Zoom Escape

You find yourself locked in a room with seemingly very little to do. To escape, you must explore realms that are invisible at full scale.

Use your mouse wheel (or pinch gestures) to zoom into the picture. Click to interact with objects within the room.

This game can get fairly difficult at times, so don't worry if you get stuck, we're here to help you out!

Some general gameplay notes to avoid unnecessary frustration:

• If a room has multiple "exits", you will zoom towards the one closest to your mouse pointer. The points where these ways fork isn't always quite obvious, so you might have to zoom out a bit before going the other way if you're on the wrong track
• Pixel perfect collisions are cool, but unfortunately, it makes some of the hitboxes a little unforgiving. If something doesn't seem to react, you might want to give it a second go. Generally, your mouse pointer indicates if something is interactable.
• Look closely at everything. Some of the things you need are hidden pretty well.
• All of the rooms are loaded dynamically, and while it ran pretty smoothly during testing, GMTK tends to challenge the itch.io servers, so there might be some hiccups here and there.

Walkthrough

How do I even start?

Obviously by petting the cat! She seems a bit hungry though. Other than that, you'll need some kind of tool to remove the woodboards in front of the window. There doesn't seem to be one inside the room, but maybe you can borrow one from your friend, the mouse? Zoom into the mousehole and find a crowbar lying on the floor. Collect it and zoom back out. Use it to remove the woodboards. Afterwards, you can zoom to the moon!

Exploring the moon:

There's a tree on the moon (which you can ignore for now) as well as a small settlement. Note the markings on the door. Looks like some sort of code? The flag next to the settlement would make for a great tissue, wouldn't it! And while you're already there, you might as well collect the bucket from the well by pulling the rope.

Histology course:

The mouse needs to get rid of the mucus, so go ahead and give it a tissue. Afterwards, enter the mouse's nose (what a perfectly normal sentence to write). There are three items hidden inside the mouse's nose: Matches (mucosa level), a worm (cell level) and a fishing line (dna level). Also, take note of the mouse's genetic code. It might come in handy later.

Hello darkness, my old friend:

Let's go back to the moon, and this time, we'll take a closer look at the tree. The way into the tree's knothole is blocked by darkness. Maybe lighting a fire can help! You should now have a pile of wood and matches in your inventory. Use them in the correct order to light up your way.

Down the knothole:

Zoom into the cave paintings and note the number written on the wall, it might come in handy later. When you're fully zoomed in, you'll find yourself inside a submarine. The binoculars are blocked, but if you enter the DNA sequence found in the mouse's nose (CATTAG), you can unlock it.

Red sky at night (or is it morning?)

Through the binoculars, you see a boat that you can zoom towards. A fishing rod is there, but in order to catch a fish, it will have to be equipped with a fishing line and some bait (combine the two items in your inventory). Also, while the ocean is so close, let's collect some water in the handy bucket you've brought along.

Give a cat a fish ...

Now that you have a fish, you can zoom all the way back to the lobby. Give the cat her well-deserved dinner and as a way of saying thank you, she reveals the beautiful painting behind her. The girl in the painting looks like she knows something. Maybe you can ask her to give you a hint?

Gardening for beginners:

There's a flower pot next to the tree on the moon, but there doesn't seem to be anything in it yet. As we all know, in order to grow a flower, you first need a seed. You might have already zoomed by a couple of times, so in case you haven't collected it yet, the seed pretends to be a star in the night sky. Once the seed is in place, all you need is a little bit of water. The flower opens up and reveals the final clue you need.

Is this really the end?

Now that you have all three clues, you can decipher the code on the settlement's door: painting -> cave -> flower gives 738 as the final code. Could you have entered it right away? Sure! But that wouldn't have been as fun, would it? Now enjoy the final surprise hiding inside the settlement.

Some Background Info:

This game was made for the 2024 GMTK game jam with the theme "Built to scale". I've been thinking about making a game like this since I saw an infinite zoom art video at the beginning of this year. When the theme was announced, it seemed like the perfect time to finally tackle it. Still a little rough around the edges, but we're pretty happy with how it turned out. We hope you enjoy it as well!

Credits:

Made by my girlfriend (a whole lot of art this time oh my gosh so much art! Also, puzzle design, music and sound effects) and me (who seems to get worse at coding with every year, also puzzle design and some additional artwork).

Additional sound effects found on zapsplat.com. Font is DM Serif, additional artwork taken from Johannes Vermeer and some random person from like 10.000 years ago isn't the world amazing.

Inspired by Jesse Martin's artworks, Powers of 10 and Rusty Lake games.