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!
