Description
Tobla: Divine Path is a narrative first-person puzzle adventure. The player takes on the role of Mort, a mortal QA tester for the newest collection of divine puzzles. The main mechanic of these puzzles is the ability to swap the positions of certain objects. Select object A, select object B and "poof" - B is where A was and A is where B was.
My Contribution
- Game System Design The core concept of a first-person puzzler where objects can be swapped was given beforehand. Based on that I designed all supporting mechanics that are needed to turn the swapping interaction into actual puzzles. I implemented about 15 different mechanics as playable prototypes in Unity. Not all of them made it into the final game, though.
- Level/Puzzle Design I designed ~50 puzzle levels for this game. All of them were implemented as playable prototypes in Unity and then iterated based on playtest observations. Because of budgetary problems the amount of levels in the final game had to be drastically reduced.
- Co-Writing My biggest contribution to the narrative side of the game is the setting. I wanted to incorporate some kind of explanation to why the player has to solve puzzles. This is why I pitched the concept of a deity that creates puzzle trials for the gods to use and needs a QA tester. Apart from that I read all story bits written by the narrative designer and provided feedback and iterations. Some shorter passages are also entirely written by me.
