InFlux Redux is a marble puzzler remaster 11 years in the making

Physics puzzle game InFlux was first released 11 years ago, and since then, it's been remastered three separate times. It's just that not one of those remasters has ever been released.

That's about to change with InFlux Redux, which developer Joe Wintergreen calls "a remaster of a remaster of a remaster." It takes InFlux from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 5 and adds all-new assets, lighting, and physics code—a complete overhaul of original that released in 2013.

InFlux, the work of Wintergreen's studio Impromptu Games—which is often just him—is a marble-rolling puzzle game that manages to be engaging, relaxing, and oddly fascinating. Players take on the role (or roll) of a strange sphere that falls from space onto a beautiful island. Traversing the landscape takes you to buildings of glass and metal, and when you enter them, they expand to become large, involved physics puzzles. 

Many of those puzzles have you manipulating other spheres by changing the orientation and the gravity of the building, moving them around mazes and over obstacles to specific goals. Wintergreen told the Epic Games Store in an email interview that rather than other video games, his inspiration came from physical ball bearing puzzles that you tilt to roll the ball to a goal. That's what a lot of InFlux's puzzles feel like—but much prettier.

Despite the inherent weirdness of playing as what appears to be a chunk of alien technology as it rolls around a picturesque island and ventures into strange buildings that are bigger on the inside than the outside, those sci-fi-sounding elements aren't really the focus of InFlux. Instead, it's an experience of figuring out puzzles and exploring a world that is, overall, pretty soothing and easygoing. The vibe is "chill more than challenging," Wintergreen said.

InFlux Redux might be even more chill and soothing than the original, thanks to its enhanced visuals and other improvements. But making all those improvements turned out to be far from simple. Wintergreen joked that the push to remake InFlux began with "a classic case of 'We do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy.' 

"I just thought it would be a nice, straightforward thing to do to keep InFlux playable and supportable into the future, and I wasn't wrong, but I didn't consider how long it would take me to do it while also working," he said.

It would end up taking years, largely because InFlux Redux was a project that he worked on between other paid development jobs—jobs that InFlux helped make possible in the first place. Wintergreen said he learned a lot from working on the game, and its success, while maybe not wild, was still significant.

"When we started making it, I was 20 with no money, on the dole, barely making rent, coming from Source engine modding with no idea how Unreal worked, and knowing that I was resource-poor and bad at programming dictated a lot about InFlux," Wintergreen said. "It was a physics marble game because I didn't know how to do good player movement, and it was a puzzle game because you can make puzzles in a level editor with no code. It sold enough that I didn't have to be on benefits anymore, and it was received well enough that I can still look at fan mail about it to cheer myself up. It took three years to make, and I learned a huge amount. Redux took a lot longer, but only because, largely thanks to InFlux, I'm hireable now, and only ever worked on it when I felt like it. The remake was honestly a lot of fun to do."

The improvements are also substantial. InFlux was made using Unreal Engine 3, and to bring it into Unreal Engine 4—his original plan—there was no way to transfer the assets or code to the new engine. That meant rewriting all of that code, Wintergreen said, while all the assets were manually remastered, at least to some degree.

And while he got close to releasing InFlux Redux a few times along the way, the longer the remaster took, the more he felt like he needed to remaster it more.

"Initially, I had planned to do a relatively straightforward remaster where the game would look, feel, and perform a lot better just by being in [Unreal Engine 4], but the art itself would be the same," Wintergreen said. "Since I was only ever working on Redux in snatches of spare time and had to rewrite and redo everything, this took a couple years.

"I had that version of the game ready to ship with a trailer and everything, but got distracted, and coming back a year later, thought, 'This isn't remastered enough,'" he continued. "I spent another couple years remastering it better with nicer shaders, a more detailed world, etc. and had that ready to go, but got distracted again.” When he returned to the project once more, it still wasn’t quite there yet, he thought, so he “reworked most of the assets with higher polycounts, re-lit everything, added new photogrammetry-based assets, and had something really nice-looking, and got distracted.” 

“By the time I came back to it again,” he said, “[Unreal Engine 5] was solid, so I reworked things again to take advantage of Nanite, Lumen, Virtual Shadow Maps, and other new tech. So it's a remaster of a remaster of a remaster at this point."

Eleven years of advances in gaming technology are noticeable in InFlux Redux, though. The game is full of impressive vistas and gorgeous landscapes, ranging from a beach at sunset to caves filled with bioluminescent lichen and tunnels that carry you past huge glass walls that offer a view of the ocean floor. Traveling across the island that serves as the game's setting is relaxing thanks to the beauty of the locations, but their realism also gives InFlux Redux an undercurrent of strange wonder—a desire to explore further and try to understand what's in this world.

While elements like the visuals and physics are reworked and improved, for the most part, the content is the same between InFlux and InFlux Redux. There are some new elements in the remake, including collectibles players can discover that unlock concept art, more traversal puzzles between the main puzzle rooms, some streamlined level designs, and a lot of quality-of-life improvements. But Wintergreen said he wasn't willing to change too much. When it comes to making puzzles that will work correctly for players, even a small adjustment can require a lot of testing and iteration.

There was also another consideration, though: Wintergreen was concerned that by making certain changes, he might accidentally bungle what worked so well with the original.

"Even though it's been 11 years, I don't think I really have the distance from InFlux to properly assess what's good about it—the people who love it often love it for reasons I don't expect," he said. "This puts me in a little bit of a weird position—I could easily change the wrong stuff if I get opinionated about it, so there were times when I stopped myself from making a change."

Wintergreen said that dedicated group of fans was a big reason for making InFlux Redux in the first place—and for sticking with it over the years that it took to work on it between other projects.

"What kept me committed to it was the fans, who are not many, but are lovely and earnest, and also the realization that a lot of folks played this when they were kids and would be excited to see it again," he said. "It's surreal to have an adult tell you that they loved your game when they were 9, but it's a big motivator too. Kids enjoy games on a better, less critical level than adults can; I really like knowing InFlux was that special thing for somebody."

Look for InFlux Redux on the Epic Games Store, as Wintergreen said, "some time soon."