CROSS TRACER

Physics driven Minimalist 2D Action Puzzle game made for VimJam 4

In this game your goal is to get the ball to the End (yellow) Checkpoint and then back to Start (white) again.

During the level, you can freely place anywhere on the map (if it's not blocked) a designated number of intermediate Checkpoints (green). You can also freely undo the last Checkpoint and edit the position, if you feel stuck. You must get the ball to all the green Checkpoints, before the End unlocks! Some easy levels don't feature additional Checkpoints, but you always have at least End point (which is also a Checkpoint, because it's not truly the end).

Until ball reaches End Checkpoint, it also leaves a traced path behind. It becomes active, when you get to End and on the way back it will give the ball a speed boost, each time it crosses the path (but if you try going the same path, the ball will be slowed instead). Don't linger on the path, just cross it!

While that is the main goal, all levels also contain 3 optional hexagons, which can be collected. Getting to End and back is fairly easy and straightforward, but getting those hexagons can be a real challenge (DISCLAIMER: I didn't have enough time to finetune hexagon difficulty, but I made sure that all the levels are beatable at least).

I hope you enjoy it.

P.S. Save system broke there at the end, so all of the levels are unlocked immediately and you can explore them freely. Collected hexagons numbers will not be updated on the level select screen because of this too. 

I find that having all levels unlocked also helps, if you don't like some level, or get stuck there (I wasn't confident in difficulty levels of them). You may also encounter bugs or oversites (for example, returning to last checkpoint is randomly broken on level 9, which I found in build version only after the deadline.).

Controls:

Manual:

Each level is split into 2 distinct phases:

First you get the ball to the End point. To assist you in this, you can place intermediate checkpoints (available number is shown in the top left of the screen). You also leave a path behind you, which is greyed out (inactive).

After you got to the End, you no longer have checkpoints to place, but you still might have a long way to cover on your way back. This is were active path comes in. At this point, path becomes active (white) and it influences the ball in 2 ways: if the ball touch it for long time or try to move along it, it's getting slowed, but if the ball cross it (at an angle roughly 30-150 degrees), it will receive a speed boost instead. This is why retracing your own path will not result in you getting back, instead, you should aim to cross it as much as possible.

Apart from 2 phases, gameplay also involves 3 states:

Checkpoint Placement: move and place checkpoints on the map.

Launch preparation: time the angle and strength of the ball launch.

Level interaction: influence ball's path with objects placed around the map (like bumpers and force zones).

Lastly, try not to touch red with the ball, because it sends you back to launch. You can also collect the hexagons.

That's about it.

Thank you for reading this far and I hope, you'll try the game now. This is actually the first game I released after a lot of failures. Jam kind of forces you to just do it, no time for doubt. And although this game is rough around the edges, I'm kind of happy with how it turned out. With how simple it is, levels were the biggest outlet for my creativity here. I wish I made more time for level design actually, but I still tried to make diverse, interesting and sometimes silly levels in those few hours I had.