Project Shinar

NOTE: As of 12 September 2023 downloads of this game are no longer available, and it will be being rewritten in a different game engine. Please see this devlog post for the reason wny.

Navigate the strange world of The Mainframe, retrieving data and avoiding the security systems and traps the system puts in your way.

Project Shinar puts you in control of three robot agents working their way through the neon-glowing, hazardous circuits of a powerful computer. Make them work together across hundreds of levels of increasingly complex puzzles to discover the secrets held deep inside the system.

Notes

• Mouse control is the expected control method. A gamepad might work but expect button navigation to be odd. This will change later, but for now I recommend that you use a mouse.
• When playing a level, holding down the right mouse button lets you rotate the camera around the active robot, mouse wheel zooms in/out. Left-clicking the robot portraits in the top left and top right of the screen will let you switch between robots. Switching between robots by clicking on them directly in the level will be added.
• You get up to three robots on a level:
  • CLR - a robot with a laser beam. Can destroy some kinds of object around the level... including your other robots, so be careful where you fire the laser.
  • PUSH - this robot can fire a beam that pushes some objects away from it. (including other robots) 
  • MOVEP - use this robot to collect data from data stores, or activate certain sorts of objects on levels.
• When a level loads, it pauses immediately to give you time to look around and work out your strategy. Pressing any of the direction/action buttons will unpause the game, or you can use the record feature to set up a program for the robot to follow. 
• The level editor is functional, although it is still possible to create 'illegal' levels without much effort, so be careful!

Keyboard controls

Currently the controls can not be rebound - the interface for doing that is Coming Soon™. The following keyboard commands are defined in the game at the moment:

In the editor

• WASD moves the camera focus point (Right mouse to rotate camera, wheel zooms)
• Q and E rotate the placement cursor so you can set orientation when adding level components.
• PgUp and PgDown move the active floor level up and down
• Delete removes the selected level component

When playing a level

• Escape pauses/unpauses the game
• F1 toggles the UI on and off

Pressing F3 at any time enables a overlay showing lots of statistics about the game - framerate, memory use, sound information, etc. Pressing F4 cycles through overlay configurations.

Press F11 to take a screenshot.

Press F7 at any time to open a feedback window. Here you can enter a summary, a message, and optionally include your email if you are reporting a bug and want me to be able to contact you.

The feedback system sends the summary, message, your email if provided, along with your CPU, GPU, OS version, screen resolution, the screenshot shown in the feedback window, and the Player.log written by Unity with information about what has happened during the current game session. The information sent is anonymous, and cannot be used to identify you - with the exception of your email address if you include one. The information will not be made available to anyone else, and your email address will only be used to contact you if needed for additional information.

Updates will usually be accompanied by a devblog, but more progress can be seen via my Mastodon