The Cluster has been and on-and-off side project for me for over 20 years, starting with a Game Maker prototype in 2003 and later recreated in Delphi Pascal and later in Unity. I'm happy to say that it's finally released after all this time!

The Cluster has been reinvented multiple times going from 2D to 2.5D and from individual levels to a persistent open world. It does some interesting and unique things with procedural generation that I haven't yet seen in other games, so while I don't quite think the game has commercial potential, I've been wrapping it up for release as a free experimental game.

It's an exploration-focused procedural open world platformer that is 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.

More info and download links on The Cluster's page here

What do you think? Take it for a spin and see for yourself :) Even if it probably won't become your new favorite game, I hope you'll find something interesting and inspiring about it.

If you're a developer who'd like to learn more about the procedural generation techniques involved, take a look at my blog posts about it, and my open source LayerProcGen framework, which The Cluster is also based on.