Their Twitter has three posts:
Three of the people behind it:
I wasn't able to deliver packages but I was too mesmerized to be mad about that. Beautiful game. Kudos.
Edit: I did figure it out and completed all the deliveries. So many potential. It reminds me a bit of Sky by thatgamecompany
Edit 2: for the author, I noticed several players approached me and tried to communicate. Please explore games like Journey (thatgamecompany) to see different ways people communicate without chatting. People can help each other, veterans can guide newbies all without using words. Every time I met a player in the game back in the days, they sent me a heartfelt message.
I had no real reason for that expectation, except this is how several games I played in recent years handled it - which made me realize now, that explaining gameplay to new players is something that's actively evolving. There may not be a rulebook, but there are clear trends.
I was surprised to learn the random messengers are other humans!
PS4 specs: ~1.84 TFLOPS FP32, 18 GCN CUs @ 800 MHz, 8 GB GDDR5 @ 176 GB/s.
I think maybe some released-yesterday phone might get close on spikes/bursts, but not on any sustained loads, like gaming, nor would the beat the PS4 on image quality either.
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-sony_playstation_5...
Shader throughput (shader count times base clock) is similar too: https://gadgetversus.com/processor/apple-a15-bionic-vs-amd-l...
The iPhone wins on boost shader throughput by a lot, but that’ll throttle. The ps4 has more, slower gpu cores. Not sure how gpu memory bandwidth compares.
This game is beautiful in every way.
I do not play video games, but I played this one through till the end and wish there was more to explore.
Said more about it here[0] already, but the game works perfectly on a foldable and takes the folding/unfolding in stride, without breaking a sweat. You can also see it on desktop by resizing your browser window to change size and aspect ratio (it's probably the same code paths handling it anyway).
Given how almost all mobile and web games I played manage to get this scenario wrong in some way, I applaud the authors for making all the right choices.
--
exactly, realy well made!
shrug
drc = 3d shapes (I think)
ogg = audio
All of these would normally be bundled in the game installer, but are sent down piece by piece over the network in this case.
Then there's some wasm and js for the game's business logic. The browser has WebGL APIs that enable running all of this.
I'm assuming they used a library or engine like Unity, Godot or Three.js that supports WebGL as an execution target.
drc is Draco Compression, it's a library from Google to compress mesh data
Can I ask the author if AI helped him with this? Is it multiplayer too?
I ask as I have been deving a webgl game for a few years
“Explore and Make Deliveries”
huge success as side project and for the CV!
Played through all missions and at the end had enough of the concept but appreciated the AOD. Especially the little bits of the environment, like the sleeping fox in the forest, were nice.
If I was in Unity, I would address this issue by manually placing a bunch of virtual cameras in the world and using cinemachine to blend between them. The size of this world is small enough to justify manual placement and configuration of each. You could also just focus on the complex areas and let the default follow cam handle the rest.
But I kind of understand it. I did a somehow similar project before and for people who are not trained in video game style controls it is quite hard to get used to them ad-hoc.
Assuming this project is at least partially aimed at art directors, project leads and such aka people who aren't necessarily gamers, detached movement/camera controls are a bit risky.
There were a lot of cool scenic locations, that almost beg for the ability to just stand somewhere and look around, yet you can't really look down or up very conveniently.
Also, walking locations where you might fall, be kind of nice to be able to look at where you're aiming at. Minor nit mostly, just fit the explore a scenic island theme.
Was this dynamic on your radar when building the game and camera system? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Nice game otherwise.
There's also a threejs reference in a hard to reach area.
immediately hit a bug where i had like 3 character skins at once though
If I may ask, how did you do the environment models? Did you use textures and UV mapping? or just untextured models with a shader for the contours?
as for the game itself, I couldn't understand how to deliver the messages.
https://summer-afternoon.vlucendo.com
?
The design of the latter allows packing more details in a smaller space. Also, players are forced to face a lot of unexpectedness, as navigation becomes a natural challenge (which isn't difficult to overcome, which is exactly the point). It's like the blind men and the elephant, and can feel very limited, but you end up using your brain, and, in that process, you fully embrace the world details.
Its got a Zelda Wind Walker vibe that I love. It was fun just running around exploring.
The one thing that transported me out of the game was the arbitrary blocking around the ocean / the end of the stream. (I assume those go to the same place, from different sides.)
It seems on such a tiny world the water should never be more than waist deep, so why not just let us explore the whole thing. I didn't quite feel like I got to go all the way around the tiny world, and being fenced by an invisible barrier broke the fourth wall.
But the game is beautiful and peaceful and I’m still glad I got to experience it. I’ll definitely share it with some friends. Thank you for making it.
Besides the visual style being very similar, there's an island in the game with about the same amount of NPCs, and they all have their own lives and many give you chores like this one.
feedback after 5m
* there should be a help section, all i could figure out is how to walk with up/left/down/right, and w/a/s/d. And the mouse. * I got nauseous after a bit, not sure if that is everyone or just me but I did have some bad nausea on a ride (teacups) at the local carnival/fair a few months ago, and it comes back every now and then. * the controls on desktop seem too sensitive. I had to eventually walk with W and then go left and right with the arrow keys, but even then it was too sensitive
I left after 5m because of the nausea.
I liked the music and peacefulness.
Developer, my friend, you are the reason I map key bindings in the keyboard.
WASD ... esdf for life ... be the center.
Where is the alien?
SPOILERS AHEAD (for another game, which you should have played by now, if you enjoy this game, in my opinion) There's also a hiss at the industrial site which reminds me of the game Full Throttle where you have to kick the wall at the right time. But that can't be a thing, right? But the gauge!
If anyone knows of similar games / apps / software tools that I could show as examples of solo developer small scope simple UI games I'm always trying to find more..
https://store.steampowered.com/app/653530/Return_of_the_Obra...
> https://xcancel.com/abeto_co
> https://xcancel.com/vlucendo
––from San Francisco
- alba: a wildlife adventure. more gameplay but somewhat similar controls/feel
- a short hike. isometric but similar feel (thanks thrance)
- the legend of zelda: the wind waker. haven't played, but mentioned in a few other comments
- proteus. first person and more subtle gameplay
anything else?
One additional input, although I could play it well on the desktop - the mobile gameplay made me a tad nauseous. I am someone prone to nausea in VR too, but I’ve never felt this in any other mobile game before. I think it’s probably the amount of motion (hilly topography) and the very narrow field of view, along with the way the mobile controls behave. This was on iOS Safari btw (iPhone 16 Pro Max).
In fact, it's the best looking game experience on a foldable I've seen so far (most games are designed for either mobile or tablet form factor, and can't quite handle the in-between). And it's cool how you can just fold or unfold the device on the fly, and the game just adapts without anything more noticeable than the camera pivoting a bit if needed to keep the character on-screen. No stutter, no half-second pause for UI to realign, not even perspective change.
EDIT: I just realized it's probably not a mobile-specific thing, and sure enough, on a desktop you can just resize your browser window to see this.
Very good implementation for sure
I've only played a few minutes (will have to revisit with more time). On first impression, the art style / characters / dynamics feel like a mix of "Little Kitty, Big City" and "Olli Olli World". Really great vibes!
As a web developer who doesn't make games...I'm a bit overwhelmed by the vast knowledge gap that clearly exists between what I know and what would be required to make this.
Wow. It's so beautiful and enjoyable to wander about in.
It seems to be making smart choices about compression techniques.
This is a good showcase of how well games can work on the web if done well.
There's no market for flash style web games so you don't see it.
I love it.
I'm not trying to be a demoscene smart-ass here, either (I expect demoscene masters would've packed the equivalent in under 1MB). Just that, models are low-poly, the world is small and made up from pieces that feel simple to describe; as long as you're not trying to bake everything into a static set of meshes, but willing to encode them at a higher level, 5MB seems like plenty.
For a dimensionally reduced analogy, the 2D equivalent would be a perfect example of an image that's very large in raster form, but quite small in vector form.
Are my intuitions widely off here?
Note that this does not make it any less impressive - on the contrary, I'm amazed by how much detail and soul is there to this world, despite apparent simplicity. I'm also amazed at how navigable this world is. I've made many stupid moves that I was dead sure will wedge me between walls, or get me stuck in a nook with no way of going back; but none of that happened. They must've put a lot of thought into the design, and it wouldn't surprise me if they manually mapped out the world to ensure there's no one-way paths.
https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2024/page-weight#fig-37
So, 5-15 for a video game (vs a static document) is pretty good!
The 3D models are compressed with 'Draco' compression. So for example the largest asset is a model of the entire world which is 333 kB. It consists of 81k vertices. Unoptimized that would mean at least 3 32 bit floats per vertex, which would be at least 972 kB uncompressed. So Draco compression is doing a pretty good job getting the model sizes down.
I'd have to dig into it more but I suspect if they wanted to they could have trimmed the size down quite a bit, but it may not be worth the effort. They could have used more repeat 3D models, but instead it looks like they went for a more artist driven look where most of the world is uniquely modeled.
It also looks like they're sending a bunch of lower res levels of detail per model over the network. That also is a tradeoff. Still with network speeds as they are nowadays it may be faster / simpler to send those over the wire each time instead of regenerating the level of detail.
The textures are a similar story. Well compressed but they're sending procedural noise over the network. Those could be generated but it's also trivial to send them over the network.
This feels so well thought out in all ways. It may be the best original work I've seen on HN in a long time.
Clever text as well :)
the stakes are so low, the music is so relaxing, and the environment is so detailed and pretty that it pushes the player slow down and try clicking around and pressing some keys. each little discovery feels great and theres no downside to sitting around and trying things out for 30 seconds
my favorite part is that there is some tough platforming if you look for it. i make it to a few places that were only accessible with a running jump across a balanced ledge. the fiddly controls added to the experience. a splash of emergent game play in such a distilled hangout game
https://www.awwwards.com/summer-afternoon.html
And a talk here on the same project:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSIxyyEaPr0
It's full of tips that likely informed this new project. In short, seems like:
- No game engine
- Three.js plus https://github.com/gkjohnson/three-mesh-bvh
- Houdini and Blender for modelling
- Substance for texturing
- Figma and Affinity Photo for UI
- GSAP and vanilla JS for animation
- Davinci Resolve for sound
- WebSocket/Node.js for multiplayer
Plus a lot of experience, creativity, and artistry to solve other challenges (e.g. shaders, shadows) and wire everything together into this pretty performant piece of art.
The studio also has a case study here of another project they made, with other hints about their tooling and process:
https://www.awwwards.com/igloo-inc-case-study.html
Just for anyone like me who played this and spent the whole time thinking, "this is beautiful, who are you and how did you make this?" The author names are only revealed in the credits at the end:
https://x.com/michaelsungaila (nice work on the beach shader!)
https://www.kevincolombin.com/ (music)
- This will _only_ need a browser to run. No console. No PC rig. No Steam account. No account at all. You just need a link to play it.
- Why use a heavy game engine and all the baggage that can bring when you can make a lightweight prototype in JS, prove value in the browser, then port to desktop if you choose to.
Browser games are an underexplored art form.
As opposed to creating binaries for every platform and be subject to every possible store scrutiny on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac?
That not a waste of time for sure.
What am I ever reading?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSIxyyEaPr0&t=1177s
But this new game seems to make use more textures and cell shading.
What's the 5th thing you have to find?
Anyone has any tips on building games like this?
Keyboard controls were a tad frustrating, but hell of a job overall.
However I gave up playing on mobile, the system randomly mixes fingers movement between moving the character and zooming, thus breaking any gaming experience, I guess it was mainly tested on desktop.
One second it is going forward, sundenly the next second zooms in.
Like ever? Are you talking about any sort of game or you mean strictly "video games"?
Wish there were achievements for that!
The speech sound effects and environments reminded me of Stray a lot. I miss that game so much.
I’m not unfortunately a fan of the way the touch controls work. Given the player is on a tiny spherical world I’d expected to be able to drag the world around under their feet to make them walk/run, whereas the way it works at the moment, on a smallish phone screen, feels somewhat backwards.
* I love the writing, it's witty and poignant
* I was impressed that WASD controls worked with my keyboard set to Dvorak :)
* Unfortunately have to second the comments about nausea; the oddly paced camera (it feels like it is panning through molasses then suddenly accelerates to switch views) is probably responsible, I'm guessing the "overshoot view then correct" "feature" is also a factor. Additionally seconding the comments about allowing the camera to follow the mouse (if feasible somehow while not losing cross-form-factor support) would go a long way to help here as well.
* The font that shows you where you are is cute in an orientalist sense, but imho it is very difficult to read (even knowing what it says from context clues and previous hints)
* Not a criticism but it is odd to have jumping when there is no mechanism that uses it in-game
* 99.99% a me problem: I had a hard time with spatial awareness and a difficulty building a mental map of the world and my best guess is that it's because I personally found the default field of view to be too "zoomed in".
Agreed on the spatial awareness issue. I think games like Mario Galaxy are a bit better in that regard because you see more of the world at a time. In this game you can sometimes not see what's 5m in front of you.
Not even a complicated storyline but very poignant.
It may be hard to find an audience (revenue) but these kind of gems should be encouraged similar to traditional art form.
It is somewhat obscene that there is art in galleries out there with far less effort and talent that go for millions in both funding and revenue.
This project with this tiny planet is amazing. So well designed, such a nice cute little world. Makes me want to cry.
I am so far away...
It was the cherry on top of this complete flex of brain power. This is like Pixar’s demo reel. Could easily define a generation of technological advancement.
is there any similar game or is it first 3d in-browser game with amazing graphics?
Liftyee•4mo ago