Alter

Design Concept:

• For alter the idea was for the main character to have DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). Throughout the game our character Layla, had to learn to live with her new alters Jack and Arthur, and in time work with them as one to complete their objectives.

• The idea for the game was to have several days, and in each day two distinct moments. During the day, we would be subjected to testing, with all of our alters, and at night we would explore the medical facilities where we were to try and find a way out.

• The game was supposed to be focused on puzzles, while also having some dexterity/sneaking moments were we would need to evade guards, or jump around boxes to proceed to the next level.

What worked:

• At the second part of the game, the puzzles were well designed with the environment, and the system was working in a way we could have different puzzles that behind the scenes were working the same way. For example by creating a system were to open a door the player needed to press buttons in a correct order, we could use this system for numpads, passwords and even washing machine buttons!

• This puzzle variety with the same mechanics helped a lot with player interaction. Most of the times the players knew mechanically what they needed to do as the previous puzzles had taught them that, so they could focus about the solution itself of the puzzle. This means players didn't feel alienated from the puzzles, and the eureka! moment felt rewarding.

• The second part of the game had the players use most rooms more than once to progress. For example they could find a speaker in a bedroom but nothing to put in the speaker. Later they would find a usb, which they could go back and use in the speaker. The fact that the design allowed backtracking and the level design economized rooms, this significally helped managing developer resources, while keeping the experience exciting to the player.

• The usage of three different characters resulted in some funny interactions with mechanics, such as Jack the child, couldn't solve password puzzles as he couldn't read.

  
  

What didn't work:

• Due to time constraints we were not able to implement several days, so we ended up with just one. Because of this we had too many mechanics for the level we had, and what ended up happening was we had some game mechanics like the AI for the player to sneak around or the boxes the player could move that were used only once. This meant the resources we spent developing this mechanics didn't pay off, as we couldn't even use this mechanics multiple times to provide the player with similar puzzles with scaling difficulty.

• We wanted to have 3D models for each of the three alters, and a visual transformation so the player could have a visual queue to the transformation other than mechanical changes such as camera height, movement speed etc... The problem was when the player wanted to switch character, there were no constraints on the camera to show the body, so to most of the players this change would go unnoticed. The idea was good, but to make this alter change more meaningful, we should've developed an animation, and lock the camera to show the body transformation while it was happening.

• The first part of the game had a lot of dexterity-based challenges such as jumps. As our main target audience was adults, having dexterity-based challenges was not necessary as it doesn't really add to the game, and unnecessary development time was used for it.

• The game had a lot of narrative with subtitles. Most of the narrative on the first part of the game happened through a speaker, and the player would need to listen to it before progressing. Most players ended up skipping the dialogue to progress the game faster. The narrative should've consisted in smaller sentences that would slowly appear during the game, creating a more organic flow.

• The different characters and what made them unique relied on a lot in physical challenges. But most of the game was around solving puzzles, which didn't entice the player into changing characters. To solve this we should've had less characters, and have them being used in specific times rather than allowing the player to change freely.

PS: Most of the lessons I learned from this project were used in Alter Tales of Ubuntu, a redesign of this game based on the same concept. In that project page you will see most of this points corrected and adressed in one way or another. However, some of this changes worked well, and others not so much. Please read that design post mortem for more detailed insight.