Fragments is an atmospheric puzzle game about interacting with the fundamental components of a deconstructed digital ruin.
In the game the player solves puzzles by swapping and embodying the traits of different objects in order to navigate the level.
As an example, the player can take the shape component of a big pillar object in order to become tall themselves and reach somewhere up high, or alternatively give the component to a small cube object in order to make a platform to the exit.
The game was made for the first semester collaborative project module in the Cologne Game Lab. It can be downloaded here.
My Responsibilities
Designing the system on which the puzzles are built upon
Conceptualizing, schematizing and sequencing each puzzle
Outlining the level design and blocking it out in engine
Conducting organized playtesting and tweaking the game based on that
Implementing certain game behaviours and helping with shader set up
Process
I set out on having mostly a systematic methodology for creating the game’s puzzles:
Explore ideas schematically on paper in order to find a puzzle concept that I think would work and be fun to solve.
Then I move to the engine where I blockout the original sketch and see how It feels within the space of the game and with the mechanics at-hand. Something I learned this project is how important it is to implement your ideas into the engine early on, as there are so many things and dimensions to the creation of levels that you simply can’t think of just through your imagination.
Finally, after a bunch of playtesting and multiple layout drafts to get the difficulty, guidance and satisfaction right, the puzzle is done and given to the artist.
Perhaps that was one thing that we should have thought about more when planning it out – after her detailed and beautiful environment work was in-place, we didn’t playtest anymore, which lead to players sometimes getting lost in all the visual detail and losing the guiding thread. That was a learning experience I really tried to take into account for future projects.
