Ideas and Level Sketches

At the start of the project we had an idea, make a puzzle adventure game set it a dream-like world, pushing the idea of strange landscapes and environments.

We started developing our idea, defining some roles and creating our pitch.

I am the Level designer, which means creating levels with a gentle exploratory feel to them, and creating puzzles that challenge players without making them throw their controllers at the screen. Then of course a big challenge, making them interesting and unique.

At this point we had an idea about our game but no real clarity. For the pitch I drew up some design ideas and threw together a quick example to screenshot it unity. Which was easy and effective.

This was created from some sketches I made just beforehand, though these sketches where complicated and not too clear.

At this early point we had an idea for levels, character, bosses and an idea of the theme/story of the game. The character would be someone who found themselves exploring, a bit out of their element but able to progress. One boss would be a bird of some kind, the first level would be a canyon, then later a hub world and 3 versions of a castle - past, present and future and finally the story was to be a place where time and space where tearing apart, but we all had confusions and different ideas about how this was going to work, whether it involved sand, objects from different places and strange phenomenon's, and what exactly those would be. One thing we did have an idea of, was the setting for the first level and what kind of puzzles we should have, so I got to work.

I had puzzle ideas already drawn out, but grabbing a canyon, creating puzzles that were natural and designing a level that was gentle, guiding and interesting was not an easy task. I started by looking at pictures of canyons, and thinking about how to translate the ideas I already had.

Once I had decided the type of puzzles I wanted (though they still went through changes and iteration) I started drawing up the plan and layout for the level, this took a few tries but eventually I, with discussion, designed a stage that would introduce the players to different ideas and mechanics and give a feel of exploration and progression.