Hi there!

I wanted to play with the idea of a space that is "broken" (doesn't work the way we expected it to behave) but it has rules that support it. It's procedurally generated but the levels are the same for every user.

Players can move around, create a ladder that takes them to a new level or leave breadcrumbs (this is just a visual mark). If you place a ladder in a certain spot of a certain level it'll always take you to the same destination. There's no randomness.

Each of the tiles in the floor has an id that goes from 1 to 64 (as there are 64 tiles and 64 stages). Going through a ladder placed on a tile with id X will take you to stage X. Tile id is based on its placement and remains the same on every level. This is hidden to players, because they just need to see there's a certain logic in exploration, not understand all the rules.

Space feels finite after exploring a bit, and I think that's the important part, finding tracks that you left a few seconds ago.

And I think that's pretty much it, love the concept of the jam and I'll try to find time to make a few more prototypes. This one can be found here.

yeahh!! this is great! i love the idea of exploring persistent procedural spaces, and i think these breadcrumbs are a really cool item to have in the exploration toolkit

Thanks! I think the idea of game mechanics (like placing a sprite) that have no relevance in terms of game logic (the object isn't interacting with anything) but still means something to players can be interesting.