GAME DESIGN / LEVEL DESIGN / LEVEL SCRIPTING
This was the third project of my second year of university, where we took the role of entrepreneurs that want to find funding for an interactive digital product. Me and my team decided to make a Story Driven Puzzle game.
Tools: Unreal Engine
Date: February 2021
Development Time: 2 Weeks
Team: Artist: Finn Tran, Tran Nhan and Donislav Todorov Designers : Paul-Bogdan Grigore and Yonah Mercilia Engineer: Bram Reuling
Xel is an adventure puzzle game with rich and complex puzzle elements. It takes its inspiration from highly successful works of similar genres and wishes to combine their heavily diegetic approach to storytelling with engaging gameplay mechanics that complement the immersive style of its genre.
The vents lift the player while making a very industrial noise, this way it accentuates the mystery behind the temple on the island.
In terms of how the mechanic works, it's just a higher auto jump when the player steps on the vent.
The vent was added because without it, there wouldn't have been any verticality.
The boxes and the levers provide the first challenge since the player needs to move the boxes on the pressure plates and needs to activate the levers in order to progress through the game.
These objects need to be linked to the other "dimension" thus moving one in the first dimension needs to appear in the same spot in the second dimension.
The laser system is comprised of three components: an emitter, a reflector, and a receiver box.
The emitter and the receiver box are static while the player needs to move the reflector box to complete the circuit.
We chose to add a laser system because the box and the levers didn't provide enough options for the other designers to make the levels fun.
The Dimension switch swaps the entire world around you, providing other paths, opening new doors, or even showing things that weren't there before.
Behind it, the player just gets teleported 200 000 units away, where an exact copy of the level was built by deleting or moving parts of the original level containing both worlds.
This mechanic is very important since it provides a 4th dimension to the game, thus giving even more options in terms of puzzle/level design.
In this project, I mostly focused on the main layout of the island and temple. I always liked the idea of showing players some objects and then later adding functionality to those objects, this way giving the player the impression that the answer was there from the beginning. I'm doing the same in Xel with the outside small buildings which are closed at the beginning. The buildings pack a small puzzle in them which unlocks the next building. The first small building is opened when the player enters the big gate room, which is the final one, in the big temple.
The island uses some gravel paths to guide the player towards the entrances of all buildings.
The main focus (the temple) is on slightly higher terrain, this emphasizing the magnificence of the temple.
This first room was very important since it showcased the dimension switching mechanic by some auto switches showing the users that some objects might be available only in one dimension.
This small building features a small maze, and in it, there is a lever that opens the door at the end of the maze.
The maze itself isn't that complicated, but to make the player's life, even more, easier I've added the solution of the maze on the ceiling of the maze.