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Thanks selfsame, I think I have done that now, though this is all a bit new to me.

Free-ow! Took me a while but there we go, it's definitely something and it's definitely submitted!

Thank you very much for the support everyone, and well! I've now made it to a point where I can release something. At the moment that something is a navigable area with a series of dials and a porthole; move the dials, see a different thing through the porthole; simple. With the time I have left I plan to sprite as many of the alternate worlds as possible since void, desert, and rocky void can get boring. If I have time I'll even put clues in some of these worlds as otherwise using the machine will be guesswork, which doesn't make for a great puzzle!

Well hello there!

Right, so.

Structure will be a game that attempts to evoke some part of the atmosphere of Myst. To that end I'm trying to focus on one of my favourite aspects, and devise a mechanical puzzle. You find a device (the titular structure) which can modify the fundamental components (the structure!) of the world around you. The machine is of course broken, but by fixing and working around the breaks, you are able to turn your world into a variety of others (if I have time to make any).

I'm making this in gamemaker using some rather simple and inelegant code, plus super low res graphics; probably no music though.

Game flow will be manipulating the structure to access a world, in which there will be a clue either to further understand the usage of the structure, or unlock some new potential for it. Periodically worlds will have maguffins which provide the structure with more energy, allowing more diverse worlds to be accessed.

Worlds are generated using five main variables; Force, Dynamic, Nature, Civilisation and System. These each range from low to high, so for instance Force, which controls the formation of the world through weather, will create a flat, dry world when low, but create a world of deep, placid oceans or constant earthquakes when at the maximum value. Increasing the value of any of the variables decreases from a pool of points, which is made larger the more maguffins you have.

Two other variables, Sustain and Time, control how long the world can survive in the generated state, and where along that timeline the world is, but these are not directly manipulable.

There's plenty of overlap for the variables, so the plan isn't procedural generation, but that many of the options fail (creating a desert world or void) or create worlds with minor similarities, so that there will be a small number of designed worlds. If I have any time for subtext, maybe something about how this implies "your" world failed/died, or if it or you are even real when everything is a mutable product of the machine.

As of writing I have made a clicky-clicky first person adventure game walking around simulator thingy with some graphics in it; I am still building the main mechanism of the puzzle, but have the majority of the workings planned out.

I look forward to seeing all the submissions,

Thank you for your time,

Oliver