Auto-Puzzles

My contribution

• Game Concept: It's been a long time since I've developed a solo project, so I found the process of developing several Game Concepts without any restrictions incredibly fun. Finally, I decided on a 2D puzzle game, with simple yet versatile mechanics that would allow me to create fun puzzles that were clearly different from each other. The game is heavily inspired by "Toy Car" from "Professor Layton and the Unwound Future".

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• Programming: Since I was the only person working on the project, I had to take care of all aspects of the game, including those I don't usually work on, such as Sprite creation or game programming. Although I opted for square-shaped Sprites to avoid complications when creating them, I did dedicate a lot more time to the programming part. I've programmed every aspect of the game: the level selection menu, which includes a slider bar that allows vertical scrolling, the goal activation when all the objectives in the level are collected, etc. I paid special attention to the programming of two very different states within the levels: when the player is placing the arrows in a level, they can interact with them by dragging them to any empty square, removing them with a right click, etc., but once they press Space to make the player start moving, they will not be able to interact anymore and it will be the player's own Sprite that takes care of the level logic, checking if they have interacted with an arrow, if there are any objectives left to collect, etc.

• Level Design: At the same time as programming the game's various mechanics, I began designing the 15 available levels. It wasn't the first time I'd designed several independent puzzles based on the "rules of the game," but it's always fun to start designing new types of puzzles for a new project. Although the objective of all the puzzles is the same and they all have the same mechanics, I tried to make each level feel completely different from all the others.

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• Setting up a difficulty curve: This time, instead of designing all the levels and simply ordering them from least difficult to most difficult as I did with "Sokoband", I took the difficulty curve into account when designing the levels, trying to make the difficulty of the levels increase steadily but appropriately. I also tried to introduce the different game mechanics regularly, so that the player's progress is rewarded with the discovery of new types of obstacles and arrows.

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• Organization and analysis of Playtestings: Thanks to the collaboration of some friends, I was able to carry out some Playtestings that was very helpful when adjusting the difficulty curve, as well as discovering some solutions that I hadn't considered when designing some of the levels. These Playtestings also helped me introduce some details focused on improving the User Experience, such as slight modifications to the arrow Sprites or the slider bar for vertical scrolling in the game menu. Following these Playtestings, I also decided to create optional easier versions for two of the game's levels.​​​