Icosi-Do cover
Icosi-Do screenshot
Steam
Genre: Strategy, Indie

Icosi-Do

Streaming at Steam's Next Fest (October 3 - 10, 2022)
Steam's Next Fest in October starts in less than 2 weeks! I was planning to schedule my two streaming events soon, but very few devs of other puzzle games have scheduled their events already. Since I'd like to avoid overlap with other streams about puzzle games, I'll probably wait another week. In the meantime, I'll do a few more streams that are not associated with Next Fest.

Patch of demo D-14: grey text by default, customisable background colour, etc.
A few relatively small visual changes:

  • Text in menus, messages, etc. appears now in grey by default. You can change it back to the colours that are used for the puzzle by changing SETTINGS > VISUALS > TEXT to COLORED. No worries: I will keep the colours in the promotional images!
  • Also, you can set a background colour in SETTINGS > VISUALS > GROUND. It's either a predefined colour (BLACK, EERIE, JET, ONYX, ...) or a CODE that is a hex triplet as you might know it from HTML, e.g., "FFA500" for the colour orange.
  • There is a separate setting in SETTINGS > AR GLASSES > GROUND for the background colour that is used for rendering to Tilt Five™ glasses.
  • Internally, i've added additional achievements, but those are not available in the demo.

That's it for this update. Next, I'll have to prepare for October's Next Fest, i.e., I have to figure out how to broadcast. Let me know any comments!

Third Weekly September Challenge
After the "one under par" challenges in the last two weeks, this week's challenge is about unusually difficult level 5 puzzles, which means that they are more difficult to solve in 5 moves than most other level 5 puzzles.

The level codes of the 3 puzzles of this challenge are: 5638-05, 8252-05, 6853-05,

To play these puzzles in the demo, you first have to unlock level 5 by solving puzzles on levels 1 to 4. Then you start a game with NEW GAME (in the main menu) and select CODE instead of a level to enter one of the codes.

Enjoy and please let me know what you think of these puzzles!

Patch of demo D-13: new colours, new setting, and new controls for Tilt Five
After working on a game for Rec Room's game jam (see here), I'm back at working on icosi-do's support of Tilt Five™ glasses:

  • I changed colours again because pure red was too dark and might flicker a bit with Tilt Five™ glasses. I didn't want to add any blue to the red colour; therefore, I added green, which meant that the yellow colour had to become a more pure shade of yellow. I still have to get used to the new colours, but they might work better for users with colourblindness. Also, I increased the ambient colour to avoid very dark rods.
  • The low Glockenspiel notes are louder now. Yeah.
  • I've increased the size of the collision shapes around rods; mainly to make it easier to select rods with the Tilt Five™ wand. The collision shapes are now at a size that I sometimes feel that they might be a bit big, so it's unlikely that I make them any bigger - at least not for all devices.
  • There is a new option for Tilt Five™ glasses: SETTINGS > AR GLASSES > CLONE VIEW. If it is ON and the Tilt Five™ glasses are tracking a gameboard, the view in the glasses is cloned/mirrored/shared on the PC screen. Otherwise, the standard PC game view is shown.
  • It's now possible to play with Tilt Five™ glasses without Tilt Five™ wand. For this, no wand should be connected (turn it off with the T5 button, if necessary) and CLONE VIEW has to be set to ON. Instead of a mouse pointer or reticle, a small sphere is shown to indicate what you are pointing at.
  • But how do you resize and move the puzzle without a wand? Well, if Tilt Five™ glasses have been detected, it's now possible to change the size and height of the puzzle with keyboard ("Z", "X", "H", "Y") and Xbox controller (bumpers and "X" and "Y" buttons).
  • If CLONE VIEW is set to OFF, it's possible that one player is using Tilt Five™ glasses and wand while another player is using PC screen and keyboard/mouse/Xbox controller. (Hovering over rods doesn't work yet for the PC player, but apart from that selecting rods works fine. Does anyone really want hovering to work?)

Please let me know what you think! I still have to test Remote Play Together between a Tilt Five™ player and a PC player, so there might be more changes coming soon in case that doesn't work as expected.

UPDATE: I tried Remote Play Together from a Windows PC (using Tilt Five™ glasses and wand) to a Mac (using keyboard and touchpad), and it worked fine. If you want to try it yourself: remember to set SETTINGS > AR GLASSES > CLONE VIEW to OFF!

Second Weekly September Challenge
This week, we have another "one under par" challenge: All level 5 puzzles can be solved with 5 swaps, but some can be solved with only 4 swaps, which is the case for the puzzles in this challenge.

Here are the 3 codes of this week's challenge: 4100-05, 5162-05, 1261-05.

To play these puzzles in the demo, you first have to unlock level 5 by solving puzzles on levels 1 to 4. Then you start a game with NEW GAME (in the main menu) and select CODE instead of a level to enter one of the codes.

Enjoy and please let me know what you think of these puzzles!

First Weekly September Challenge
This month, I'm publishing a new challenge each week. This time it's about solving level 4 puzzles with only 3 swaps. As you might know, all level 4 puzzles can be solved with 4 swaps. However, some of the procedurally generated level 4 puzzles may be solved with only 3 swaps.

Here are the 3 codes of this week's challenge: 5199-04, 8440-04, and 9964-04

To play these puzzles in the demo, you first have to unlock level 4 by solving puzzles on levels 1 to 3. Then you start a game with NEW GAME (in the main menu) and select CODE instead of a level to enter one of the codes.

Enjoy and please let me know what you think of this type of challenge!

Patch of demo D-12: beam and new hiding place
Another small patch:

  • The hiding place for unused rods was changed in one of the recent patches. Now it's closer to the original position again for flat screens.
  • When using Tilt Five™ glasses, there is now an optional beam between wand and the point which the wand is pointing at. Hopefully, this makes pointing a bit more comfortable. It can be turned off under SETTINGS > AR GLASSES > BEAM.

The next feature will probably be a way to see different views with the Tilt Five™ glasses and on the flat PC screen. As always, please let me know any comments!

Patch of demo D-11: less clipping, more clipping, better names
Just a small patch as I'm working my way through a list of recommendations by Tilt Five.

  • The movement and scaling of the puzzle and menu text has been limited to avoid clipping at the edges of the gameboard.
  • If you get too close to any rods, they are now clipped to avoid visual discomfort. (I accidentally published an intermediate version with too much clipping - the latest patch should fix that.)
  • The menu point "SETTINGS > TILT FIVE" has been renamed to "SETTINGS > AR GLASSES" to take into account that one day the game might support other AR glasses as well (and to avoid using a trademark without the ™ sign).
  • The test performed with SETTINGS > AR GLASSES > CHECK SYSTEM has been improved to detect whether the correct driver (version 1.2.1) has been installed. If the test doesn't find the correct driver, it now responds: "NO DRIVER 1_2_1"
  • Also, the manual has been updated.

As always, please let me know any comments.

Patch of demo D-10: initial Tilt Five support and tweaked colors

This patch includes support for Tilt Five™ glasses!

  • If you don't have Tilt Five™ glasses, enjoy the slightly tweaked colors!
  • With Tilt Five™ glasses, plug them in and immerse yourself deeper in icosi-do than ever before! The app should detect the Tilt Five™ glasses automatically. If not, go to SETTINGS > TILT FIVE > CHECK SYSTEM to diagnose the problem. Also: make sure that you have installed the latest drivers version 1.2.1 from https://www.tiltfive.com/downloads !
  • Currently, you need a Tilt Five™ wand to play the game with Tilt Five™ glasses. Hold it like a wand. Use the thumbstick to navigate the menus and rotate the puzzle. Use trigger or "1" button to select menu items or rods, "2" button to escape/go back, "X" and "B" buttons to move the puzzle up and down, "A" and "Y" buttons to resize the puzzle, system button to escape and then quit the game.
  • If you want to record or stream your gameplay, consider activating props with SETTINGS > TILT FIVE > PROPS: ON, scale up the puzzle with "Y", and move your head very close to the board because the puzzle is rather small on screen otherwise.

Note that this is not the last update with support for Tilt Five™ glasses - more will come soon. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know!

Tilt Five support is coming!
After years of waiting, I got my Tilt Five glasses and controller today and spent some time playing a handful of games. Maybe more importantly, I used the lighter-like controller as prop to act out how to interact with icosi-do using this system.

My current plan is to think of the controller as a laser-pointer and mark what the controller is pointing at with a small glowing dot (like a laser pointer). The thumbstick of the controller is going to rotate the puzzle, trigger and "1" button are selecting a rod or menu item, "2" and Tilt Five button are used as back/cancel/escape buttons, and the ABXY buttons are going to scale and vertically position the puzzle.

Also, the background is probably going to be a dark grey instead of black because of technical issues with the display.

With all the limitations of the current Tilt Five system, I don't expect icosi-do to feel super-awesome on Tilt Five - but it might feel about as comfortable as the desktop version and much more immersive.
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