Mondrian - Plastic Reality

Danny Silvers

Boston, Massachusetts

3 0

0 Collaborators

Mondrian's back & he's taking his friends for a time-tripping, brickbreaking spin through the Plastic Reality. Explore hundreds of ever-changing levels, compete on Leaderboards, build a Museum, and share your own creations via Mondrian Maker and Steam Workshop. The canvas is waiting. ...learn more

Project status: Published/In Market

Game Development, Graphics and Media

Intel Technologies
Intel CPU, Other

Links [6]

Overview / Usage

About the Game

Mondrian's back, and he's taking his friends for a spin through the Plastic Reality. In this sequel to the award-winning Mondrian - Abstraction in Beauty, you play as five great 20th Century artists as you uncover the lost masterpieces of the Modernist movement. Mondrian's orbital brickbreaking gameplay returns with all new additions, improvements, and challenges; build your own Art Museum, a hub world for your artistic collection; and create levels to challenge your friends using Steam Workshop and the all new Mondrian Maker level editor. The canvas is waiting, are you ready to explore its mysteries?

Problem Solving

As we steadily enter the era of Web 3.0, an era defined by user creativity, digital collections, and the metaverse, in what ways can developers bridge the gap between play and creation? Mondrian set out to solve this problem, making creation as easy and as fun as play, with the introduction of the Mondrian Maker and Mondrian Studio suites. These tools give players a very low barrier to entry in terms of level AND graphic design, letting them quickly challenge the community, or create print-size images of their procedurally color harmonized works. The tools and Mondrian's roguelite-inspired artistic backend let them create entire collections of hundreds - or even thousands - of variations on a single work in a matter of minutes.

Use Cases

Mondrian is directly integrated with Steam Workshop, giving players a convenient place to share their levels and a thumbnail of their works (with levels made in Mondrian Maker and thumbnails made in Mondrian Studio). The Workshop allows players to instantly subscribe to new creations, which are auto-downloaded from the game's Main Menu, and can be played in any of the game's Quick Play modes. The in-game Museum also previews the possibilities of sharing entire collections of works, and making those works interactive via Mondrian's retro-brickbreaking-inspired gameplay.

The game's tools have been used in other manners as well, such as merchandise on our Redbubble, and even artistic NFT's on OpenSea and Kalamint. We continue to explore new use cases for the tools almost every day, and build them out to become more robust with every update.

Methodology / Approach

Inspiration from the Past

Mondrian - Plastic Reality is, at its core, a brickbreaker, similar to Breakout or Arkanoid, but with orbital gameplay more akin to Tempest or Super Hexagon. With such nostalgic gameplay came the need to build a level editor inspired by nostalgic toolsets. We looked back to lessons taught by games and tools such as Lode Runner: The Legend Returns and Jazz Creation Station for the best approaches toward level editor UX. We steered away from creating a complex modkit that would intimidate new players, and instead went with a gentle and colorful creative environment that would appease seasoned and amateur creators alike.

From its earliest days, the Mondrian series has included a backend AI with impeccable taste in color harmonies. This AI instantly paints levels based on predetermined rulesets about allowed primary and secondary colors, scheme widths, brightness, and saturation. The player does have access to granular painting control in Mondrian Maker should they choose to use it, letting them quickly paint any block in full RGB, but the AI takes care of the rest to create striking imagery on every generation.

Optimization

Following the mantra of "anyone can create," making sure the game can run on the lowest end Core i3's was integral to creating a positive experience for all players, regardless of technology budget. The game has been tested across a wide breadth of machines, from the lowest end business laptops to high end gaming PC's. As a result, it delivers a great time no matter what machine you play it on, or what input device you're using.