A Divine Guide To Puzzle Solving

Description

A Divine Guide To Puzzle Solving 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 were A was and A is were B was.

My contribution

  • Game System Design
    The core concept of a first person puzzler where objects can be swapped was given by management. 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 into a playable prototype 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 to 16.
  • Co-Writing
    My biggest contribution to the narrative side of the game is the setting. I wanted to incorporate some kind of explanation, why the player has to solve puzzles. This is why I pitched the concept of a deity that creates puzzle trials for the gods and needs a QA tester. Apart from that I read all story bits written by a colleague and provided feedback and iterations. Some shorter passages are also entirely written by me.

Team size: 7
Duration: 12 months
Release Date: Coming 2024
More info: Steam