Get the Game Design Overview

About the game

Seranar's Crypt is a puzzle/platforme game made in 22 days with a team of 4 game designer and 3 game artists.

During this project I did game design with my team a i made some level design.

I design half the tutorial level in cooperation with an other level designer, and the third level.

I had a lot of talk with the second level designer to define the metrics and the difficulty curve we want.

WorkFlow

Here you can see the tutorial of the game I design with the other level designer.

We design multiple phases in this level and divided in 4 distinc zone.

- The first zone is an introduction to the game. Lucius fall down in the cave and try to steal the Icon. After touching it, he's infused by the ability to turn in a ghost. This is a scripted event to show the player what is the main feature of the game.

- The second zone is about traps in the game.

Lucius and the ghost can die from hazard in the level.

Turn by turn, we teached the player to recognize threat for Lucius and for the ghost. Also, those 2 character can see things that are invisible for the other. So threat for the ghost aren't for Lucius and vice-versa.

A movable coffin is locking the way to the interuptor

- The third zone is about interactivity with the environement.

Only Lucius can interact with physical object such as switch, coffin or damaged wall. So we introduce this mechanics to the player with a damaged wall to enter the room, and then a coffin that can be moved away to access the switch and open the door.

- Finally in the fourth zone, we introduce to the player all of the ghost ability: Jump, Levitate, and see level element that Lucius can't.

This zone is a practice area for the ghost movement.

Here is the second level designed by the other level designer.

You can see his reflection on his website.

In this level we would like to challenge the player with the mechanics we established before.

The shape of this level is an "O" this mean that when entering the room, the player can see the exit.

He need to understand the flow of the level to resolve all the puzzle and unlocking the gate to exit.

Finally, the level I worked on.

this level end our demo and we want it to be more challenging for the player, the player have to activate 3 lever to unlock the door to the exit.

I inclued some plateform phase with moving zones requireing dexterity of the player to bring challenge and stress.

Following this phase I included a puzzle game requiring to find a code, with the ghost ability to see things that Lucius can't, the player can find the code. By this way I can manipulate my flow chart and bring a calm moment to the player.

After resolving the puzzle, the player need to get through a new plateform phase just before reaching the last lever.

With a bit of backtracking, Lucius can escape from the crypt and the demo's end.