A 3D-Isometric puzzle game where you play as an older man named Adam. Awoken is in a strange place wanting to make his way out of where he is.

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My contributions

During this project I was mainly in charge of level design, environmental designs and UI. Along side this I also assisted my teammates with little bits of coding due to the group mainly consisting of 2 students in charge of game development.
My thought process during the environmental design is to make sure that the levels look like they would have been able to be in actual use, but a bit fallen apart due to the time. I also added small hints of the ending in each room with the small monuments in the corners.

About the game

Akined is an Isometric Top-down Puzzle game where the player takes control of Adam and the Spirit attached to him. The goal is to help Adam escape from the dungeon that he suddenly woke up in through the help of the Spirit which can possess objects.The game was made in 4 weeks by 4 people; 2 UX designers and 2 Project managers.

Initial Brainstorming

We spent about a week brainstorming our initial ideas, Puzzles and level design. We started off by grouping up the whole team and deciding on what we actually wanna make, we had a few ideas of a fantasy like theme where you play as a kid in your backyard, a Maze idea and more! But we ended up with the "haunted house" idea. After that we thought of the story and the gameplay a lot, what our main mechanics should be and how we could use that in the puzzle design.

The process

I started off firstly checking for the right asset pack to use during this project, we where given a fair few to choose form so I got in charge of picking out the right one's for this project. I started off with grey-boxing the first stage, using some of the assets from the pack to figure out how to lay out the level. After I finished the first level I moved quickly onto the next one, to get as much finished as quickly as I could due to the time constraint. In this project we where lucky that we had thought out the levels very toughly before we created them in Unity, so I was able to finish them quickly without needing a grey-box

What we had to cut

These are some of the features that we had initially planned to implement but had to be scrapped due to time constraints and/or lack of knowledge

A swirling tether/link between Adam and the Spirit that would emphasize their connection to each other. The link was intended to be one of the main threats of the game, which would break if the characters got too far away from each other, resulting in death.
We felt this mechanic could be expanded on later as a type of progression system to present more intricate puzzles.

Initially, we intended to have all objects in the environment have specific abilities when possessed, for example, turning on generators to power magnets/conveyor belts or turning on/off lights to solve light-related puzzles.

Our design at the start was to have a camera following the player character throughout several smaller rooms in a bigger level, where each "completed" room would serve as a point to progress to the next level. The Player would be free to roam between most of the rooms in any way they want, to choose which puzzle to tackle first.
A lot of inspiration for this, both mechanically and aesthetically, came from the game series Luigi's Mansion.

Takeaways

As my first game project, and first game I've ever made. I had a lot of fun during this project and I learned a lot along the way. With my main charge of level design and visual design I got to test my skills and see how many levels we where able to make within the timeframe and with the obstacles that we faced during the project. It was during this project I found my love for level design, and specifically environmental design!