a little South African/Kenyan studio making our first game after we graduated from university.Follow us on Twitter or Facebook if you're into that.

Feedback is always welcome <3

[Luminous Peaks]

I like this a lot! Love the header art, and the deformation mechanic reminds me of the jelly blocks that show up in Yoshi's Island/Story, which I always thought were really fun to play around with. Is the game going to be level-based, or have more freeform exploration (or has that decision being made later)? Definitely looking forward to it either way, keep up the good work.

[Benjamming]

Hey thanks! 

Hadn't seen those jelly blocks before - it's a great reference!

It's going to be kind of a mix! We're basing it heavily, in terms of level design, on Braid. There will be an overworld that players can access puzzles from once they've seen them before. This is due to the puzzles being tricky often, so players will want to come back.

In terms of the actual levels, it's pretty linear right now, but we want to make the layout a bit more interesting so players can explore a bit more .

Thanks again!

[Benjamming]

Update 1

We've been working on a bunch of stuff this week, redesigning a few of the levels and putting in an overworld system.

The programmer has been working on the character quite a bit.

He redid the system for procedural animation so it's easier to add animations:

He also started work on making sure the character shape follows the contour of the ground. This is early days though.

The artist started playing around with ideas for levels at nighttime too.

[Dustin van Wyk]

Really dig the mechanics of this , the aesthetic reminds me a lot of 'The Floor Is Jelly' , which is awesome 
Keen to see how this pans out 

[TonyManfredonia]

The mechanics of this game will go a long way for puzzle / tactical strategies. The fact that the whole world is at your disposal will keep this game very interesting!

Following this one, for sure

Keep up the great work!

[Rarykos]

I've seen a gif of this on twitter!

What I love about this project is you take a genre that is completely beaten to death and do something interesting with the basic design it offers. It tickles my brain! Looks fun, good luck finishing it! :D

The art is visually interesting and good looking, but I don't know if it's my broken screen, or the night time ground looks a bit off.

[Eluardian]

I love this so much.

[Benjamming]

Really dig the mechanics of this , the aesthetic reminds me a lot of 'The Floor Is Jelly' , which is awesome  Smiley
Keen to see how this pans out  Coffee

Thanks so much, Dustin! The Floor is Jelly is a big inspiration for us on so many levels . Hope to see you drop by a Make Games SA meetup sometime if you're based in Joburg :D.

The mechanics of this game will go a long way for puzzle / tactical strategies. The fact that the whole world is at your disposal will keep this game very interesting!

Thanks! Yeah at the moment a lot of the puzzles are cool, but I'm super excited to see what sort of stuff the system throws out. We've already run across fun ideas like "what happens if the world throws you up", so we're keen to see more pop up! Really keen to explore some really lateral thinking stuff .

I've seen a gif of this on twitter! What I love about this project is you take a genre that is completely beaten to death and do something interesting with the basic design it offers. It tickles my brain! Looks fun, good luck finishing it! :D The art is visually interesting and good looking, but I don't know if it's my broken screen, or the night time ground looks a bit off.

Glad to see our endless posting is working XD

Oh man so great that you see it that way! Our design process often is just looking at puzzles in famous/standard platformers and seeing how a squashy character/world could make it more interesting different, so it's awesome that you see that coming through .

Thanks for the art thoughts! Will mention it to the team, I think it could just be that the purple looks alot more apparent with the night time background?

I love this so much.

Thanks - we love you! <3  

[Benjamming]

Update 2

This week was about redrafting the levels to be a bit less linear and more exploratory, in addition to breaking the puzzles up into a smaller sets that made sense for the overworld. We also started dressing the levels in game, in addition to coding a bunch more stuff on the deformable platforms.

Everything is looking more polished:

The dressing is working really nicely!

[SiJaf]

I really like the concept! 

[Benjamming]

I really like the concept! 

Thanks!

[Tyrus Peace]

Excellent art style! I imagine you're already planning on this, but rounding out the corners of your world would go a *long* way in making it look a bit more cohesive and, uh, doughy!

Having the character cling to corners, as they walk off them could look very cool, too. As you are probably aware of the portion of the character that's grounded at any moment, it seems pretty doable!

[Modog]

Good idea, man.

You have all to get success with this game!

[rj]

helllllll yeahhhhh

[Anton]

This looks really nice !

[Benjamming]

Excellent art style! I imagine you're already planning on this, but rounding out the corners of your world would go a *long* way in making it look a bit more cohesive and, uh, doughy!

Having the character cling to corners, as they walk off them could look very cool, too. As you are probably aware of the portion of the character that's grounded at any moment, it seems pretty doable!

Thanks! Yup, already in the process of doing it! It's only tricky to do because once you deform the platform, it can mess up real fast! Cukia, the programmer, has a full time job of wrangling the platforms and character :D We're also making it so that whenever you're on a deformable platform it'll dent/impress a little so that it feels soft!

Clinging to corners is something we definitely want to do, thanks for the idea! :D Just another technical road block! Here's our thinking on it:

You have all to get success with this game!

helllllll yeahhhhh

This looks really nice !

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh thanks for all the encouraging words! ^_^

[TonyManfredonia]

I always find it so enlightening to see how developers find their own creative ways to design environments / mechanics / etc.

Really awesome to see the backend of the design! Thank you for sharing! :D

[Davi Vasc]

wow, using playdough for the world and character is really a great idea. You'll have a lot of fun possibilities for gameplay mechanics. Looking forward to see what kind of stuff you'll come up with!

[Benjamming]

Really awesome to see the backend of the design! Thank you for sharing! :D

No problem! Will try to share more for you .

wow, using playdough for the world and character is really a great idea. You'll have a lot of fun possibilities for gameplay mechanics. Looking forward to see what kind of stuff you'll come up with!

Thanks! We have a bunch of cool/simple puzzles and a couple complex interactions. Keen to throw a demo onto here soon . Also long term, keen to see what crazy stuff the mechanic leads to .