GAME DESIGNER - Technical & Level Designer
Temple of Recall
Role(s)
Level Design | Game Design | Technical Design
Collaborators
12 People
Summary
A group-based game project with the intended goal of creating a vertical slice for our 3rd game project course at FutureGames. The prompt given to us was "Once upon a time". Based off of this prompt, the team created a puzzle-adventure game revolving around the idea of rewinding objects.
The player character has found themselves in a temple lost in time, and using their ability to rewind affected objects, proceeds to make their way through the temple, completing challenges with the hope of escaping the temple and returning to whence they belong.
My area of responsibility within the project was the implementation of the first passes of the gameplay mechanics and level events, some of the gameplay and puzzle design, as well as the level design.
YEAR & LENGTH
2024, 1.5 Months
GENRE
Puzzle-Adventure, Time-Based mechanic
Engine
Unreal 5.3
Link
Trailer
Inspiration & Idea
For our Game Project 3, we were given 3 different themes to work with: "It's dangerous to go alone", "With a twist" , and "Once upon a time". Our group chose the "Once upon a time" theme after discussing some ideas
Our initial idea was to have the player create alternate timeline versions of themselves that would then do the actions they took previously, while the actual player character could then do other things within the level. However, given the amount of time available to us and the uncertainty of whether or not we could viably achieve the intended mechanic within it, we then modified the idea into rewinding objects the player could interact with.
We ended up looking at games that had to do with time rewinding, like "Prince of Persia" and others like it, basing the initial rewind of objects on that, and from there started moving forward.
Level Design
Seeing as the game takes place in a temple, I had initially looked into different types of temples to try and get a better idea of what the layout could be. Some of the ones I found of a relatively similar style we were aiming for artistically were mostly box-y, with open spaces like gardens flanking passageways between rooms. Some of them also had grand entrances and were quite large. I wanted the player to have a feeling of awe when starting, so we went with a larger entrance way to try and illicit that reaction.
We ended up going for a near fully enclosed space as we didn't have the time to fully populate a more open space, though we brought the outside in by having the temple have overgrowth inside of it in order to get the feeling of the place having been aged, and allowed the player some glimpse of outside through the roof of the central Hourglass area.
In order to help players get adjusted to the main mechanic of rewinding objects and having to work to solve the challenges/puzzles backwards, I designed and placed the challenges in an incremental order, starting with introducing whatever the new object to rewind was, then introducing the new mechanic coupled with rewinding, and then a tougher challenge that would either have multiple rewinding objects or a combination of rewinding and not rewinding.
Central Area
Because the player character is stuck in a time loop I made it so that when they finished a level they would start back at the entrance area of the game, before having to make their way to the central hourglass area that would serve as a hub area in a larger game or scenario.
However, each time they go through it, there are minor alterations made to it, along with a new path being open for them to take to the next set of puzzles/challenges. The room was made to initially have 3 paths, though the third set of challenges had to be cut due to time constraints.
Initially, the room was going to have a tree that would grow leaves as the player progressed through the game, but in the end we decided to change it to an hourglass as we couldn't quite find a tree that we felt fit, and modelling one from scratch was going to be quite time consuming. Overall considering the theme and mechanics of our game, the hourglass fit well within the levels.
It's here as well that you can peer a bit into the outside world above, seeing a discoloured sky, as if the entire world is frozen in time.
Technical Design
For my part with regards to the technical design, I mostly worked it in the beginning, before then pivoting into more level/level event based design, making small things to further the experience for the level.
I was responsible for the first iteration of the Time Rewinding mechanic, as well as the pushing of the block and turning the sundial + getting the light shining to activate "light plates", so that we could start trying to come up with puzzles surrounding these mechanics.
For the time rewinding, the first version was based on constantly keeping track of an object's transform, and then when 10 seconds of transform points had been recorded, deleting the oldest points to make room for the newer points, allowing you to rewind all objects that had that code at any time.
The next iteration was to make it so that objects only kept track of their transform points after a button was pressed, and would then keep up to 10 seconds worth of changes. This was done with a true or false checking whether or not it should be recording.
At that point, it was mostly left to the programmers to continue working on and refining it, adding in the functionality of it only effecting certain objects and such with my continued input during the process.
After making the prototypes that were used for testing purposes, I kept in contact with the programmers to help and provide feedback on iterations of the mechanics, helping with trouble shooting issues they faced. I also helped implement code that they had created on occasion as well and worked on trouble shooting issues with the animations in the game.
I also worked on the implementation of level events, having made all the non-player character camera movements, as well as the fractured doors and pillars that recombine into their original state when the player gets close, either blocking player paths or allowing them to move forward.
Final Thoughts
The project was an interesting but tough one, which came with a lot of learning experiences. Working with a unique mechanic like the one we had was difficult but enlightening and fun. It's definitely a system that would benefit from more built around it however, as the game feels a bit sparse and only really scratches the surface of what could be done with a mechanic like this.
Unfortunately, the project did feel a bit directionless at points, as it seemed like many were unsure of what we could do with the mechanic as it was without adding a lot more onto it, which we just didn't think we had the time for. We also had issues throughout with some of the art and programming taking longer than we had anticipated, though that's a learning experience in and of itself.
Looking back at what the initial idea for the mechanic was, it was definitely better to have gone the route we did with slimming and reworking the mechanic to what it became, as I don't think we would have been able to get extra mechanics we required to make it work done in time at all after the struggle we had with getting this one working.
I am a bit disappointed with overall level design for the project on my part, as it's bereft of interest. I arrived at a point where I was simply making rooms to house challenges in, and that just didn't feel exciting. It felt creatively lacking in that department as I feel that, beyond simply housing a puzzle/challenge element, I didn't really know what to "classify" some of these rooms as, narratively speaking. The artists did a great job at making it look a lot better though.
On the other hand, in terms of some of the minor events throughout the level like the door and pillar, as well as the central hourglass area, I was very happy with how they turned out, and felt like they were good points of interest and memorable little events that helped to sell the nature of the temple and game. I also think the pacing of the challenges was decent enough considering the scope, though I would've preferred having some more challenges to really ensure that that the player understood how the mechanics and puzzles worked.
It was quite fun creating and modifying the time rewind however, and I'm very happy with what it became, and how it interacted with the puzzle/level elements.