Video: Designing a puzzle game around visualizing math functions

Today game designer Mahdi Bahrami published an interesting demo of his current project, Tandis, which is shaping up to be a puzzle game that challenges players to play with mathematical functions to change shapes.

If that name sounds familiar, it's because Bahrami has had multiple games honored in the Independent Games Festival over the past few years. His most recent game, the Islamic art-inspired puzzler Engare, won an IGF Student Showcase award in 2014, and appeared in the popular Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC the same year.

This new project Tandis also made an appearance at GDC's Experimental Gameplay Workshop last week, where Bahrami described it as a game where "you use mathematical functions to create shapes" and solve puzzles.

Now he's released a demo of the prototype to the public, which seems to show a Tandis player doing weird things to 3D shapes with math, making it worth watching for anyone intrigued by the concept of building games around abstract real-world phenomena.