Linking each of the islands or 'nodes' together in the Brainworth game world are a series of vines. These each indicate which islands are connected in some way, with vines above depend on you having completed vines below.

Getting these vines right, however, was tricky. After looking at other layouts for educational learning, we found that it was too easy for your eyes to jump from one linkage to another, so you could easily try and follow one linkage and end up on completely the wrong node.

This is a problem inherent in many a graph-based layout, but one we felt we could tackle with some well thought-out algorithmic art.

Thus, Gonz, one of Brainworth's artists, creates each vine in short segments of waves. The wiggliness of the waves helps each vine be more distinct than a straight line, and subtle variations are used to change the 'shape' of the waves in each segment in a procedural manner to ensure that even if two vines are pointed in almost identical directions, they'll never appear to be wiggling along in exactly the same way and you can easily trace one around corners and other overlapping vines without losing track.

Our art is then handed over to Kenni, who adds a purpose-built script which layers each of the vines with some light texturing. By applying these also via a script and not hand-crafting them, we again ensure the most subtle of similarities to keep the eye able to focus on the vine the brain wants to be focusing on, and not drifting off.

Our game world is designed to light up and flourish when you complete tasks. The vines are no exception, so in order to keep them in harmony with the game world, we have them mimic (in their own special way) the growth from brown to green to blue you can already see on our islands.

Finally, for that extra spice of reality, we have a consistent light source from the upper corner of the screen, and run some of Kenni's filters to make sure that each segment, no matter what shape and what orientation, appears lit from the correct angle.

And there you have it: our sun-ripened, completely individualised and uniquely shaped vines can safely crisscross our entire game world with as many or as few as necessary without becoming so entangled in themselves that they become illegible or impossible to follow.