Movement machine, mildly entertaining to look at for about one and a half minutes
GoblinsCrimes
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A member registered Aug 17, 2023
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I'm a fan of cellular automata. Finding a new undiscovered one sounds pretty exciting.
After playing for a while i want to point out some cool features of it for anyone that might want to try it and could be put off from the lack of comments.
Pros: two cells are all that is needed for an infinite motion machine on any axis, by only having three cells (push, pull and change states) you can make fairly complex contraptions without any abstraction, basic small building blocks are a very solid component for this cellular automata
The simple complexity lends itself to be a great tool for making logic gates, for anyone interested in the computing aspect of a cellular automata you can easily make every logic gate, the game is indeed Turing complete and the dev even provides a list of projects you can build with it.
Cons: The lack of music or any noise is suffocating, it isn't necessary for the game itself but as someone that needs background noise to work properly it becomes pretty annoying, take this as more of a personal nitpick. I don't expect the game to be fully fleshed out within 12 hours of release so if by the time you're reading this sound design already exists in the game then don't take this into consideration as this review was written in a very early stage of release.
The tutorial is too noisy, it's small in what it tries to show but the way the white rectangles are spread across the screen makes for a really overwhelming hud, a practical tutorial that makes the player do what is shown in the demonstration videos could be a better explanation, i think the contents of the game could be written in a single screen of tutorial even while keeping the current format.
This last one is mostly just an observation, the artstyle of the game is inconsistent. In the hud the cells have a smooth outline, in the workshop/map the cells have a pixelated outline while still keeping the smooth icons, the inspiration from Cell Machine is clear and i don't think this gives the game less or more value but its another source of visual noise that might hinder some players.
In its current state its a solid 7/10, really interesting game for what it does, will defo spend some time toying around with it!
Side note: This also seems the first game of this nature that the dev has done so keep that in mind when playing, i hope this game grows a community that explores its limits and sees what the game can do.