Cheese This!
DESCRIPTION
A 'dungeon slider' game where you must guide a block of cheese through a series of rooms by solving puzzles to clear the way.
Developed for the lame jam 32.
MY ROLES
Game Design
Systems Design
Level Design
Programming
GENRE
Puzzle
TEAM SIZE
2
JAM DURATION
3 days
Core Concept
This game relies on a mostly simple core. You control a block of cheese and must navigate rooms using a creatively restrictive move set. Rather than allowing the player to stop moving in their chosen direction at any point, the cheese will slide continuously in that direction until it collides with a wall. This forces the player to think carefully about where the cheese will end up after each movement and how to get to their next destination at any point.
I knew this was hardly a unique core mechanic, so I needed to design the overall systems and map layout in a way that set this game apart from other games with a similar core. Below I have explained how I did so.
Additional Mechanics
To support the core mechanic of this game, I implemented a few unique mechanics as well. These include:
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Ratholes - static hazards. Falling into one of these fails the player.
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Pads and gates - each gate starts off either open or closed, serving as a static obstacle when closed. Sliding onto a pad will flip the state of each gate of the same colour in that room.
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Hot coals - dynamic hazards. Each of these moves either vertically or horizontally between two walls. Colliding with one causes the block of cheese to melt and fails the player.
During development I had another idea for a mechanic: keys which unlock certain doors. However, I chose not to include keys, feeling it might downplay the core of the puzzle solving aspect: that being the act of simply working out how to get to a specific place.
Map Layout
As previously mentioned, I wanted the main focus of the puzzle solving in this game to be concerning the navigation. To further flesh out this concept, I eschewed the standard linear format normally used for games of this type in favour of a sort of dungeon layout similar to The Legend of Zelda series. The fact that moment-to-moment traversal is already more complicated than that in the Zelda games (or at least most of them) is part of the reason I chose not to add too many new mechanics. Because of this, and in spite of this game drawing inspiration from the Zelda series, its puzzle aspect is quite different.
The early game is wholly linear, as there is only one clear path forward. However, once the player clears a few rooms and gets to grips with the core mechanics, rooms start to contain multiple entrances and exits. While there is still only one way through the dungeon as a whole, the player is forced to think carefully about which exit they are meant to take first and which to save for a second visit to that room. To make the player's life a bit easier, entrances and exits close after being travelled through, minimising their confusion on repeat visits.
Post-Mortem
I believe this project demonstrates my design capabilities very well, relying primarily on a strong core mechanic while also bringing a few new ones to the table. These mechanics are also introduced quickly enough to keep the game reasonably well paced without overwhelming the player with too many new mechanics at once. Finally, the game systems are complemented with a dungeon-like map layout which is neither fully linear nor overtly non-linear, adding a new dimension of puzzle-solving while keeping the majority of the challenge where I had intended. While the game uses the same core mechanic as several before it, I was able to design the game to deliver what I feel to be a unique experience overall.