DICHOTOMY

Gravity, at the palm of your hands.

Find the game HERE

 

Name: Dichotomy

Game Genre: 2D Puzzle Platformer.

Team Size: 5

Game Engine: Unity

Source Control: Unity Collaborate, GitHub

Elevator pitch:

A 2D, puzzle game, which revolves around two game states; gravity and no gravity. Areas of the map would only be accessible in one of the two states, challenging the player to use momentum and gravity to dodge traps on their way to victory.

 

My Contributions

Programmer

Using my experience with the Unity Engine and the C# language, I was able to help out with some of the coding tasks such as player movement.

Level Designer

My role as level designer was to design the tutorial level for the game, as well as giving helpful feedback to levels designed by other team members.

Gameplay Designer

Using the theme of the game jam, I was able to lead my team towards realizing and finalizing the idea of the game, and its mechanics.

 

Gameplay

Some puzzles required the player to float up with an object, then switch gravity back on and drop it on breakable platforms.

 

The premise of the game revolved around using gravity to pass through obstacles in each level. The player would need to place boxes scattered around the map on pressure plates, in order to open up doors and advance. There are also ‘ying-yang’ balls which the player can obtain and throw to hit levers. Starting off relatively simple, the obstacles become challenging, very fast, and the player will need to start changing gravity states mid-air to survive.



 

This level requires the player to stack objects to climb up to the other side. The black boxes are only present when gravity is switched off to prevent them from flying up and through the level. The black boxes disappear when gravity is switched back on.

One of the harder levels in the game, which requires the player to master the movement system. The spikes on the floor kill the player.


 

Lessons learnt from this project:

  • Scope management when working on short projects.

  • Difficulty of puzzles and how to indicate pathways for new players.

  • Version control through GitHub and Unity Collaborate.

 

Design Process

For reference, the theme of the game jam was “Duality”. My first thought looking at the theme was basing the game on the concept of Ying-Yang. The first concept sketch would involve a multiplayer game where two people controlled two sides of the same character, in a ‘QWOP-style’ game.

Another idea I thought of was a multiplayer 2D maze whereby the players would open doors using shapes around the map. The doors would also be placed on timers, increasing in difficulty with each maze.

After discussing the idea, we realized that creating a game with multiplayer is too risky for game jams and has a higher probability of bugs. So, I shifted my focus to singleplayer games. The second idea I had was a 3D platformer whereby the player would grab black and white orbs around the map. Each time they grabbed a different color orb, they would switch to that color. But, if the tile they are standing on is a different color, they would begin taking damage.

After much discussion, and a brief moment to joggle my mind, I came up with an idea that we ended up settling on. A 2D puzzle platformer that would use the gravity system in Unity as a feature. The player would be able to float over obstacles, and pick up heavy objects when gravity is switched off. They would then place these heavy objects on pressure plates to open doors. From there on out, we started building the levels in Unity and discussed what code would be needed for the mechanic.