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As Without So Within

A serene game where exploration leads to minigames and puzzles. Visit natural and surreal landscapes to restore the beauty of nature and the serenity the mind. Solve environmental challenges to advance. Once mind and nature are mended, gain access to meditation vistas.

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About the Game

Healing Nature is healing Yourself.

Meditation is Growth.

Balance is Power.

Core Gameplay

Mend the nature in the outer world with relaxing minigames whose pace and difficulty is determined by the mind balance. 

Gain access to the inner world, a surreal dimension where serene environmental and traditional puzzles unlock new powers to better mend the outer world.

With time, inner and outer world integrate, with actions in one having direct consequences in the other: opening closed paths, making puzzle component accessible, simplifying difficult minigames.

Finally, as one area of nature and mind is healed, gain access to its meditation vista.

Minigames for Healing Nature 

Save the nature through minigames that require observation, rhythm, skill, and focus. Typical examples are:

  • Stopping fungal growth: prevent infestation to spread by attacking it at the right time. 

  • Following the flow of nature: follow a shifting path and chose the right one when forks may lead to more difficult challenges.

  • Rain and Thunders: avoid lightning strikes while gathering raindrops.

  • Crossing Roots: follow the roots to the healthy trees and starve the infesting weeds.

And many more. 

Prepare a strategy for tackling different challenges, as the mind balance will affect different games in different ways, and failing to heal a type of ailment (or even succeeding too much) may make other challenges extremely difficult.

Puzzles for Healing the Inner World

As balance is gained healing nature, healing the inner world becomes possible. Some of the puzzles that may be met in the inner world are:

  • Turning Tiles: changing the face to one tile will rotate others; the puzzle is solved when all the faces are of the same color.

  •  Escape: a cat-and-mouse game where you must think ahead before choosing the direction to escape one or more chasers.

  • Memory: classical memory game, with tiles to be discovered and matched.

  • Oriental Solitaire: Match-and-remove game, where the order of removal determine success of failure.

Cross-World Environmental Challenges

As the game advances, cross-world environmental puzzles are introduced. Healing some type of ailments in one world opens paths to access hidden or blocked areas in the other, or provides objects that are useful to solve more minigames and puzzles.

Meditation Areas - idle game

Healing a biome and the inner world connected to it opens special meditation areas with atmospheric sounds, music, animations and idle games as poetry composition.

Meditation areas are meant to be a background for relaxation and for idling to unwind and connect with the inner self, and find serenity in contemplation and poetry.

The Dimensions of the Mind

The state of the character is represented by five traits. Each trait affects both the outer and inner world gameplay.

  • Openness: Will to explore and to reach out for knowledge.

  • Focus: Ability to see a task to its end.

  • Drive: Will to interact with the others and the outside.

  • Kindness: Will to find common ground and share.

  • Calmness: Resilience to negative emotion.

Balance is power: maintain the ideal balance by choosing the order in which to mend the nature and mind to unlock all your inner strength.

Join us on Discord

Join our Discord community and engage with us during the development process: we want to build a meditative experience together.