Enigma

Enigma is an open-source puzzle game inspired by Dongleware's Oxyd on the Atari ST and Rock'n'Roll on the Amiga, released under the GNU GPL and ported to Mac OS X. You steer a small black marble around hand-crafted landscapes, hunting matching pairs of Oxyd stones while dodging traps, lasers, and physics puzzles.

Setting and concept

Enigma's premise descends directly from Oxyd: every level is a tile-based maze dotted with coloured Oxyd stones, and the goal is to uncover and match every pair on the board. Around that simple win condition the project layers hidden traps, sliding-block puzzles, switches, lasers, ice and water tiles, and stones that require precise marble physics to manipulate.

Gameplay

The marble is steered with the mouse. The community-built level set runs to roughly 2,500 "landscapes" that may be played in any order, ranging from gentle warm-ups to sprawling logic puzzles that take dozens of attempts. Two-player split-screen levels are included for cooperative or competitive play.

Engine and technical notes

Enigma is written in C++ on top of SDL with Lua scripting for level definitions, which is what makes the landscape catalog so easy to extend. Mac OS X builds ship as a native universal application; the project also targets Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and even handheld systems like the GP2X. Levels and graphics are open content and bundled with the application.

Development and release

Enigma's first public release was in 2002, motivated explicitly by the impending end of commercial Oxyd development. The project is hosted on Savannah (GNU) with an active GitHub mirror at Enigma-Game/Enigma, and continues to receive level packs and platform patches from a small volunteer team long after the original Oxyd line went dormant.