41: A polycube packing game in VR

Here is the GitHub repo.

I made this game as a sophomore in high school. I called it 41 because I intended for there to be 41 different polycubes in the final game.

However, making a game fun is very hard, especially when you are trying to cater to a range of skill levels. In the version of the game in the demo video, only tetracubes were used. For new players, this was difficult and fun, but for experienced players, it was boring until the game speed hit a certain threshold, after which it felt too frantic, having barely any time to think about placing a polycube down before another one came along. My intention with all 41 polycubes was for the game to be slower and more strategic rather than about fast execution. However, the uniform distribution of all 41 was too easy at a steady pace. I didn’t do much after that.

One way to (maybe) restore my original vision of the game is to pick polycubes with a weighted distribution or even with an adversary. I also considered making a few variant games:

• Only monocubes are spawned, but at a very fast rate. Now the challenge is to move them into place fast enough.
• Instead of spawning a continuous stream of polycubes, a small set would be spawned at a time, and the player has to assemble them into a brick before a timer expires (like the polycube puzzle).
• Use an octahedral lattice instead of a cubic one.
• Spawn only rectangular polycubes.

I only made the first variant, and it was ok.

10 March 2022

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