Xau is a game I'm working on, inspired by The Witness, Taiji and Yume Nikki. Its main mechanic is connecting nodes in a graph.
Xau means That Which Is Connected in Laiqbun, referencing the main mechanic of the game.
Both of thes games are ones where you solve puzzles on screens that are all over the map. Xau is simila in this regard, as screend will node graphs will be found all over the map and the player will have to figure out the right way to connect them.
The way their puzzles work messes with your mind a lot and cause it to seek patterns even when out of these games. Xau will try to do something similar to that. Is that ethical? About as much as amogus and loss, I'd say.
Yume Nikki is an eerie 2D top-down view... RPG? I'm going to not give it much thought and say it's that.
It's a very eerie game where you explore a really abstract open world that seems to be telling a strange and dark story. People have analyzed it to hell and back, so I won't do that here.
I want Xau to have that similar vibe, especially with the wandering around aimlessly-ish. It will have parts that are going to be less abstract and surreal, but overall I want its environments to be a visual representation of some of my feelings and thoughts on things. It will be confusing as fuck, is what I'm saying.
For one, its puzzles will occur on node graphs, which is a pretty unique medium for puzzles, as the player has a lot of freedom on how to make a solution.
Unlike in both Witness and Taiji, Xau will have text. Text parts will be usually brief, will only showcase storytelling, will be entirely optional, and will be very rare and cryptic.
There will also be puzzles that aren't entirely logical. Some puzzles will focus on observation and interpretation, instead of applying rules to reach a solution. The game will use visual language to allow the player to discern between logical puzzles and interpretation puzzles.
