Puzzles! That's pretty much the description for this post.
As I said in a previous post, we had a lot of puzzle ideas, some of which we had refined and worked down to what was practical and manageable. I then thought about what my favourite puzzle aspects were from the list, and what ideas had been spinning around my head the most.
I then grabbed an A3 piece of paper and sketched out an idea for a chain of puzzles, this was a way to get everything down as quickly as I could, and literally experiment with everything. I threw in a puzzle where the player pushes blocks, a climbable part the you have to unlock, objects that fall to create a Rube Goldberg effect, which then form a ramp leading to another section, a platform that moves as you do and a teleporter where you need to figure out which takes you forward. Then walk around a room that turns upside down, going back into the room you where just in, but now upside down.
Each of these was sketched out to flow together, one puzzle needing to be completed to move on to the next. I designed these to be as complicated as possible at this stage, this ended up meaning that the way the puzzles were pieced together was complex, but that each puzzle alone was simple.
To get a feel of this I decided to create a rough working version of the scene. Some of this did not take too long, due to scripts and scenes that I had created earlier in the project, however other parts, such as moving blocks around, walls that slide and close up and a platform that moves relative to your position took some more thought.
The gap that closes itself I got working well without too much effort.
The blocks took some editing to get them right, I had to surround the puzzle with cuboids to stop the blocks going where they weren't suppose to and platforms to make them easier to push. I also turned up the drag to infinite to stop them the blocks sliding. The puzzle works and for the most part is contained, though a this stage they can get temporarily stuck in the outside parts of the platform.
The platform that moves in relation to you was initially jumping from point to point quite roughly, this was done in quite a messy way, however I have since created a much smoother and cleaner version.
This was an interesting test area, there wasn't too much about it I didn't like, so for the moment I felt everything as is, though of course some parts I liked more than others.
This isn't all I created though, since the start of the project I have wanted to create a puzzle with a rotating room or corridor in some way, so I put together a puzzle where different shapes and paths needed to be rotated, 4 shapes per section and 4 sections long. The player would need to rotate each section in order to create the path across. This again was a test, so it was as complicated as I could make it without it getting out of hand. I am very pleased with the result of this puzzle and am hoping to create similar puzzles withing the game. In the screens below, the path across is the path at the top of the top-down view.
After thinking about what puzzles I had made so far and what I would take forward, I decided to sketch out another potential test stage (the upside down part of the room) and this would use the idea of platforms moving around you as you move, giving the player a puzzle where they have to figure out how to get across the room. I have not implemented this yet but I am very exited to see how it is going to work.
I think there are some things I could have done better here, and overall I could have designed better puzzles, the brain fog I felt was hindering me. Though at the same time I am really happy with what I came out with and how we can use this in the part of the game to come, as implementing it in a real and fun way that people are actually going to experience is one massive part of the challenge where designs can really shine.
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