Between Life And Death
Mobile Puzzle
Project your soul from your body to solve puzzles and
escape the dungeon of the cult keeping you prisoner.
Project Overview
The Team:
-
2 Level Designers
-
4 Game Artists
-
2 Animators
-
5 Programmers
My Contributions:
-
Designed half of all levels and puzzles.
-
Puzzle Design.
-
Level Art.
-
Helping with lighting the scenes.
-
Created application for The Rookies 2024 and Swedish Game Awards 2024.
Key Highlights
Structure Through Combinatronics
A method I learned about and presented to my design partner, Martin Rogmark, was that we could use combinatronics, a type of puzzle matrix that was used to discover and identify fun or non-fun interactivity between the different mechanics we had in the game.
Green was the combos that we definitely wanted to explore, yellow was something that we could consider but wasn't a priority while red was a combination we didn't see any potential in or it was already intersecting with itself.
Early Blockouts
The first thing to define was the metrics of the game and then start creating some placeholder prefab art. Since the game was grid based we had to create a lot of blocks that would let the player go in any directions.
But we also had to take in to consideration that we were using a mobile screen as main device so we had to establish the camera position and test regularly to see that the level would play well on a smaller screen
My Created Levels
These are all the levels I had ownership over, while also collaborating together with my design partner, art and programmers to make sure all levels fit the narrative and mechanics of the game.
Since the game was made for mobile our biggest challenges was to present the playable area on a smaller screen, which made the designing of levels tough but at the same time a great time of learning.
In the last level in the video, which is the finale I wanted to change the conditions of the game by trapping the player. This created a emphasis on using only the soul to solve the puzzle while on a pressured time, since the guard moves when you move. In hindsight I would improve the readability, since right now it's not clear that a guard is moving through different floors below the player and you need to hurry before he reaches the cell you are trapped in.
Swedish Game Awards
Six months after the game project was completed we applied to Swedish Game Awards and The Rookies mobile category. After the applications went in we got nominated for Best Mobile and later on won that title at SGA-24.
This evening was something to really remember, going up at the stage, receiving a trophy in front of the Swedish games industry was something I couldn't even imagine when we created this game.
