Puzzel + Platformer - Fix some broken scaffoldings as a slient new staff
Role : Game/Level Design, Programmer, Art
Tech detail: Unity, C#, Lua
Timeframe : 5 Months, May - Oct 2023
Demo : https://shellciao.itch.io/head-of-delivery
Tech detail: Unity, C#, Lua
Timeframe : 5 Months, May - Oct 2023
Demo : https://shellciao.itch.io/head-of-delivery
Overview
What are the potential of self-made platforms, how would it affect player’s puzzel solving experience? Head of Delivery is a prototype experimented on this topic. The puzzle solving styles are affected by player’s platforming skills while platforms are created by puzzle solutions.
Born out of Ludum Dare 53.
What are the potential of self-made platforms, how would it affect player’s puzzel solving experience? Head of Delivery is a prototype experimented on this topic. The puzzle solving styles are affected by player’s platforming skills while platforms are created by puzzle solutions.
Born out of Ludum Dare 53.
Task Overview
- Created an event-driven system that guides game progress and level switching.
- Designed and implemented coupled economy and ability systems which promote different playing styles.
- Designed all levels with trophies and hidden easter egg events about the game’s background story.
- Developed the tutorial and helper systems to encourage player investment in the puzzle-solving process.
- Created all cutscenes and triggers and dialogue writing.
Design Decision + Learning
System Design
Economy: Paint + Step + Token + Shop
The game has 3 intertwined concepts, paint, step and token:
- player are given paint at the begininng of each level
- each step will consume 1 unit of paint
- each unused paint equates to 2 tokens at payment
- each tile placed equates to 1 token at payment
The tokens are the primary reward in the system and can be used to purchase abilities in the shop.
Player’s decisions on movement and tile placing results in different strategies in achieving the game, thus have the potential of developing player styles in the game. Hidden token bags are up for grabs, they are located at difficult to reach positions and would require player to have unused paint at this level. The exchange machine adds a random factor, players can exchange unused paints for either 1 or 3 tokens with chances. Allows additional decisions in the economy system.
Unused paint carry-over
Pickup hidden tokens
Exchange machine
Ability design - augmenting playing styles
Hammer destroys existing blocks
Jump boost launches player into the sky
Players will enter the Ability Shop after finishing the level to buy new abilities.
The new abilities are designed such that players could uncover new ways of puzzle-solving. Now the players will obtain more strategies when dealing with the same level which will foster diverse gameplay styles.
Hammer
by altering existing terrain the levels will become non-linear, players can traverse between the levels and decide the order by themselves.
Jump Boost
Player can now jump much higher to get over obstacles easily, such that a combination of the jump boosts can bring exciting gameplay experiences.
Different solutions/level trajectory to the same obstacle
Helper system: player tool - Note
During initial playtesting, players showed eager intent to make moves constenetly without imagining the results of the moves and feel anxious once a desired step cannot be made after a few attempts. It was difficult for players to imagine the sequence of steps and remember the steps they made. To encourage the player to not making hasty moves and to imagine, thus learning, the rules and patterns of dice-rolling before making actions. Note-taking abilities benefits puzzle solving and manages the flow of the solution process. By saving in terms of pair of tiles and the steps made inbetween, the game pivots towards segamenting the puzzle solving process into pairs of tiles.
To make sure smooth interaction with the note, the following decisions are implemented:
- continous passive background recording, saves the steps just made when player choose to save
- automatic sorting of records based the step counts.
- limit the number of records with same step count, player will need to replace the existing record to save new one.
- self-adjusting the thumbnail scale of record page by calculating the bounds of steps and convert into scale of the render texture.
Auto-sorting of records based on steps/deleting records
Self-adjusting thumbnail size based on steps count
Replacing existing records with same step count
UX + Tutorial
The slight idiosyncrasy of the concept and the rules of note system demands a thorough tutorial and help from UI. The tutorials are done in forms of small cutscenes with character dialogue and demostrations, all tailored into the narrative of “new employee onboarding”.
In the first iteration, all tutorials happened within the first scene, connecting the opening cutscene. Play-testers reported the cutscene was too long for them to focus on the content. The first instance of player input came in too late in the dialogue, which made reading through the dialogue a chore. Then it became nature to segment the tutorial into smaller chucks with only one thing to teach in each chuck, and separate them with player inputs.
The slight idiosyncrasy of the concept and the rules of note system demands a thorough tutorial and help from UI. The tutorials are done in forms of small cutscenes with character dialogue and demostrations, all tailored into the narrative of “new employee onboarding”.
In the first iteration, all tutorials happened within the first scene, connecting the opening cutscene. Play-testers reported the cutscene was too long for them to focus on the content. The first instance of player input came in too late in the dialogue, which made reading through the dialogue a chore. Then it became nature to segment the tutorial into smaller chucks with only one thing to teach in each chuck, and separate them with player inputs.
Allow player movement after short dialogue
Demostrate the flow of interaction with the system in tutorial
I designed the dice face indication and the step system with intention for them to be intuitive and needless of a tutorial. The step system was not well understanded by the play-tester at first. The unused steps will be carried over to the next level while the new level will give the players some new steps. To resolve that issue, I appended another bottle to indicate the leftover steps and made an animation to indicate the unused step carry-over mechanics.
Step UI animation at the begining of each level change
The leftovers are consumed after the main bucket to further differentiate the two indicators
Learning
- Agile adjusting based on playtesting feedback.
- Difficulty management based on testers’ gameplay videos.
- Tutorial making and flow control.
- Difficult to implement features are not necessarily better than simple and easier features.
- Communication frequency with artist should be determined early in the project stage.
- Incorporate testing early in the development.
Design Doc
TECH Decision + CHALLENGES
Record System
The record system is supported by recordEntry composed of steps, to improve performance, each step is keyed so no two same step can be made.
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Level Change Cutscene Event Management
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The record system is supported by recordEntry composed of steps, to improve performance, each step is keyed so no two same step can be made.
Level Change Cutscene Event Management
Level Design and Editing
The levels are arranged with increasing difficulty curve. Most levels have a specific trick about dice to teach the players and the players can apply the trick in the following levels. But to accomandate all kinds of play styles, all of the levels (except for the first two tutorial levels) have more than one solution. The player can use more steps to pass the level which will leave them with less awarded tokens.
Learning how to make adjacent stamps
Applying the learnt knowledge
The components of a level were separated and implemented into tools for quick level editing.
Each of the segments are controled through quick scripting in editor for fast adjustment and iteration.
- begining position of player
- begining position of head
- level completion trigger (beyond this point player can no longer restart the level and the level is considered passed)
- level triggers (calls change level event)
Each of the segments are controled through quick scripting in editor for fast adjustment and iteration.
Challenges
- The initial design was updating the recorded steps in realtime in the thumbnail section. However this implementation counters its nature as a referencing source. Then to optimize performance, the spawning of icons are done at the time of record page accessing with pooling. The thumbnail is then achived by adding an additional camera looking at the selected record page.
- Cutscene handling includes updating states of game state objects and scene objects. The complexity of involving multiple events requires careful categorization and sorting of objects’ hierarchy.