Replicube: A puzzle game about writing code to create shapes

xypage · 2025-05-14T04:15:56 1747196156

Went to check it out, it has a demo so it's worth giving it a shot, but then I went to look at what else this developer has published just to find it's the guy behind the original jelly car games?? Which they have a sequel to on their steam page and the music instantly sent me back. This became a huge nostalgia trip on accident, thanks for sharing!

wingerlang · 2025-05-14T11:02:58 1747220578

He is quite active on YouTube, sharing progress and behind-the-scenes of his games.

fcoury · 2025-05-14T16:27:36 1747240056

To save everyone a click, this is the video where he talks about this game:

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

mcphage · 2025-05-14T15:04:49 1747235089

The new Jelly Car game (Jelly Car Worlds) is a ton of fun.

mjevans · 2025-05-14T05:58:58 1747202338

The description reminds me of 'that turtle program' I encountered as a child...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)

Hopefully this program also helps teach children new ways of thinking. As a suggestion, any sort of 'building blocks' graphical script language that doesn't need words?

kej · 2025-05-14T08:34:33 1747211673

As an aside, Python includes a `turtle` module that mimics the drawing experience of Logo. It's a fun way to introduce kids to some programming ideas.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html

junon · 2025-05-14T09:00:31 1747213231

I kind of recall seeing turtle in a number of places to refer to draw cursors. Kind of funny how much the term stuck, I think due entirely to Logo.

giancarlostoro · 2025-05-14T14:55:24 1747234524

I was going to mention the same thing. Turtle is fantastic.

noduerme · 2025-05-14T10:40:58 1747219258

Yeah, you must be my age. I was kinda blessed to go to a school that had a couple Apple IIes and let the kids take turns using Logo to draw shapes with the turtle, when I was 8 years old or so. I'd written some BASIC before on my mom's IBM-PC (stupid "Hello, what's your name?:" GOTO 100 kind of stuff), but Logo was a new way of thinking about the screen for me. Probably that and the early Rand/Robyn games (the Manhole, Cosmic Osmo) got me into coding. Soon after, my school bought some Mac SEs and I spent the rest of my elementary school screwing around with HyperCard after school, trying to make an RPG.

If there's one thing I'd love to suggest to parents, it's this: Give your kid an obsolete platform with nothing to do on it except make stuff and figure out how it works. It's just as entertaining, but diametrically opposite in terms of educational quality from giving them pre-made apps to play with.

(Full disclosure: My dad wouldn't even allow D&D into the house because it was someone else's game. If we wanted RPGs, we had to design our own on paper.)

Yoric · 2025-05-14T09:24:47 1747214687

Snap! https://snap.berkeley.edu/

Also, I heartily recommend the demoes that the author is giving regularly at FOSDEM. They're really fun to watch :)

Charon77 · 2025-05-14T06:10:17 1747203017

This is still being taught at schools in my country even now

sitkack · 2025-05-14T17:35:47 1747244147

Lucky kids, as much as Scratch has replaced Logo, Logo fosters deeper thinking.

nayuki · 2025-05-14T16:50:55 1747241455

The 2D version of this coding game would be tixy: https://tixy.land/ , https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=tixy.land , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43942881 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24974534

einsteinx2 · 2025-05-14T19:09:34 1747249774

I don’t usually like programming games but this looks genuinely interesting. As I saw others mentioned the similarity to the thinking required for using OpenSCAD or writing shaders makes this extra interesting for me because I suck at both of those things.

keyle · 2025-05-14T05:53:01 1747201981

That's nice because it's a programming game, but it doesn't send you in the deep-end. Whatever you do appears on the screen pretty much instantly, so you get that constant feedback loop, it's like a 3D voxel REPL.

Many programming games got complex real quick and frankly annoying. I like this model, it's simple, if you let it through, it's a block, return a number for a colour.

KeplerBoy · 2025-05-14T06:46:28 1747205188

It's a lot like shader programming. I guess one could argue it is shader programming.

keyle · 2025-05-14T06:51:40 1747205500

Good point I didn't see it that way, but that's a perfect analogy.

lifthrasiir · 2025-05-14T06:12:21 1747203141

And yet you can make it as deep as you like, thanks to the presence of leaderboard. In fact, some code golfers including me quickly jumped into the wagon ;-)

keyle · 2025-05-14T06:52:06 1747205526

Add a 4th dimension, time, woo!

bstsb · 2025-05-14T07:03:17 1747206197

i initially found this game through the developer's tiktok account - they've got some great marketing over there.

ended up getting the demo and i'll probably be buying the full game

KeplerBoy · 2025-05-14T07:27:56 1747207676

he got me through twitter. the man knows his marketing.

petercooper · 2025-05-14T11:30:05 1747222205

I discovered it when someone made a quick slapdash Web-based clone and was getting a lot of hate on X. Sometimes imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery..

Charon77 · 2025-05-14T11:56:27 1747223787

Tried the demo. Very good baby's first step to shaders

snarf21 · 2025-05-14T13:16:10 1747228570

I don't know much about shaders but this reminds me (in concept at least) of using OpenSCAD to use code to generate models for 3D printing. One cool puzzle to solve doing so is using different shapes to add or cut material from the existing model.

jzacharia · 2025-05-14T07:55:59 1747209359

Saw this on X - great game, picked it up and have already sunk a few hours into it.

jaaamesey · 2025-05-14T05:35:17 1747200917

Literally my favourite game of this year, thanks so much for making this!

kaan_keskin · 2025-05-14T09:41:10 1747215670

i already played this 2 hours. really liked it

skeptrune · 2025-05-14T06:16:43 1747203403

I am excited to see coding become more and more of a creative medium as AI frees up from the monotony of crafting business logic slop.

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