I served as
game designer,
project lead, and
programmer (C#, Unity) on this
puzzle game, where the player is a writer traversing through a novel, assisting
characters by manipulating words on storybook pages.
As a
game designer, I
created word puzzles which experimented with different variants
of the base game mechanic, playing with ideas including words as physical objects
(introduced Level 1), compound words whose component words have different meanings
(introduced Level 2), and words carrying over between levels (introduced Level 3).
Largely, my work as a designer on this project included developing the game's puzzles,
which relied on clever wordplay and puns, developing and testing the core movement and
puzzle mechanics, and
conducting playtesting to incorporate user feedback to improve
puzzles and manage level progression.
As the
project lead, I guided the
13-person team through the development process,
facilitating communication between art, programming, design and sound teams to
ensure the project’s completion over the course of the semester.
This game was developed as part of
Brown RISD Game Developers, a student game
development organization run by students at Brown University and RISD, with
audio contributions provided by students at Berklee College of Music.
Development took place over the course of
24 hours, with work spread out
across 4-hour weekly meetings and one 8 hour mini-game jam.
Fun Fact: The handwriting in the game is mine!
