Faster Circles, Tougher Choices

Out of the Box was played by someone other than its maker for the first time, and the notes were clear: the movement felt responsive and the arenas read well, but the circle was too slow, and several rooms could be solved without really thinking about them. This update is the answer to that.

Twice as fast

The circle now moves at double its old speed, with acceleration and braking raised to match so it still stops and turns when you ask it to rather than skating on. The chasers were sped up with it, and the Extreme drones further again, so the rooms that were a chase are still a chase.

Pick a lane

The clearest change is what happened to the launch pads. Choose your current used to be one pad and one exit. Now you start at the bottom of three lanes, separated by walls that are marked as lethal and patterned so you can tell what they are, with pads and their routes drawn above you.

Stage 6, Choose your current: three launch lanes divided by barred lethal walls, six pads with dotted arrows showing where each lane leads, and the player circle at the bottom. — One of these three chains reaches the exit. The other two end at a wall.

One chain of five pads carries you to the way out. The other two choices end where the walls are. Everything you need to read is on screen before you move, which makes it a decision rather than a reflex — and the two later pad stages take the same circuit and make it harder: one reverses your controls, the other shrinks the room while you fly it.

Rooms that close faster

Shrinking boxes now close two and a half times faster. The first shrinking room also gained solid baffles, which turns it into a slalom: the walls are coming in, and you cannot take the straight line.

Stage 9, Less and less: a tall blue box with two solid grey baffles staggered across it and the player circle in the bottom corner. — Less and less, now with something in the way.

Hit an interior wall and what happens depends on what that wall is: the solid ones stop you and kill your launch momentum, the lethal ones do what they look like they will do. They are drawn with the same patterns as every other hazard in the game, so there is nothing to memorise.

Extreme means extreme

The five Extreme rooms were the other half of the feedback. Doors used to open all at once; now each layer has its own switch, so getting through the outer box does not hand you the inner one. They combine locks, pursuit, currents and lethal baffles, and the authored clears sit between eleven and fifteen seconds of continuous decisions.

Stage 21, Cross purposes: a yellow outer box with a locked red room inside it, two switch markers, two pursuing drones, a conveyor panel and lethal bars. — Cross purposes: two locks, two chasers and a current, in that order or not.

The ring lands harder

The one thing the playtest asked for more of was the escape. Collecting a ring now pulls in faster and lands with an elastic pulse, two expanding ripples, a scatter of sparks and a rising three-note chime. Reduced motion keeps the moment and drops the expansion.

Six seconds of stage six at the new pace: the lane, the launch, the escape, and the room folding into a ring. Silent.

The moment the ring lands: the circle inside a tight ring with short sparks all around it and a faint ripple spreading out. — The landing, one frame in.

Every one of the twenty-five stages has a re-recorded solution that is replayed against the real simulation, so nothing above is a level that only works on paper. What it is not yet is tested by people: the next step is putting the new pace in front of a player again and finding out whether faster is also better.

The project page has the new rooms in its gallery. Still in development, still no store page and no date.