Shuffle Company - Prototype of a Full 3D Wonderland Spiritual Successor

For discussion of non-Wonderland topics - please read rules!

Moderators: ~xpr'd~, tyteen4a03, Stinky, Emerald141, Qloof234, jdl

Post Reply
User avatar
Com Rante
Rainbow Wonderlander
Posts: 192
Joined: Sun Apr 22, 2007 7:34 pm

Shuffle Company - Prototype of a Full 3D Wonderland Spiritual Successor

Post by Com Rante » Wed Dec 28, 2022 3:11 am

Hi all,

Over the past five years, I have on-and-off again worked on a spiritual successor to classic Wonderland that I had given the title "Shuffle Company." I am not able to continue development on it anymore to bring it to completion. But one year ago I did put together a complete prototype of it, exploring a handful of game elements to see how much potential there was for classic Wonderland puzzle designs with full 3D environments. Turns out there is a lot of potential.

I was recently thinking that even though I had to abandon this project, that the people here would likely be interested to take a look at the prototype. I have also made the code open source via the MIT License on GitHub if anyone is curious as to how it works or wants to use pieces of it in your own projects.

The prototype explores quite a few challenging-to-implement game elements that I thought would need to be in place to make the game interesting compared to the predecessors. These include:
[*] Arbitrarily shaped pushable crates
[*] Consistent frames-of-reference for moving objects and moving objects on top of moving objects
[*] Dynamic fluid puzzles (in this case, just water)
[*] Physics (for cosmetic purposes only)
[*] Multiplayer (not in the prototype build, but in the source code)

Please note that it is a prototype, so it contains bugs, incomplete implementations of features, and poorly implemented systems (fluid for example). Since it was built with a newer version of Unity, I recommend that it be played with what would currently be considered a mid-range Windows PC with a discrete GPU.

Download

Controls:
Arrow Keys to move
N to skip the current level
ESC to quit the game

Prototype code for a level editor is also in the repo, even though it isn't in the prototype.

GitHub Repo

Image

I hope fans of classic Wonderland can find something of interest in this! Thanks!
User avatar
Wonderman109
Rainbow MegaStar
Posts: 3530
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2012 11:25 pm

Re: Shuffle Company - Prototype of a Full 3D Wonderland Spiritual Successor

Post by Wonderman109 » Wed Dec 28, 2022 3:47 pm

Oh hi, Com_Rante, I didn't know you still pop in here. Welcome back
This looks like the graphics of the new trilogy's beta despite being classic-styled, interesting.
User avatar
Jutomi
Rainbow AllStar
Posts: 4364
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2013 8:42 pm

Re: Shuffle Company

Post by Jutomi » Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:13 pm

Oh my! This was a REALLY nice game to play through! :o

There absolutely were some mildly janky things - mostly the riding-on-boxes-on-conveyors thing (and I died every time I tried pushing a box onto a moving stack... :oops: ), but it otherwise played pretty well, actually!

And the puzzles - absolutely wonderful. There were a couple instances where I had a tiny bit more than bare minimum, but I do appreciate the slight safety net.

The gameplay was what was really fascinating though. It did have this strange feeling of being RTW but with better buttons and way cooler 3D and water mechanics. I was in awe by the big boxes (especially those z-boxes), and I adored the pushable push boxes, but the water physics were absolutely insane. A real treat :)

Lastly, I enjoyed the ways the player could parish. I giggled quite a bit when I first smashed a box into myself, as I did boxes getting pushed by conveyors, shoving themselves off of my still-living head. The roly-poly physics made even failing a joy. :>

Overall an awesome game, Com Rante. Absolutely loved playing through it; Idk if you'd ever be interested in finishing this or would rather it stay its current prototype, but I do know a good chunk of the remaining Wonderland community is experienced with both puzzles and unity if ever you wanted to ask any of them if they'd be interested in polishing it up a bit :P

Oh yeah - and a pleasure to finally meet you proper :) (unless I did like eight years ago and forgot; it happens sometimes.)
Your only little stinker that's absolutely NOT a z-bot by this name,
Jutomi~ :mrgreen:

Also, if you want to see my level list, here it is! :D
(Also: List of Hubs, WA Manual)
Oh, and my YT wonderland channel. Forgot about that.
Post Reply