Hate yourself - Gameplay design
I have looking through several research to find a way to apply the puzzle aspects to my game. Some of the videos that I found really interesting include “What Makes a Good Puzzle?” by Game Maker's Toolkit. I wrote down some of the key points from the video that I found very useful.
The factors that may impact the quality of a puzzle game include:
The mechanics (the rules, the limitation and the goal of the game)
The catch ( the logical contradiction when 2 things seem to contradict each other, for example, you need to stand on a button to open the door and go to the door at the same time)
The revelation (reveal something that is not too obvious but still logical)
The assumption (of the players)
The presentation (how you visually present a puzzle)
The curve
Another video that puzzle game maker can learn from is “How Jonathan Blow Designs a Puzzle” by the same maker. It describe the process Jonathan Blow take to design a puzzle game
He will come up with a mechanic
Through programming and playtesting, he see the rules
He think of the consequences and make adjustments
And finally, I want to talk about "5 TIPS for Designing Better Maps & Levels" by BenderWaffles. Here are some useful info
Take real-life references and put them into map
Plan them out on paper
Aware of what your player will be able to see in any given time, no matter where your player is standing, you want them to be able to see something interesting
Organize randomly
Before talking about the gameplay aspect of the game, I want to talk about the concept that I will use. So as I listed out in my rationale, the theme of my game is going to be about a character trying to run away from herself in her dream. There are 2 objectives that the character needs to achieve (1) not get killed by herself and (2) get out of the dream.
When I think about the setting for the dream world, I want something that reflect the real world (because our dreams reflect our real world ammirite he he?). So I decided to use 3 blocks (how the blocks arrange will be seen later when I introduce the gameplay). Each block is a reflection of very common place: (1) bedroom, (2) class (3) street. To stress on the dreamlike appeal I will also do something that make the setting seems like “real but also not real”: cloudy, blurry, unusual colors)
My next job is to think about a mechanic that the the player can use so that she won’t be killed by herself. Will I create cloud so that the player can use to hide herself from the enemies? Or will I think of ways that the character can use to deceive her enemies? Or should I let the character change her way of seeing the world? The last idea came to my mind when I’m watching the video “How Jonathan Blow Designs a Puzzle” by Game Maker's Toolkit. It striked me due to how similar it is to my therapist’s advice and I decided to go with it.
I tried to think of the way that reflect the idea of “changing the view of the world” from the character POV. That’s when I came up with the idea of “changing the color of the world”. I then associate each room with a color.
Street = green
Bedroom = pink
Class = blue
The gameplay will be better explained through the graphic below. Please view the PDF file attached