Project Overview
This simple puzzle game was made for GMTK Game Jam 2022. Being to sole developer, I handled game design, puzzle design, and the engineering.
This was the first game jam I fully participated in and submitted a game. I worked with a team of three other people: one artist, one friend who is learning music production, and another friend that helped with sound effects.
Prototyping
One important part of game jams is prototyping. You have to be able to efficiently create prototypes of your ideas in order to discover what works and what doesn't.
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For this project, I made sure to prototype the core mechanic before committing to a game idea. I used an elegant solution to attach the die to a pivot point and simply rotate the pivot point to roll the die. I was able to prototype the basic movement fairly quick which was perfect as I was under a strict time frame.
Planning ahead
A habit of mine that I was able to practice and put to use is designing systems with the future in mind. I always try to avoid simply solving the problem at hand. Instead, I try to solve the problem in a way that will benefit in more ways than one.
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When creating basic player movement, I made sure to design it in a way that would allow for multiple dice and more interesting puzzles later on. Due to this, when I tested multiple dice for the first time, it worked perfectly with no additional work.
Designer Friendly Systems
Another thing I was able to practice during this project was designing systems that are easily used inside the editor. When I created the goal tiles for the game, I wanted to make sure that the desired number can be easily changed in the inspector window.
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This simple system saves a lot of time for designers using the mechanic. Instead of having 6 different tiles each with their own number and code logic, I built the system shown here that takes in a number and handles everything else for you. Design choices like this is a huge reason why I had enough time to make 25 levels before the deadline.
Releasing on itch.io
This is my first game that has gotten fully released to the public. Although it is free and I didn't spend much time on it, it was a new experience uploading a game of mine anywhere except for version control. Having people that I do not know play my game and give me feedback has been super rewarding and now I have an idea of what the process entails.
Puzzle Design
I've always loved puzzle games and their ability to let the player teach themselves about the game. The second day of the project was used to churn out 25 levels. While these puzzles went through very little iteration due to the time constraint, I was still able to accomplish my goals with them and I had a blast designing them.
In order to teach the players simple tricks without explicitly telling them, I had to first introduce the concept in the most barebones form. Then after slowing ramping up the difficulty, the player would begin to make connections such as how to rotate the dice effectively and how to work backwards from the solution. These strategies start to be prevalent in the later levels where it is near impossible for players to randomly move the dice until they win.
The biggest issue I faced with designing puzzles was the early levels. The flaw in the game concept was that players could just move around randomly until they win without learning what the level was trying to teach. I tried to combat that by giving the player multiple chances to learn before being faced with the puzzles that require the solution. Unfortunately, the game's concept was too easy to stumble through, so I had to give the player a few tips to prevent frustration on the later levels.
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