Lue Fang
Game Designer, Programmer, 3D Art Generalist
The Loop
The Loop
Overall Background
This is a 2-week game design project which delves into one of the most basic form of game - text adventure. This is a puzzle-solving escaping game, facilitated by Quest software made by textadventures.co.uk. The game could be accessed here. The video below is a brief introduction and a general walk through of the game.
General Game Design
Since the design is constrained by the given information on the location(CMU), the verb(Destroy), and the object(Axe), so ultimate game design idea is to integrate them. Influence by several movies, like the Triangle and the Coherence, which discuss the parallel universe and time distortion, this game also has a nontraditional ending compared to other escape room game.
Dependency Chart
The dependency chart is contains all the connections between the objects and operations players needs to do to complete the game. The diamond shapes indicate transformation. The other rectangular shapes indicate interaction. The chart also demonstrates the general follow I used to develop the logic and plot of the game.
Room Design
The following is detailed designing ideas of each room(level). Since the game focuses more on storytelling and interactive puzzle solving, I had the programmer art of room layout to help with my thought process.
Room1: The small and Dusty Room
This is the room where the game starts. Shown below is the layout of the room.
Fun Fact: The dog was originally designed to be hostile. Since I wanted to create a unexpected reaction to immerse the player into the wired environment, however, I made the dog react totally different from its appearance.
Small and Dusty Room
Room2: The Corridor
The Corridor serves as a connection between chemical lab and storage room. Shown below is the layout of the room.
Fun Fact: I was planning to design the game so that player could destroy the door with axe. However, in that way the linear order of the game would be broken, and other interesting design to open the doors would be limited. Thus, I restrained the ability of axe to destroy only wooden objects and designed multiple challenges regarding opening the doors.
Corridor
Room3: The Chemical Lab
The Chemical Lab is designed to hold different puzzles related to chemistry I designed. Shown below is the layout of the room.
Fun Fact: how to produce oxygen was the first chemistry experiment I did back in junior high school It also fits the condition that basement might not have enough oxygen. Thus, I put the challenge of producing oxygen with KMnO4 into the game. This design not only put my unique identity to the game, but also created a decent challenge for entering the basement.
Chemical Lab
Room4: The Storage Room
The storage room is designed to make full use of the required verb: destroy. Shown below is the layout of the room.
Fun Fact: The books hidden inside the wooden boxes were used to indicate the fate of the character in the game. The Great Gatsby and the game shared the same plot that player was given hope but had a tragic ending inevitably.
Storage Room
Room5: The Basement
The basement is located under the chemical lab and contains the teleport machine for escape. Shown below is the layout of the room.
Fun Fact: The number puzzle on the ceiling used to be a mathematical challenge that bothered me for a long time. When I finally solved it, I was amazed by how carefully designed the question is. Thus, I redesigned a version of the puzzle to fit into my game.
Basement
Room6: CMU
The final destination of the game. Shown below is the layout of the room.
Fun Fact: Originally, the game was designed that the teleport machine would send the player back to the small and dusty room and everything would reset, for players was trapped into a infinite time loop, the only way to end the loop is to kill themselves. However, I received feedback from play testers that the ending is too depressing, I finally designed it to have a more open ended ending, which gives the players some space to imagine.
CMU