Unity Game Experiment

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, producing 9 nodes in total. The player starts at the left side of the screen, so clicking on the left-centre node draws a line from the start on the left to the clicked node, beginning their traversal through the maze. I used an array to store every node that has been selected, including the start, and also a line renderer that sequentially draws lines from node to node. The player can click any adjacent node to continue their traversal. If the player reaches the end node, they are congratulated and the game closes, signalling they have completed the puzzle.

This experimentation with game development has been useful to me because it had been a while before I had made a game so benefitted from refreshing myself on key aspects. I intend to complete further projects in Unreal, but I thought it was imperative that I remember everything I had learned about game design concept in a familiar environment before trying to learn new software.

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Semester 2 Submission

Project Outline This project is an exploration into player feedback and player reward in game mechanics. I have explored this by creating mechanics in Unreal Engine, imagining how they might be used in a game, and how a player might feel when using them. This exploration progressed into player reward in puzzle scenarios, which links into my current area of research. I looked into how visuals can create a language that the player will learn to understand while playing the game, and will guide them through problem solving in the game. Project Context My semester 1 project was a core puzzle game, meaning the game was centred on a central puzzle mechanic and expanded from that point. I wanted to explore a mechanic that was more of a peripheral puzzle that exists as side quests to the main gameplay. Many popular game series have main gameplay mechanics with puzzles along the way, such as Batman Arkham, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider. As these types of games are extremely popular and (a...

Design Inspiration Semester 2

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Semester 2 Project Progress

13th January 2025 To begin this project, I am experimenting with creating different game mechanics. This is to build up a repertoire of skills in Unreal Engine and also see if any mechanics seem as if they can be adapted or incorporated into a game. I began by using free assets to make a character that can run around and execute an attack pattern. This was just to experiment with the assets and create a character that I could test other mechanics with. The first mechanic I created was one that lets the player grab an object and pull it toward them. When within a defined range, the player's reticle changes shape to indicate to them the object they're looking at can be grabbed. Grabbing it moves the object on an arcing trajectory toward the player. This could be used to grab a weapon to use, to bring an enemy closer to be attacked, etc. 14th January 2025 I added functionality for the player to hold an object and attack with it. When an object is pulled toward the player and reach...

Lewis Wray MA Games Design

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