Brain Bending: Torsion

Oh goodness, I think I need a cup of tea, a quick lie down and someone to tell me everything will be okay. I've just played a gameplay prototype of Torsion, a "space warp gameplay prototype." Like Narbacular Drop and TAG: The Power of Paint before it, Torsion is a simple demo made by a brainy computer engineering student and showcases a simple mechanic in a First-Person puzzler that quietly breaks your mind. There's some footage doing painful things to your sense of spatial reasoning below.

Startling, hey? How about that bit where physics and gravity were being affected by the shifts as well? You can download and play it here, though you'll need the latest PhysX runtime, DirectX runtime and VC++ 2005 CRT as stated in the readme. There are handy links to their download locations in the readme as well. It's actually not all that bad to play, once you get the hang of the shifts in perspectives, floaty movement and the feeling of your brain dribbling out your ears. It is extremely experimental though, so don't go in expecting a fully polished proof of concept.

It's currently in "on and off" development by Tobias Zirr, a student at KIT, graphics programmer and one of those 64k challenge techno-wizards. Intimidatingly, it's running on Breeze, an engine of his own creation. Unfortunately however, Mr Zirr says on his website that:

This is a gameplay prototype that I've been working on for several weeks about one year ago.

Steady on, newshounds: the actual video/prototype was only posted this week. Hopefully Mr Zirr will resume development of his idea some day soon, as it's not often you see something this original.