Lewis Wray MA Games Design

 My submission for Friday 25th October is a demonstration of a puzzle game I am calling "Clone Bot". It is a puzzle game in which the player must reach the exit of a level using multiple clones of a character. Many of the puzzles will follow the process of the player completing a task with their first character, then spawning a clone who can then solve the puzzle. There are different ways this process could be played out and the puzzles could be made more complex by giving the player access to more clones.  I started with Unreal Engine's top down project template. This provided me with a basic level containing some obstacles, a character that moves to the location the player clicks, and a camera that follows this character. The first thing I did was remove everything from the level except the floor and the boundary walls, and instead placed a plane for the puzzle to take place on. The material used for the ground in the level is a grid pattern, so I altered the scaling of...

 I have created a few games before using the Unity game engine. However, I have looked into the strengths and drawbacks of Unreal and Unity in order to determine which would be most appropriate to use in my project.  Previously, every game I have made has been 2D. Therefore, Unity has been the clear correct choice. It is possible to create 2D games in Unreal but Unity has many elements that are built specifically for 2D development. A large distinction between the two engines is the simplicity of Unity compared to the complexity of Unreal. Unity is perfect for beginners as it is simple to learn and basic programming skills in less complex languages can be transferred easily. Unreal is more of a challenge because it has many more features, industry standard graphics and a choice between C++ programming (more complex than Unity's C# or Java) and Unreal's own system, Blueprints. Blueprints and quite straightforward and simple enough to understand with the correct guidance, but on...

If we were to look at what makes video games in general fun in the simplest possible sense, a simple answer is the sense of accomplishment. It is something almost all video games contain, from Pac-Man (1980) giving you a score higher than the one you achieved previously, to modern multiplayer games such as Halo (2001-) giving you a victory screen when you beat the opposing team. There are many different ways in which games provide players with a sense of accomplishment. Many genres of games rely on other aspects alongside this, such as enjoyable gameplay loops or a detailed and rewarding storyline. However, puzzle games rely almost entirely on this sense of telling the player they succeeded in something. The entire game is based around approaching problems and finding solutions, then letting the player know they have achieved something once they have found a solution.   One aspect of puzzles that creates a sense of enjoyment for the player is guiding them to what they think is...

 To begin my investigation into the creation of puzzles in video game, I decide to try to replicate an instance of a puzzle from the game The Witness (2016).  The puzzles in this game consist of the player drawing a line from a start point to an end point, while satisfying certain constraints along the way. The way these puzzles are presented to the player is in small panels on walls. The player can select puzzle by approaching its panel and can then try and solve it. The selection of a puzzle is used so the player knows all parameters of the puzzles, everything they need in order to solve it, is contained within the small area they can see in front of them and they don't need to consider anything in the environment that is out of their view.  Each panel has a grid/maze on it that allows to player to draw a line to solve to puzzle. I began my design of a level by creating an empty 2D world in Unity. I then drew a 3 by 3 grid with a selectable node at each intersection, pr...

 I have recently finished playing Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn (2024). It is and adventure game set in a fantasy world in which medieval weaponry meets gods and magic. The gameplay is heavily inspired by the souls-like genre, most resembling the popular Star Wars Jedi series (2019, 2023).  Gameplay The gameplay feels very reminiscent of recent games in the genre. It is similar to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019) in the way the combat has a lot of variety and allows the player to experiment with different strategies in battle. Another aspect that is similar is the traversal. In both games, the movement feels very fluid and the player feels as if they have freedom of movement. Flintlock has a mechanic that lets the player use small powder explosions to affect their movement. They can dodge in the air to get slightly more horizontal distance or cancel their moment by dodging in the other direction. They can also jump again in the air to gain extra height. The physics in the ga...

If puzzles in games can be solved somewhat quickly, it will be a lot of work for the designer for a few minutes of gameplay for the player. One way around this problem is to come up with a way of procedurally generating puzzles. This means writing an algorithm that, given some constraints, can create its own puzzles.  Procedural generation is common in many video games and is especially useful in roguelike games. This process allows designers to design some small 'chunks' of levels, then feed these into an algorithm that creates complete levels from these chunks. An example of this can be seen in Dead Cells (2017), which sees the player progress through areas that are different every time they enter. It would be possible for designers to manually create enough versions of these areas to ensure it is different each time. However, a more efficient method is procedural generation. An algorithm could define that there must be an entrance, an exit, a certain number of enemies, a tre...

Core puzzles A style of puzzle with a simple basis that is easy for the player to understand. As the player progresses through the game, more elements are added to this style while the basic structure remains the same. This allows the player to observe a difficulty curve and feel they are improving and understanding more about how the game works. An interesting concept for these types of games is the possibility of automatic generation of puzzles. If puzzles are all based around a simple concept with a defined solution, it is possible that they could be procedurally generated. The Witness (2016) begins with a basic maze that the player must draw a route through, then gradually adds more constraints for mazes to have to add complexity. Portal (2007) begins with the idea that the player can make holes in walls that teleport them around levels. From there, they use different objects and experiment with physics systems to build puzzles around the portals. Fez (2012) tells the player that t...

Previous related work: A-Level Graphic Design A-Level Computer Science BSc Computer Science Design Skills: Blender Unity Game Engine Adobe Photoshop Adobe Illustrator HTML & CSS Web Design Desired Design Skills: Unreal Maya 2D/3D Animation Interests: Puzzle games such as Portal (2007) and The Witness (2016). The challenge of the game is almost entirely puzzle solving. Even if a game wouldn't necessarily be described as a puzzle game, I enjoy solving the problems they present you with, especially if they allow the player to be creative with a solution. For example, Resident Evil is primarily a survival horror series, but each game involves puzzles in some way, whether it's figuring out which key fits which door or deciding on the most optimal way to organise your inventory. I have been recently been playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023). This game has the best level design in terms of puzzles of any game I have ever played. It is as if each puzzles has not...