[GAME] Quantum Childminding

[Hand-E-Food]

Quantum Childminding

Schrodinger's daughter is a difficult girl.

Look away for a second and you'll lose her.

She could be anywhere.

She's actually everywhere!

At least she is until proven otherwise.

Schrodinger's nanny always finds her in the last place she looks, and only after exhausting all other possibilities.

Play it!

I feel this game really encapsulates what it's like to be a parent of a small child you want to trust more than you can.  :-)

It's a short game.  I enjoyed the mechanic but couldn't think of many levels for it.

Enjoy!

[Stephen Lavelle]

haha, very cute :)   a sequel where you can swap between controlling either parent? :P

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[Chris Pickel]

Cute. Felt like I spend a lot of time just rechecking places I'd already looked, rather than making progress, though.

Reminds me a bit of “It Dies in the Light”:

http://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6847423

You could borrow some of its mechanics, but I'm not sure they would work thematically for you. Penning the kid in sounds effective but a bit harsh :)

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[Hand-E-Food]

Yeah, trying to find lost kids can feel a lot like that.  Thankfully most kids find something interesting and stay put.

I remembered It Dies in the Light as I was making this, and I wanted to make something a bit different.  Originally, I tried Quantum Childminding without the indicators of where the child might be, and had a heat map of places you'd seen recently instead.  It was way too difficult to work out where the kid had been.  The indicators were necessary.

I did contemplate adding crates in.  Given you need to catch the child, you couldn't block her in completely, but you could limit her routes.  I may make that change in future.

[Skalmantas Šimėnas]

It reminded me a lot more of Dungeon Janitor. It had a slime add random tiles around itself instead of making the speed lower and, to be honest, that randomness fit really well with something slimy.

[Virelsa]

Very clever! My first thought was "well, this is basically impossible, right?" but strategies soon develop. As an extension, pushable mirrors could make things interesting.

[Hand-E-Food]

That's an interesting idea!

[Wajeemba]

Wow, I really love these mechanics! I hope you don't mind- I took the liberty of adding another level. Would you consider making a public repo on Github, so that the community can add levels via a pull request? Does PuzzleScript allow you to permalink the game to a static external repo directly?

[Hand-E-Food]

Wajeemba, thanks!  I don't think you can do pull requests with Gist, but I'm active here and happy to include other levels in the game.  I've updated the game in the above link.

[Nils Jung]

I have to agree, the mechanics for this game are really interesting! However, I feel like there is still a lot to be explored level-design-wise, so I made a little remix of the game with two new mechanics: Crates and Doors. Hope that's OK :P

http://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=1c1b539ae5097bb8b62634e776948bd4

[Hand-E-Food]

Oh my god, those levels are horrible!  I love it!  I'm sitting here with my daughter, explaining that I'm trying to find a lost girl.  Now she's talking about playing hide-and-seek at the shops. 8-(

Of course it's okay.  I'm so glad the game is inspiring others.  :-)

I love how you added that you have to push crates with safety in mind.

[Nils Jung]

I hope "horrible" means horribly difficult and not horribly terrible D:

[Hand-E-Food]

That's exactly what I mean. :-D

[c4t5...@gmail.com]

This is awesome! I took the liberty to update some textures.

GitHub submission successful - link to source code:
http://www.puzzlescript.net/editor.html?hack=8395edf7b7a2f10309a49b908cf587ea
The game can now be played at this url:
http://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=8395edf7b7a2f10309a49b908cf587ea

I expect I can do more tomorrow :)

Also, may I recommend leaving in the original levels so it isn't so hard to start? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you overrode the original starting levels with the (really interesting!) update of the doors and crates.

Thanks for making this!!

[c4t5...@gmail.com]

Ah, I thought this replaced the original game! My mistake. This looks to be a second level set for the current game.

[c4t5...@gmail.com]

I got through, I believe, all the textures today. I also added in a tree and flowers for the park.

GitHub submission successful - link to source code:

http://www.puzzlescript.net/editor.html?hack=38cac2ad1eae61a72840696959990f37

The game can now be played at this url:

http://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=38cac2ad1eae61a72840696959990f37

This is the original game I worked on, not the one with the crates and doors.

[Wajeemba]

Uncommented the other levels you textured 

Successful Compilation, generated 50 instructions.

GitHub submission successful - link to source code:

http://www.puzzlescript.net/editor.html?hack=816290867233eac3c58f96bc98ff2668

The game can now be played at this url:

http://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=816290867233eac3c58f96bc98ff2668

[Connorses]

The park is a cool level, I really had to stop and think about it for a bit.

[Wajeemba]

:D Thank you! It really looks nice now that c4t5 textured it!

[Wajeemba]

Necroposting here... After 3 years, I was thinking of the game again and searched online for "Quantum Childminding." Happily I was able to navigate back here. Very much enjoyed replaying the game! Seems like the game has shown up a bit here and there in different places online, which is fun to see.

I noticed the content for the game got fragmented, and created a new revision that merges in Nils Jung's crates and doors levels. I also wrote some story to give a fitting end to what is now an 8 level puzzle game that takes some considerable mental effort to complete.

Here's an updated live puzzlescript link: 
https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=018115da1a6492609883a16beed596c8

I don't believe there are any bugs in this build, but I only tested each level piecewise, so please post if you notice anything off/play it all the way through.

I'm also including a link to my gist fork directly, since I can't see a way to trace to gist from the puzzlescript page. https://gist.github.com/wajeemba/04abfab3c595f83a2faa5e40c919aeac

I'd encourage you to fork directly from the gist link if you add a level or a feature, then post with both the puzzlescript and the gist link here for ease of keeping the "master" current. Though see my next line below...

I'm thinking I will create a real github repo for the project, as I can see myself adding levels or expanding functionality here and there over the years into the future. Puzzlescript's setup with gist is perfect for a quick yet permanent way to share one-off's, but it feels like it really isn't intended for multi-contributor collaboration. I haven't done much on github yet but this would be a fun place to start! @Hand-E-Food, do you have any input or preferences on how the github repo would be implemented?

The ultimate endgame I envision for the project would be a simple way for someone to pull the Quantum Childminding game into their Retropie library. Pico-8 and Puzzlescript games feel right at home alongside Asteroids, Centipede, and others! (Microcenter licensed a nice rom set from Atari! https://www.microcenter.com/product/627545/atari-32gb-micro-sd). Maybe that involves a fork of the puzzlescript project itself (https://github.com/increpare/PuzzleScript) to package it into a RetroArch core (https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch)

Good times!

-Wajeemba

[Hand-E-Food]

Necroreplying... :-)

I'm happy for you do what you want with this. I made this and put it out there, people enjoyed it, people added to it, I moved on. All I'd ask is the original level designers be credited for their work.

I don't have any input into the code management or packaging. It's your passion project, do it as you like.

Enjoy!