ABOUT THE PROJECT
DESCRIPTION
1 Player Puzzle Game.
Your are Djinn Alwaqt, the Genie of Time.
Walk through an ancient city in less than a few seconds, using only your minions to foil your enemies' traps and puzzles. Reach the magical portal at the end of each level by twisting time itself.
Djinn Awalqt was made in 3 days by a team of 11 people as part of Ludum Dare 47 game jam. with the theme "Stuck in a loop".
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
- Level Design
- Game Design
- Level Art, Lighting & Building
TASKS
I was tasked to design the main rewind mechanic and the level 3. I did an art pass and some level design adjustments based on player feedback on level 1, 2, 3 & 4.
TASKS - Level Design with time as a mechanic - Level 3
In Djinn Alwaqt, the player have to explore I try out path to figure out a correct solution to the puzzle and progress forward within the game.
For the level 3, the player already understand the rewind mechanic and how to use their past selves to solve a basic loop such as having someone else standing on a pressure plate to keep a door open.
Here the challenge is that the player have to use the same character to open two different doors. To help the player understand that, I've setted up a main area in the center of the level, where the player spawns. The two pressure plates that can be activated with the same character are also in the same area and not separated by a door, so the player can understand that both of them are actually accessible right from the start. The doors that are activated by those pressure plate are within visual range so the player can also actually understand which pressure plate opens which door.
Once this has been understood, the player can solve the rest of the puzzle by using the same simple one minion per door to open the two remaining doors.
TASKS - Designing the rewind mechanic
To fit the "Stuck in a Loop" theme of the Ludum Dare 47, we thought about a mechanic that forces the player to play again and again the same actions. While brainstorming, the idea of being helped by our past selves abd using the game over as a mean of forseeing new actions and new paths emerged.
One of the big design challenge was on how to make understand that the time was a ressource of some kind and let the player spend it as they wanted. The solution was to make the time decreasing only when the player moves, and have all the other action (such as moving past selves) following this rule accordingly.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Although there are still a lot of issues, the strongest being a too steep learning curve, I am very proud of this project.
Designing a time mechanic and making sure that the player understand correctly was a real challenge, and it was really great to see players insist on the puzzle and getting that "Ah-ah !" moment each time a solution was foreseen.
