The Cluster
A downloadable game for Windows and macOS
The Cluster is an experimental 2.5D exploration platformer set in an open world that's carefully procedurally planned and generated.
The world is suffering from the Plague of Shadows. Playing as Emyli, you must explore its uncharted areas to find and awaken dormant artefacts used for powering an ancient defense system.
With the help of a map that's dynamically filled in, guidance from the Spirits of the Shrines, and Emyli's gift to be able to throw firestones to fend off shadows, will you be able to bring back safety to the land?
Features
A procedural open world that feels planned with intent, featuring gameplay that revolves around navigating the world's design as it is, rather than relying on sandbox gameplay like digging or building to be able to reach locations.
A multi-tiered map shows the game's planned space on a vast scale. The detailed level of the map is uncovered as you explore the world, and helps you spot previously overlooked paths.
Enemy Shadows can follow you almost everywhere using the exact same running and jumping abilities as you. Both you and enemies have to pick up stones from the ground to use for throwing at each other, which creates platforming-centric light skirmishes.
Shrine spirits offer hints about the locations of artefacts, providing a balance in between aimlessness and knowing where to go. This is possible because the game's planned world has knowledge of goals far outside the currently generated geometry.
Directional road signs point the way to faraway landmarks like shrines, gates and the hub village. Reinforcing the feeling of the world as a carefully planned place, such road signs are common in manually designed games, but rarely seen in procedurally generated worlds.
Sophisticated dynamic camera framing smoothly positions Emyli differently in the frame depending on the proximity of nearby walls and passages.
And for people interested in the tech
The game also serves as a procedural planning showcase. It demonstrates some of the things the "Layer-Based Infinite Procedural Generation" approach of my open-source LayerProcGen framework is capable of, and that it scales up to a fully playable game.
Numerous built in debug options make it possible to inspect various aspects of the generation at different layers of abstraction.
Background
I worked on The Cluster on and off primarily between 2005 and 2016, starting with a 2D game made in Delphi Pascal and reinvented multiple times. In 2016 it eventually became clear to me that it would be impractical to complete it to the standard of a commercial title for a variety of reasons.
It does however showcase several interesting aspects of procedural generation that I haven't seen elsewhere, so I've been wrapping the game up for release as an experimental game. It can be enjoyable to play for some hours for the right (exploration-loving) audience, even if the variety and polish is not quite as originally envisioned.
Download
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Development log
- The Cluster is now released for free!22 days ago
Comments
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The exploration feels unrewarding because it's mostly just tiny detours to get a tiny reward that you can see ahead of time, or larger detours to disable an enemy respawn.
The tiny offshoots with a bit of psi just aren't fun and turn exploration into a chore. They're all the same, trivial to get, andd you see what's at the end ahead of time.
Hi, thanks for trying the game!
First of all, I'm sorry to hear you're not finding the exploration rewarding. I get where you're coming from, and an aim for my next game is certainly to have more varied things to find.
Then, a small provocation: If you can see in advance that a given path is just an offshoot leading to more psi, there's nothing forcing you to go there. You can just pursue other paths that you don't yet know where leads. :)
Finally, some thoughts: Many games have a clearly marked "main path" that leads to the current main goal. In such games exploration is optional and leads to optional rewards, or they don't reward exploration and you just find empty dead ends if you try to deviate from the marked path. That's the usual context when talking about whether a game rewards exploration or not.
But in The Cluster, there's no clearly marked paths leading to the main goals (the artefacts). There's various hints, but you still have to explore to find the artefacts. So finding those is the main "reward" of exploration, and simultaneously the main goals of the game. Of course, there have to be other paths that don't lead to the artefacts, or else there wouldn't be any exploration needed. Rather than leaving those empty, there's psi or enemy bases there so that they still serve a purpose. If you will, you can think of those as "consolidation prizes" for having followed a path that did not lead on to an artefact, instead of there just being nothing there.
Still, after creating the algorithm used in this game, I've since learned the importance of using loops rather than dead ends in level design. The Cluster does try to create loops here and there, but there's still a lot dead ends. I'd focus (even) more on loops in future games.
The game's mechanics look simple, but have more depth than it seems. The same can be said about the game world. The level looks random at first, but as you explore it you realize that every part of it has a purpose, which makes you want to explore more. This procedural algorithm has so much potential. Just add more varied art and a gripping story and you've got a masterpiece!
Glad you liked it, and got a feeling the design was built with purpose! The new game I'm working on - working title The Big Forest - is a different genre (not platformer) but will build upon the same kind of procedural algorithms while having more varied environments and gameplay, or at least that's the plan. :)