Every Cable Is Physically Simulated In This Cable-Untangling Puzzle
Do you find untangling things relaxing?
In Knode: Untangle & Connect, you're stuck on a strange ocean platform with one meditative job: trace fully simulated cables through a tangled mess and plug them into the correct rack. There's also a companion watching everything you do, offering commentary along the way. They're suspiciously friendly, too.
Built entirely solo by BusFactorOne, the game features over 12 levels and roughly 4-5 hours of gameplay. No timers, no stress, just pure vibes, physics, and an absurd amount of untangling.
Knode: Untangle & Connect
Knode: Untangle & Connect
Even if you don't consider untangling cables relaxing, it's still technically very impressive. The cables move very smoothly, with none of the artifacts you might expect from a physics-heavy system.
Apparently, the entire cable system was written from scratch in C++, and the developer even built their own physics engine specifically for the game. It'd be really nice to learn more about their workflow.
"I'm using a particle system approach (something like PBD/XPBD) with my custom physics engine. The cable is composed of spheres, over which a smooth surface mesh is rendered. I tried using capsules, but the results weren't as good.
As for constraints, well, the topology remains intact in 99.9% of cases; you likely won't be able to untie a knot by 'breaking' it through force or speed (I’ve tried many times). By the way, the 32-meter cable in the video consists of about 150 particles. The biggest challenge was achieving decent performance with 'piles' of various knots, but it seems to run quite well on my aging i5-9600k (with all calculations performed on the CPU)."
Knode: Untangle & Connect will also include a built-in level editor and Steam Workshop integration. The game launches soon, on September 25, so wishlist it now and get ready to start untangling.
Here are a couple more unusual games worth keeping an eye on: one about woodworking, and another about navigating a missile:
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