Moncage

gamedeveloper.com:

Moncage is a mind-bending puzzle game about a rotating cube that carries whole separate worlds on each of its faces. Within those unique places, though, are connections that the player can bring together if they turn the cube in just the right way. In doing so, they’ll explore a story that brings these seemingly-disconnected, silent places together.

Game Developer spoke with the team from Optillusion about how a video on stencil buffer inspired them to create their cube filled with puzzles, the challenges that came from giving players control over so many places all at once, and the difficulties that came up in designing the puzzles that would connect these varied places.

Where did the concept for Moncage come from? What inspired this puzzle game?

A while ago, we came across this video about stencil buffer, which showcases a cube containing a distinctive model on each face of it. We were so fascinated by this idea and decided to recreate it in Unity ourselves and played around with it quite a bit, and that eventually led to Moncage.

The way that each face of this 3-dimensional cube displayed a different scene made us feel like we were looking through parallel worlds. And we thought to ourselves, “How mind-blowing would it be if we made it possible to connect these parallel worlds?”

What thoughts went into creating the various worlds and places that exist on the sides of the cube faces? Into telling a story with these places without saying a word, or picking which places to show that would tell that story, but also work well as puzzles?

We worked on the narrative alongside the game development process. We would come up with parts of the story, and then design some puzzles to integrate them. We wanted the game to be a coherent