Meet the lowly carbon atom and his friends. Although they
don't know it, yet, they have so much potential. So many
ways to interact. They would love to be able to retire to
the Land of Greater Entropy where they could relax for
awhile. But to get there, they need to solve some puzzles.
This
is a puzzle-based game in which you build molecules
out of the basic elements in order to use the properties of
the compounds thusly constructed to solve the puzzles at
hand and usher the heroic elements to the puzzle exit.
The game has a nanoscopic and macroscopic play zoom
level. Molecules are built using elements found in the
particular puzzle level in the nanoscopic zoom level, and
then the products created are manipulated in the larger
world at the macroscopic level. If the right conditions are
present the molecules can be disassembled and
recombined in new ways to solve another subset of a
puzzle; useful if there is a shortage of atoms available for
use on the page.
Along the way, the carbons meet up with other basic
elements, and combine to form molecules with new
properties. You might combine two hydrogen and one
oxygen for water, which you might then fill a tub basin
with. Or perhaps you boil it by creating a flammable
chemical, perhaps octane. Explosive Nitrogen compounds
are required in some levels to knock down walls and open
up new paths. The background environments of each
puzzle are shown, including temperature and humidity
levels, exposure to air, etc.
As the game progresses, you discover and utilize water,
ice, combustion, steam, salt, steel, rust, hydrochloric
acid, diamond, carbon nanotubes, electrical conductivity,
superconductivity, unstable compounds, and a host of
other possibilities. To speed up gameplay, compounds
already discovered in previous levels, if the right elements
are present, don't have to be reconstructed, but become
available in your toolbox right away.