Puzzle Design / Game Design

Description

I worked as a game/puzzle designer on We Were Here Together, the third entry in the co-op ‘escape room’ series.

We Were Here Together has 1500+ positive Steam ratings, (90% positivity) and had 42K concurrent viewers on Twitch when it came out.

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/865360/We_Were_Here_Together/

My contribution

• creating puzzles, from idea to releasable content
• collaborating with a multidisciplinary team
• setting up and running playtests, analyzing and summarizing results

More…

In this project, I was responsible for creating puzzles from scratch and bringing them from idea to releasable content (ie. concepting, (paper) prototyping, whiteboxing, testing, adjusting based on tests, QA). I worked together with two other game designers and a team of artists and developers as well as several other disciplines. My biggest contribution was in conducting regular tests which allowed us to direct the team’s (design) efforts to those areas that could use that attention the most.

Praise & Press

Our school (of the arts) featured this project in an article:
https://exposure.hku.nl/verhaal/4271358/over-mutsen-mindsets-en-een-knuffel-met-een-verloren-been (Dutch)
The project has been nominated for the ‘Cinekid Golden Guppy Media Award’, an award for media products suitable for children, and has received an honourable mention for this award.

Player count

armor games: 17.222 views, 141 ratings, rating 81/100
itch.io: 6.550 views, 34 ratings, 436 downloads
gamejolt: 1.277 views, 32 ratings, 427 downloads
(note: this is a web-game)

Design

Key design decision

A third into the project, we had lots of bits and pieces of knowledge, all related to the general direction we wanted the game to go in. However, a specific, clear vision of what we were trying to achieve with the game was lacking.

I analysed the information we had and defined a single goal for the game, and went on to identify how every piece of information fit into this overarching goal. I visualized these relationships in a onepage (seen below), pointing out areas we needed to explore further.

Materials

analysis of the game as it is now, relationships between different elements and what elements still need to be improved

a paper prototype we created to test the relationship between setbacks and exploring an interesting environment

More design information, as well as the design process

Chalk Gardens Design Package (2057 downloads )

Project

Approach

try to translate the concept of ‘positive reframing’ to an entertainment game that conveys a deeper message through its mechanics.

put together a team to be able to make a full game

short research phase to be able to quickly get to prototyping and playtesting

Result / Evaluation

Complete, if unpolished, entertainment game that conveys its message through both mechanics and story.

Was nominated and received a special mention for the Cinekid Media ‘Golden Guppy’ Award. (press release)

Project was highlighted and used for promotion of all graduation projects

Great collaboration that allowed both of us to become a better professional

I should have managed the (design) goals of this project better, as it would have allowed us to create a more focused and thereby more powerful game.

Keep paper prototyping for longer when you’re both designing and programming, because digital prototypes eat up all the design time.

Description

Process

Our process was straightforward at a glance, but complex in the sense that we were trying out and improving on a lot of different ideas and elements.

By generating new ideas and prototyping those, we were able to slowly create a unique space the game could fill. This space was carved out first by trying to convey our message through the mechanics, and later by supporting the mechanics by creating a world and narrative in which you could use these mechanics meaningfully.

A lot of times the process felt like a balancing act between the two different goals of accurately modeling how it can feel to gradually break out of a certain mindset and making the experience of playing the game a fun, positive one. Though it wasn’t necessary to make the game fun or positive, it was a condition we had set for ourselves, to stay away from more horrorlike experiences.

We defined our design goals and how we wanted to run the project.

Then we started generating concepts that we thought would be able to fulfill our design goals. In this we took a mechanics-first approach, because one of the goals of the project was to try to convey a message through mechanics alone, so we wanted to have a strong core mechanic.

We selected a concept we thought would be able to fulfill our design goals. We prototyped it and felt the core mechanic was lacking. We switched concepts, we prototyped the new concepts, we made variations on the new concept, we prototyped that.

By then what we were working with had become very much like a puzzle. I had intended the game to be a more open-ended, sandbox-like experience, and we created a digital prototype to try and capture the sense of exploration.

This worked but the digital prototype had many flaws as well. To be able to quickly try out different ideas, we went back to paper prototyping, and performed the above-mentioned balancing act by trying to integrate exploration with the story the mechanics were telling. After lots of prototyping and by looking back at our research we were able to reach something that more or less worked.

We started building this digitally, because we knew a lot of the work and time was in translating our paper prototype to the digital medium, providing the feedback mechanisms necessary for understanding what the game was doing and to tell players how they were influencing it.

After numerous iterations we’ve reached the current state of the game: something that achieves a lot of things to some degree, but is maybe not the most focused it could have been.

Project Role

Niels de Jong – design, programming

Joanna Siccama – art

Project Duration

22 weeks

started the 6^th of february 2018

project showcase 29^th of june 2018

armor games version (containing small tweaks) 13th of june 2019

Play time

~20 minutes

Links

https://armorgames.com/play/18618/chalk-gardens

https://red-owl-games.itch.io/chalk-gardens

https://gamejolt.com/games/chalkgardens/332358

https://www.facebook.com/ChalkGardens

Chalk Gardens Design Package (2057 downloads )

https://www.cinekid.nl/en/news/94

Design

Key design decision

I’m going to talk about one of the three concepts we developed into a somewhat refined prototype.

We stumbled on an effective way of starting meaningful conversations by having players estimate the answers of their co-player.

My contribution, then, was in safeguarding this core effectiveness while simultaneously improving on it. I did this by coming up with alternative versions of several game elements, and testing these alternatives to see if the change was an improvement.

This can be seen in the designproces.

Levenseinde Design Process (Dutch) (1278 downloads )

Project

Approach

heavily invest in teambonding to create a safe environment in which it is okay to discuss feelings surrounding death

researching and familiarizing oneself with this serious subject matter, by interviewing several experts in this subject field (e.g. an end-of-life coach, a preacher)

quickly creating throwaway concepts to redefine project deliverables and problem definitions

creating persona’s as the embodiment of three different problem definitions

evaluating on 1/6th of the project duration (something I picked up working on a previous project)

prototyping and playtesting to improve on game mechanics and interface/feedback clarity

Result / Evaluation

3 prototypes that each take a different approach on tackling the main problem

complete research, project and design documentation

design advice for a possible follow-up team

presented results to a group of ~30 subject field experts

featured on regional television

It’s possible to deal and design with heavy subject matter by being respectful and curious and the same time

Subject experts are a great way to get (additional) information about a vulnerable target audience, even if it imposes a risk because they’re not the target audience themselves

‘Exploratory’ does not mean ‘define no clear goals or deliverables’: it’s important to distinguish between ambiguity in the design process (which can absolutely be a good thing) and ambiguity in the project boundaries (which, you guessed it, is not a good thing)

1/6th evaluation yielded less information than I hoped for, but it did confirm everyone was still on board and motivated

Process

We wanted to know for whom we were going to design our games/toys/things, and wanted to get familiar with how care for the terminally ill worked right now. Because we had explicitly been told to not engage with the (vulnerable) target audience, we sought out experts in the subject field, ie. people that have to deal with the terminally ill elderly on a daily basis. Also, we shared our own experiences regarding death and communication with (terminally) ill family members.

All in all, this process was a liberating experience because by talking about these things, we broke the taboos surrounding the subject. This open way of speaking about death gave us some special moments where a stranger would open up and share his or her own experiences. It was an enriching life experience in its own right.

Of course, the subject ‘terminally ill elderly and their communication with their loved ones’ is a very broad subject, and much of the work we did was in carving out specific problems and definitions to guide what we were going to make.

The research coalesced into three personas, each with their own problem. Because we had quite a large team and our client mainly wanted to see different possibilities we decided to come up with solutions to all three problems.

I personally worked on two of the three resulting problem definitions, and helped shape the prototypes we showcased at the end of the project. We got a feature on the regional television for that showcase.

Our client was quite happy with the results. We showed our prototypes and explained the underlying design to a group of about 30 experts. We were encouraged to further develop these prototypes, but chose to focus on other projects instead.

Project Role

Niels de Jong – designer (tegeltjeswijsheid + levensverhaal), programmer

Youri Stans – game artist, designer (tegeltjeswijsheid)

Kris van Geel – interaction designer (geroerd)

Floris Roding – game artist, designer (levensverhaal)

Loren de Bont – game artist

I personally worked on two of the three concepts, created paper and digital prototypes for these concepts and iterated on those.

I also wrote the general design process documentation and the specific design process documentation for the two concepts.

Project Duration

17 weeks

started the 18th of september 2017

stopped the 23rd of january 2018

Play Time

The download of one of the prototypes is below

play time is 10~30 minutes depending on how much you talk

Links

Levenseinde Design Process (Dutch) (1278 downloads )

feature regional television

Levenseinde RTV Utrecht uitzending (2237 downloads ) (starting from 10m55s)

playable .apk of one of the concepts

tegeltjeswijsheid android (Dutch) (1423 downloads )

(please note this is a development version so you’ll need to be in developer mode and allow unsafe apps)

(2 player couch/hotseat co-op, works best on tablet)

Around the Creek is a storydriven game in which you get to know and love weird characters while making difficult (moral) choices in order to solve an exciting mystery

Design

Key design decision

About halfway into the project, we had integrated so many design guidelines and gameplay mechanisms into the concept, that we lost sight of the core value of our game. I decided, in cooperation with my co-designer, to side-step our current goals and design goals and take time to find back the value of the game. We then strengthened this value (the uniqueness of the characters, in both art and dialogue) by building a “chunks” structure around it, based on interest curves. These “chunks” structured how we approached the latter half of the project.

Chunks structure

(for more explanation see download below)

Materials

Around the Creek Design choices (dutch) (1695 downloads )
Around the Creek Design document (Dutch) (1577 downloads )

persona created based on research using our game

early onepage

Project

Approach

create a game along with a viable plan for selling it to an audience

use SCRUM evaluation techniques in a non-SCRUM team process

create interesting characters in a living world

Result / Evaluation

a vertical slice of a complete game, with many points that need to be improved, plus an accurate view on our target audience

check everyone’s ideas about how to design a game, because not everyone designs with a target audience in mind / at all

only create prototypes to answer questions you have (also, if you don’t have questions to prototype, that’s a warning sign)

check how everyone is feeling about the project about 1/6th into the project

SCRUM evaluation techniques like daily standup and “retrospections” offer an indirect and because of that effective way of giving feedback to eachother

map out the skills and personalities of team members, and explicitly create responsibilities to fill gaps

game design documentation (eg. onepages) shows how the game has grown

prototype faster

Description

This project had to be pitched and approved first. We created an elaborate concept, and used the following weeks to start building parts of this concept and get some initial reactions. However, because we had created such an elaborate concept, we had a hard time finding the core of what we wanted to achieve. Moreover, the team was (subconsciously) divided about what direction to take the game in. This confusion came to a head about halfway into the project. At this point, we had a bloated concept and we had created several prototypes that we had not really tested, because we didn’t know how we could use the results. We spent a week finding back the core value of the game we wanted to create (the characters, both in art and dialogue), and built a “chunk” structure around this value to really put this unique value in a good light.

This “chunks” structure was modular and allowed us to fulfill our initial goal of creating a vertical slice of the complete game.

We used this vertical slice for getting an accurate view of our target audience as well as getting feedback we could use to improve the vertical slice.

We then jointly decided to stop this project, because our opinions on how to further develop the game differed on a too fundamental level.

Project Role

Niels de Jong – lead design, lead programming

Youri Stans – lead environment art, design

Esmeé van ‘t Hoff – lead writing, environment art

Loïs Vehof – lead character artist, writing

Runic Sounds (http://runicsounds.com/) – audio

Project Duration

16 weeks

started the 6^th of february 2017

stopped end of may

Play time

~20 minutes

Links

Around the Creek game page (gamejolt) (2119 downloads )

Around the Creek blog (tumblr.) (2178 downloads )

Around the Creek Design document (Dutch) (1577 downloads )

Around the Creek Design choices (dutch) (1695 downloads )

Play time

+- 4 minutes per try

Links

Play in-browser web version

Project Description

A small venture into the territory of the fantasy console PICO-8, Squashy is a game heavily based on a basic pong/breakout game.

However, the old gameplay pattern is twisted to push you towards prediction and risk-taking.

I focused on making the whole game juicier as well.

Project Role

I designed, programmed and created all art and sound assets.

The retro style is largely due to the fantasy console PICO-8

This game is an adaptation of the Squashy game found in the online magazine Picozine

Design

Materials

Minotaur's Maze Playtest (1344 downloads )

Below you can see a onepage design of the core idea of the game

Project

Approach

Incorporating ‘game feel’ into the control of the player character

Gradually making changes in a cycle of adding changes, playtesting and polishing

Fleshing out original concept while staying true to it

Result / Evaluation

Positive reactions from targeted audience

Hardware requirements (4 xBox controllers) limits marketability

Playtesting gives a way of solving discussions and answering unknowns in the design of the game

Constituting clear design goals and sticking to them gives a focused design and thus a focused experience

Not having to program gives more room to think about (level) design

Description

Well actually, the minotaur never really made it into the game.

Minotaur’s Maze started off with a single week in which the basic concept was formed by just two people. At the end of this week, the concept was pitched to peer students. Two decided they wanted to work on this concept, which gave us a team of four to create the final game.

This original concept was: unreliable information, indirect contact with other players through trails and following an unknown other being.

There were a lot of possibilities that all fitted in the original concept. At a certain point in time these different possibilities starting conflicting with eachother and we had to make a decision to keep a clean design and focused game.

We could create a game focused on exploring. When in a maze there’s a lot to explore! A symbol language and lots of details in the maze would improve this kind of game. Alternatively, we could create a game centered around a horror element, using the minotaur as an unseen threat that could pop up any moment. Our third option was making a party game, with frequent playful interactions between players.

We decided to make a party game and started valueing our game elements around positive interactions between players outside of the game, something we called ‘hectic fun’ and the design goal that there should be no dull moments in the game. You had to be constantly busy in an interesting manner.

We quickly created the basis of the game, and used that to playtest. This became a good habit: whenever we weren’t sure of changes we made or we wanted to go in two directions, we used playtests to see which change allowed the player to reach the design goals more easily.

At the end of the project we shifted focus to adding polish effects.

We spent the last week preparing for the ‘launch’ of the game, making a poster and coming up with a marketing stunt. We spread little paper coins with a text on the back prompting people who found such a coin to come play the game in the room we set up Minotaur’s Maze-style: dimly lit, with flickering torches on monitors and a big couch to play the game on.

Because this was one of the longer projects I’ve worked on, and because the basis of the concept had already been established, this feels like one of the most thought-out and clear designs I’ve made so far. That’s funny, because at the same time I see a lot of improvements still to be made.

Project Role

Niels de Jong – designer, some programming

Youri Stans – environment art, designer

Mike Ottink – programmer, designer

Annelieke Henzen – character art, audio

Project Duration

11 weeks

started the 10^th of june 2016

published the 29^th of august 2016

Play time

10 minutes

Links

Note: the game is designed for playing with 4 xBox 360 controllers, and plays best using that setup. However, you can play with up to three players without any xBox 360 controllers.

Note: when playing the game using keyboard, make sure Num Lock is turned on, or the second player’s controls won’t work.

Minotaur's Maze windows (1204 downloads )

Minotaur's Maze Documentatie (1607 downloads )

Bezint eer ge begint is a relaxed choose your own painting game.

Design

Materials

Below you can see a onepage design of the core idea of the game

Project

Approach

Integrating the Design Thinking Process Guide (which means, a focus on empathizing with the target group)

Locking down the design after a certain point in time, to provide stability during production phase

Clear responsibilities for every teammember

Result / Evaluation

Group design really really is not a thing: only once we decreased the size of the group actively designing the game, were we able to produce results.

We spent too much time finding a good problem definition for the target group, resulting in not having enough time to hone the design of the final product.

I am glad I did not take on the responsilibity of being the project lead, allowing me to focus on both design and programming

Description

The goal for this project was to create a game elderly people could benefit from. This was a project I was thrilled to work on, for two reasons: one, it was the kind of project that I could see myself doing in the future: creating a game to help improve people’s lives and two, all of my teammembers were highly skilled with great mindsets.

So, creating something good would be easy right? Well … no. First of all, the target group proved to be tricky to adequately capture: it turns out old people are a very diverse group. Who would have thought. We needed to zoom in on a single problem, but this was a hard endeavour given the fact that during the earlier stages of the project, all seven! of us were trying to reach consensus about what to zoom in on.

We wanted to find the problem definition just right for our team, the school assignment and the target group.

Finding this exact right problem definition was a slow process. Too slow, in fact, so we split our group, giving just a few people control over the concept. In hindsight, this should have been one of the first things to do. These people could then gather all information and research findings other team members collected, and use that to create a concept. Discussions about this concept should be between a maximum of three people, and not between the whole group of seven.

With our small designer group, we were able to quickly define an approach to the project, supported by the large amount of research we already did.

However, we did not have much time left for production at that point. Fortunately, we weren’t short on artists, and we had created an art-heavy concept to put most of the production work on their shoulders.

I’m quite happy with the end result. We were aiming to create a game that proved games weren’t only an (often violent) means of entertainment, but could be gentle works of art too. Reactions that this “was a peaceful game” and “a bit like a real painting” hint that we may have achieved that goal.

Project Role

Niels de Jong – designer, programmer

Kevin van As – (only a part of the project) designer

Rody Muijers – project lead, artist

Esmeé van ‘t Hoff – artist

Loïs Vehof – artist

Youri Stans – artist

Sabeth van der Voort – art lead, artist

Project Duration

7 weeks

started the 8th of february, 2016

published on the 1st of april, 2016

Play time

5 minutes

Links

This game was originally designed for tablet. As such, it plays best on an android tablet.

Bezint eer ge begint android (1537 downloads )

Bezint eer ge begint windows (933 downloads )

In Burst, you glide peacefully ever forward. Until. An artgame.

Play time

+- 4 minutes

Links

Play in-browser web version

Burst windows (1299 downloads )

Project Description

Burst was created in a short timeframe (a few weeks at most) It won third place in a competition which challenged you to create an artgame.

I remember being quite pleased with what I was able to accomplish. The game is not extremely complex, but it’s still nice to complete something. Plus, it can be quite soothing to just glide along.

Originally published on 12-11-2013

Project Role

I designed, programmed and created all art and sound assets.

The music ‘Yearning’ was made by blazingdragon.

EGA is an arcadey game in which you do two simple things: you collect stuff and you avoid stuff. Easy.

Play time

+- 2 minutes per try

Links

Note: the online highscore list is no longer … online…

The local highscore list functions just fine

Play in-browser web version

EGA windows (1078 downloads )

Project Description

EGA was created to fulfill an assignment for a game creation cursus.

I decided that I wanted to make a very very simple game. So I thought of the most basic things you could do in a game. However, an idea popped into mind that shaped the game as it is now: what if you do both of these basic, elemental game actions at the same time?

I used a game anatomy found in Jesse Schell’s ‘a Book of Lenses’ to split the aesthetical and technical side of the game.

Originally published 10-2-2013

Project Role

I designed, programmed and created all art and sound assets.

The music was made by Eagleguard.

Stairwell is an artgame about growing old.

In 5 levels, it tells the story of a young man visiting his grandmother. A game with literary aspirations.

Play time

+- 2 minutes per level

+- 10 minutes in total

Links

Play in-browser web version

Stairwell windows (815 downloads )

Project Description

Old people have always made me feel slightly uneasy. They know of a world that just isn’t there anymore, and I have the idea that after a certain point, you simply lose touch with the world as it is now, because that nonexisting world has grown so large.

I created this game for a competition with the theme ‘dubbel’. This is a Dutch word that can be interpreted as either ‘double’ or as ‘ambivalent’.

This game was somewhat unique in that I designed it (almost) completely upfront, taking one week. I created the game in the two weeks after that.

Originally published on 29-8-2012

Project Role

I designed, programmed and created all art assets.

The music was made by blazingdragon, the sound effects come from freesound.org (see the credits)