Giant Steps

Created for Ludum Dare Jam 38: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/giant-steps

Controls Move   Q, W, E, A, S, D Look around   Mouse Pick up / drop   F (then one of Q, W, E, A, S, D) Restart level   R About

The idea for this game began with the feeling I wanted to create something involving a hexagonal grid. I could not think of a game in which the player issues direct movement commands to a character constrained to a hex grid. So, hoping it was at least somewhat novel, I ran with that idea and brought in a familiar block-carrying puzzle element.

Foremost, Giant Steps is an homage to Brandon Sterner's Block Dude, a TI calculator game that delighted me and friends for many hours in middle school math classes. I owe much to that game -- with the exception of some of the later puzzles, Giant Steps is more or less just Block Dude in three dimensions, with more hexagons :)

The name "Giant Steps" is a reference to the geological formation of Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, a dramatic landscape of hexagonal basalt pillars that juts out into the North Atlantic. The shape and texture of the basalt columns was a visual inspiration for this game.

The name is also a nod to the brilliant John Coltrane album of the same name, which I listened to repeatedly during the development of this game.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Cary Yang, who playtested an early version with ten puzzles on Saturday night and caught a broken puzzle.

Otherwise, this was a solo project. I used Unity 5.6 as game engine and development environment, and Inkscape and Blender for assets. The UI font is Roboto from Google.