ColoUR CHANGE

Game OVERVIEW

The overview of Colour Change is to use a block in different ways in order to complete the puzzles with a first person camera. The player would be able to approach the puzzle in different ways by changing the colour of the special powerup block. The main colours are: Red (Grapple), Blue (Pickup), Green (Sticky) and Yellow (Control) with White serving as the default power.

This was a personal project developed in Unity between July of 2020 to current. I wanted to make this game because I wanted to try and challenge myself to allow the player to have multiple solutions to a single puzzle.

Powers

There are 4 (plus the No Power power) which have different abilities. They are:

The No Power is the default power that is able to reflect the lasers
The Grapple Puzzle is what it says on the tin, it allows the player to grapple to the powerup cube when the player is within a certain distance
The Pickup Power allows the player to pickup the cube. When the player is near, it will show a prompt as well as turn the camera to 3d. When picked up, the size decreases
The Control Power allows the player to control the powerup cube within a certain distance. The Power was balanced by having a counter that goes down each time it is moved. When it reaches 0, the cube can no longer be controlled
The Sticky Power allows the player to stick to the cube being able to "climb" it

Level

Step 1: Pickup first Powerup Item with blue powerup

Step 2: Move it over to the corridor. this will also start a countdown that would spawn in the water after 30 seconds

Step 3, 5, 7: Repeat Step 1

Step 4, 6, 8: Repeat Step 2

Step 9: After all of the water has spawned - the door opens allowing the player go to the next section

Design ideas for puzzles

Problems during design

During the design process for Colour Change, one of my main problems with the game was the introductory puzzle. Some problems can be seen here. Something I did that helped fix the problem was including stairs that takes you to a platform acting as a save point. This solved the problem as it added in a safety net as well as a way to circumvent the finnicky nature of the powerup block.

Another attempt at the intro puzzle

To put it bluntly, I still didn't like the intro puzzle to Colour Change despite the changes mentioned above. When I replayed the puzzle and looked at it critically, the stairs were a cheap fix to an even bigger problem. That problem was the intro puzzle as a whole. Some problems with the previous implementation of the intro puzzle was that it didn't give the player enough familiarity with each power, the stairs was a cheap band-aid to the finnicky-ness of the puzzle and it was just rather dull to complete in both being boring and lacking engagement.

With this, I decided to break the room down into 4 smaller rooms with a corridor in between them. The aim was to complete the challenge within each of the room (in any order) to be able to flick a lever and after all 4 has been flicked, unlocks the door at the end allowing the player to play the game. The powerups within each room were hardcoded to remain that certain power meaning it gave the player an introduction to each power once at a time without needing to know how to use them all together. That would be for the next small puzzle. I decided to add a narrative element including the intro puzzle of the ability to change not being added yet and it still taking time.

The rooms also allowed me to introduce other visual Design elements such as wires teaching the player to following them, some components that will be seen in future puzzles and as mentioned previously, the skillset of the powers. The rooms being able to be done in any order also softly taught the player that the powers can be combined in any order as well.

The rooms worked like this:

For the Grapple room, the player would just need to grapple between different points to reach the top and flick the lever
For the Slime room, the player would need to climb up to the end and flick the lever
For the Pickup room, the player would need to pickup the powerup block and place it to open a plate which opens the door allowing the player to flick the lever
For the Control room, the player would need to control the powerup to over the gap to a pressure plate which would raise a platform allowing the player to move across to flick the lever
- This was originally going to be the player using the Control power to flick the lever but was changed to keep consistency between the 4 rooms

Team Composition

Mario Mingoia - Games Designer (Designed the puzzles, levels and different powers of the block). As it was only me working on the game, I tried to do things I weren't comfortable with as well as experimenting with different aspects of Unity allowing me to get a greater understanding of the Engine.

reflection and improvement

One of the Design Pillars of Colour Change was being able to use any combination of the different powerups to complete any of the puzzles. This therefore meant that each power needed to be properly balanced (not being too overpowered) and to having their own skillsets. Something that I did well was properly balancing all of the powerups where 1 wouldn't be the default answer to solving all of the issues and giving all of the powerups their own skills. This Design Pillar was a limitation (they do say creativity works best under limitations) as I needed to ensure all of the puzzles can be solved with any combination of them. I think this was done successfully as all the puzzles can be solved with any combination of the powers offering replayability.

A issue with the game was trying to figure out how to fit all of the powerups into the solution. This caused issues for 2 reasons; the first reason was because some of the puzzles became too open ended. This therefore meant they weren't fun to Design or fun to solve. The second reason was that even though all the puzzles could of been solved with any combination, there were some combinations that became the obvious combination. An area of improvement is therefore balance in order to get all of the powers roughly balanced so there is no obvious answer. Another issue is the No Power doesn't have anything to do until the final few puzzles meaning it is redundant. This should hopefully be addressed in a future update when it gets something to do such as either interacting with "electricals" after the first puzzle (can be explained via narrative why it is the case for future "electricals") or has another power such as magnetism. This would therefore mean that it would need to be introduced to the Intro Puzzle to give the player an idea for how it works.

links

Itch.io Page

Colour Change Video

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Google Sites

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