The Polynomial : Space of the music (game, demo, screenshots, and videos).

The Polynomial : Space of the music.

The Polynomial is a 3D musical 'space shooter' game, with non-shooter mode and built in fractal editor. Visuals are generated mathematically and animate to your music or microphone input; there are 4 music-driven animators and 38 arenas to choose from (12 arenas in free demo). You can create your own arenas using built in editor, and you can save your fractal images at any resolution. There are many parameters you can change for entirely new, original look; the number of combinations is astronomical. The Polynomial comes with 50 minutes of excellent soundtrack created by Alexey Lavrov and T.K. ; you can hear fragments of the game soundtrack in the official trailers.

I recommend that you simply download free demo for Windows | Linux | Mac OS X.

Due to my payment processor going bad, the sales through this site are temporarily disabled. You can buy it on Steam instead. You can get Linux version on Desura

Screenshots:

Long description:

The Polynomial is a 3D spaceflight music game with abstract, mathematically generated scenery and models which are set to the music of your choice. You fly around in a very strange universe, shoot the enemies, meet and protect the friends, collect bonuses, fly through wormholes, and so on, all while rocking out to the music.

You can play the music supplied with the game or build a playlist of your own songs; you can even use microphone as music source. The music animation is highly configurable with multiple visualization types.

If shooting up stuff is not your thing, maybe you'll like using it in editor mode to create unique fractal artwork. Or you can set the difficulty to none and concentrate on all the non-killing action and enjoying the beauty.

The Polynomial features an innovative scoring system. Scoring is based on continuously timed counts of your actions in the past 1, 5, 20, and 60 minutes of your play, as well as on how much you can do in the space of one lifetime without being killed. If you are playing for the score and you screw up early, you can just keep on playing – thanks to the unique continuous scoring. All of the timed counts are running simultaneously and your scores are constantly updated.

There are multiple scoreboards for different types of action, as well as a combined score which rewards you for balanced play. Conversely, if you just like flying around and don't like shooting, you can try top the scoring in just the flowers you have collected or wormholes you passed through – and if you think you are very bad at this game, you can try to get the high score in number of deaths.

Buzz:

GiantBomb quicklook:

There's fractals over here!

Ok Jeff we have to stop this quicklook before I swallow my own tongue!

It's trippy as hell

Oh, God! It's like if I was playing Geometry Wars, and a singularity opened inside of its programming, causing me to fall through my television and into the game. This is one of the most gorgeous games I've ever seen, and that distortion effect is phenomenal. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MY MIND I WANT MORE OF WHATEVER THIS IS OH NO.

Bet the devs were totally tripping balls when they made this.

Giantbomb crew has made me impulse buy another game...

I could easily look at this game all day

RockPaperShotgun, 2010-10-22:

RPS's own Lewie Proctor tipped us off about this. The Polynomial: Space of the Music is a shooter out now on Steam, boasting a demo, a reasonable 5.99 UKP pricetag and the prettiest screenshots in the world.
Quinns: The death effect made me think my graphics card was melting. I need a new PC. But yeah, it feels like a videogame. It feels like what gamers in the 80s might have thought we'd be playing in 2025. And there are enough elements to it, with the Ghosts and the Amplifying Spheres and the Flowers to make it feel nuanced. It feels like future-sport.
Jim: Yeah, it is a sort of 80s dream of the future, precisely because it's an extension of early 3D's abstractness
Quinns: Now we're getting somewhere. Everybody! Play The Polynomial, because it's an 80s dream of the future. There’s a demo out and all.
Jim: And try not to feel queasy when you die. It's just not cricket. (And in the game!)

RockPaperShotgun, 2009-06-23:

"This morning's trippy maths-cleverness comes to us via Indiegames, where they flagged up fractal 3D space shooter in progress, Polynomial. It's a beauty, although somewhat slow paced at the moment."[they seriously need to set difficulty to insane ;)]
User comment:

Lovely. I admire how graduall it ramps up the difficulty. You're just whooshing around, popping hapless amoebas, then at some point, you turn your ship around and stare at a seemingly endless miasma of rainbow-colored things, sending blue strings of death all over the place, and then, between all the mayhem, an autotarget-upgrade, right in front of you, the picking up of which results in an amazing cascade of alien doom, a crescendo of pops accompanied by an orgasm of color, on drugs, while strapped to a rocket, flying into the sun.

Fantastic.

IdealSoftBlog.it

Amanti degli sparatutto psichedelici è ritornato il vostro momento, anche se per ora quello che potremo ammirare sui nostri monitor è solo un'anteprima del fenomenale sparatutto 3D creato da Dmytry Lavrov. A dire il vero il gioco è già in prevendita al prezzo di 15 €. Pagando all'autore questa cifra le dieci arene disponibili nella versione demo diventeranno 28, gli scarsi effetti sonori della versione trial saranno migliori e troverete anche una primitiva componente multiplayer. In pratica, acquistando ora il work in progress, avrete diritto alla versione completa di questo The Polynomial senza ulteriore esborso, quando sarà finito.

Indie Game Pick: Polynomial (Dmytry Lavrov), Gamasutra, 'Best Of Indie Games':

"Polynomial is a 3D arcade shooter that features mathematically generated fractal scenery, with simplistic ship controls and a configurable difficulty setting that allows players to engage enemies in intense dogfights or explore the vast reaches of space at their own leisurely pace. The included editor can be used to generate new fractal sceneries and arenas, although the save option is only accessible for customers who purchased the game."

FumuFumuQ

2日前、久しぶりにDmytry Lavrov（いろいろ面白プログラムを作っている優秀な人）のページを調べたら、The Polynomialという彼の最新のプロジェクトをたまたま見つけました。彼の数学能力を活かしたtrippy shooter（？）です。マニュアルの説明が気に入ってます：Shot red stuff, collect green stuff, avoid getting shot by red stuff（十分分かりやすい！）モーションシックネスにご注意。

IFSという、単純な方程式で複雑で綺麗な3Dパターンを生み出すアルゴリズムを使っているように見えます。形を制御することが難しいですが、適当にパラメーターをいじると出力が大きく変わります。Eye Candyとして価値が高い…彼のブログでそのfractalのエディターのビデオがありますが、中々楽しそうです。

ちなみにTwitterに書いた後すぐ、IndieGameを始め、あちこちにピックアップされて、インターネットの狭さを実感しました…

Krawall gaming network:

Während ihr eine News weiter unten bereits euren Intellektuellen-Status durch Jubelrufe über das mögliche Lars von Trier Spiel bekunden dürft, gibt es jetzt gleich noch eine Chance zu glänzen. Statt wie der ganze restliche Pöbel mit sabbernder Zunge darauf zu warten, in „Call of Duty“ demnächst wieder Terroristen zu exekutieren, dürft ihr euch über Mathematik in ihrer schönsten Form freuen. Als Spiel! Und zwar in Form des Independent-Shooters „Polynomia“. Wie in „Wing Commander“ düst ihr dabei in 3D durchs All…oder…was auch immer es sein soll, verfolgt kleine Pfeile auf eurem Bildschirm bis der Gegner im Visier ist und ballert ihn weg. Der Clou dabei ist, dass all die extrem bunten, fantastischen Weiten durch die ihr gleitet aus wenigen mathematischen Formeln erwachsen. Eine Ausprobierversion sowie eine erste Beta zum kaufen gibt es auf der Homepage zum Spiel.