DeCalc - Reverse calculator game (FrooxArchive #2)

Hello everyone!

I've got another of my old games for you from my archive - DeCalc! This one is from 2013, similarly to CardMatch 3D, just before/around the time I was starting to get into VR with DK1.

The core idea of the game is quite simple - it's sort of a reverse calculator. You get a result number, a bunch of buttons and your task is to arrange those buttons so when they get pressed in given order, they result in equation that gives you the given result.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FquFMUV6WNM

It's an idea I got back when I was still in school. I used to play a lot with my calculator in the class, messing around with it and trying lots of silly things, like if I can get interesting result if I press buttons along a "path". Later on I ended up making this game as a result of that idea. It was another of my attempts at making mobile games, but it didn't happen to catch much interest either (and I didn't quite know how to advertise my game back then), but it ended up being part of some indie bundles.

If you'd like to give it a try (especially if you like puzzle / brain teaser games), it has 50 hand-crafted levels. The later ones get quite funky, as you start getting buttons which move other buttons around mid-sequence, which adds another dimension to the puzzles.

The game has also procedural mode, where the levels are endlessly generated and an arcade mode, in which you're trying not to run out of time.

All in all, it's pretty simple title, but also one that I'm proud of, because I managed to get some good level of polish and completeness for what it is. One major issue that comes to mind is that the endless game-play isn't quite balanced and the difficulty can spike very badly.

Similarly to the previous title, I've recompiled it with newer version of Unity and stripped all the old Google Play and Advert API's, so you're getting just the pure game itself, without all the old cruft.

Also as another funny tidbit, part of the trailer above was actually made in PowerPoint! It's probably not the first pick for this kind of thing, but this game was made before I started getting into more fancier production software and because I was quite familiar with it back then (which is topic for a future archive) I ended using it as part of my process. Similarly all the graphics for the game I made with GIMP.

Around the time I made this game, I was also experimenting with Leap Motion - this was before it started being used for VR. I don't quite remember what happened to this version, but I have this old development video of it in action if you're curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5VIWS6CY5A

Also to give you an idea of what an early prototypes looked like and how it changed through the development, I published the development videos on my YouTube channel in a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGjJxaUtgG8&list=PLoAvz0_U4_3wa5P_8tgdzM1kbE2uYveMT&index=17

Hope you guys enjoy this peek to my history. I don't quite know if this game made math fun as advertised (my guess is more likely not, if just for the fact that it's more about arithmetic, than what I'd consider math nowadays), but hopefully it's fun enough distraction for an afternoon, or just an curious artifact of the past.

If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask! And I'll see you with the next one!