Contour Constellations

First Level Created
Mid Level
Completed Level
Final Level
Main Menu
Level Select

Inspiration

When we heard the theme of connections, a lot came to mind. There were ideas for two player cooperative games, dating games, but we landed on the general idea of a puzzle game about connections. That theme resonated with the group and we thought of connecting stars to make constellations. That gave us a simple core concept that was easily repeatable, and answered a lot of questions right out of the box for how to design the game.

What it does

The player has to create finished constellations by connecting stars in the sky. They either pick which star to start on, or are given are starting star. Then the player has to click from star to star creating a continuous line. Each star needs a specific amount of connections indicated by how many spokes it has. The player cannot intersect lines, and cannot go on lines already made. This gives the player clear solutions to complete, while still sometimes having multiple options. Once they finish the level it is shown on the level select and they can move onto the next puzzle. Certain puzzles have colored stars that break the inherent rules of the game and the player has to juggle new concepts as levels continue to get more difficult.

How we built it

It was built using Unity 2D. The main powerhouse of the project was the built in LineRenderer which is the basis for all the puzzles. It handles a continuous line and allows us to do things like have a line follow from the star we clicked on to the mouse, let us check if the line already exists before we create it, and cut off the line when the puzzle is won.

Challenges we ran into

It was hard to figure out the initial mechanics. But we drew some inspiration from actual constellations which generally don't have intersecting lines, and many of them could be drawn continuously like a contour sketch with long flowy lines that inspired the name Contour Constellations. Beyond the initial design phase there were many bugs along the way with false positives for intersecting lines, struggles with the colored stars breaking the rules, and designing levels the player can innately figure out. Many levels had to be scrapped, or redesigned when put from paper into the game.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The team accomplished our goals of creating an intriguing puzzle game with a unique, evolving, and challenging concept that still retains polish and feels like a complete experience. During development we got multiple positive comments from staff, had a playtest with limited communication between developer and player where the player still figured out the game mechanics, and succeeded in creating 12 levels which perfectly fills up the screen. We had time to create a functioning game, and add many little things like finished constellations filling up the night sky in the level select, stars moving faster when you hover over them, and the line snapping to stars when you’re close to them add to the experience in ways that the player would only notice if it was gone. We nailed the concept, theming, and game feel in a short weekend.

What we learned

Everyone over the course of the weekend learned different things. We all have different experiences with game creation and unity, so we all learned from each other with things like Unity branches, scenes, audio, and the LineRenderer. This was also the first game jam for some of us so we learned to work in a crunch, and had to be extremely limited in our scope which assisted in the design process. We all came out stronger game developers than we went in.

What's next for Contour Constellations

Currently the experience feels pretty complete, but there is still a lot to do. First up would be a level editor, we had to manually type out text files but having a streamlined method would make development significantly quicker. A lot of code would also need to be touched up for efficiency which is something we did not have the time to do. From there we could add more levels, more in game mechanics with different colored stars, and polish things up like the LineRenderer settings, a better UI wireframe, and better streamlining the player into understanding the game mechanics. Then after that we add a battle pass.