The Banquet Below

Design Contribution

I Designed the puzzles for each of the rooms and then worked with our technical designer on how they would work and be implemented. 

For one of the Puzzles we needed images. Our Artist was super busy with environment and props so I used Midjourney to generate the images needed for the puzzle requirements. 

The initial Puzzles designs were created using good old pen and paper and iterated on once they had been implemented. Once the initial designs were implemented I rewrote the designs in a clearer manner to pass to the Artist to create the props needed for them. 

I also wrote all of the Riddles. The challenge here was to give the player a clue but also fit it within the theme and design of the puzzle. 

There is a deliberate difficulty spike in the middle room. In a full length game this would not be the case but for the Game Jam we wanted to show that we could implement intricate puzzles. Given the limited time Game Jam judges have I thought it was best to have a couple of easy puzzles at the start, an easy and a difficult puzzle in the middle, then lastly another 2 easy puzzles.
This was to ensure the player didn't have to spend too much time getting back to the difficult puzzle if they failed and also to help them see the end if they had limited time to play.

The level design is intentional as well. I wanted the player to descend into the "below" decks and then come out "above" decks. This also helped with narratively driving the difficulty of the middle puzzle as the player has a shorter amount of time to complete the puzzle as the water rises faster when they are below decks.