Retrace is a character-driven horror adventure game, inspired by Zero Escape and Nier Automata. A combination of beautiful painted portraits and pixel art, as well as original music, create an enchanting, mysterious setting for the player to explore as they solve puzzles and try to decipher the overarching mysteries of the world they're trapped in--a world full of deadly traps and horrifying monsters. The key mechanic is timeline-jumping; the player can return to decision points and take different paths, unlocking different information even in seemingly 'dead ends', seeking out the 'true ending'.

Above (clockwise from top-left): Concept art for Freya, the main character; a gif of the player character hiding from a patrolling enemy; part of the narrative flow diagram.

Retrace was a three-year project with a team comprising of myself and several freelancers. My main goal was to create both an interesting and complex time-travelling puzzle, and to write a compelling story of despair and determination. The game includes a number of different logic puzzles as well as the overall "END" puzzle, wherein the player must collect information in one timeline branch to proceed in another, until they have seen all possible outcomes. Both designing and implementing this was the most challenging aspect of the design process, as it required delicately balancing a vast number of variables to track the player's unique world state.

Above: Two screenshots from Retrace, the first from the "murder mystery" puzzle, the second from the "wolf and sheep" puzzle.

In hindsight, creating a complex time travel puzzle game as a first commercial venture was not a sensible idea, but the steep learning curve turned out to be extremely valuable for my development as a designer. I learned everything from puzzle design, to state management, to programming animation and cutscenes--not to mention working with artists, composers and programmers. After three years of hard work I was able to release it on PC in January 2020. It was then ported by EastAsiaSoft to consoles (under the title Retrace: Memories of Death) in 2021.

Retrace: Memories of Death