Rotational
Overview
In Rotational, the player needs to navigate to the finish by rotating the level. The level rotates with 90 degrees at a time, after which the player and any boxes present in the level fall straight down. Boxes can either hinder the player, or placing the boxes correctly can be crucial to completing the level. Doing this, the player needs to watch out not to land on a set of spikes.
My contributions
This was a 1-person project, so I did all concepting, level design and coding. The visual assets originate from the Unity Asset Store.
Date/Period:
feb 2024 – mar 2024 (parttime)
Project type:
Student project
Tools I used:
Unity (C#)
Team:
Solo project
Result
The game can be played here:
Process
I wanted to focus on explaining the mechanics through the levels instead of with a separate tutorial and, in the later levels, ‘trick’ the player into having the wrong intuition for solving the puzzle.
Level 1
The first level should familiarize the player with the rotation mechanic. For this I kept the level small and simple, putting the focus on the mechanic, and not yet on solving puzzles.
Level 2
This level introduces spikes to the player. This level is similar to the first level, but if the player tries to follow the same movements to get to the goal, they will fall on a spike and lose the level. This gives the player one option: turning the other way. Doing this, the player is also shown that falling next to a spike does not give any problems.
Level 3
This level introduces boxes to the player. When the player attempts to reach the end (turning right and then left), the box will be positioned in front of the goal, making the player unable to reach it. This shows the player that they have to pass the box before getting to the goal.
solution: R-L-L-R-R
Level 4
For this level, playtests showed that most players are tempted to immediately turn right in order to get out of the starting position. However, this causes the player to get stuck. The player first has to correctly position the blocks (by turning left) before the finish can be reached. The solution goes against the original ‘instinct’ of the player.
solution: L-L-L-L-R-L-R-L
Level 5
With this level, the player encounters the problem that the boxes are blocking the finish. So those need to get out of the way first. For the first box this can be done almost immediately, but for the second box, the player needs to be in the upper right spot.
This level originally had 3 boxes (with a slightly different layout), but to increase the difficulty between levels somewhat more gradually, I slightly simplified the puzzle. I also used the positioning of the spikes to ensure there is only one possible solution.
solution: R-L-L-L-R-L-L-L-L-R
Level 6
In this level, the player needs to go through the gap in the right in order to reach the finish. Behind it, however, there is a spike. So in order to survive this, the player needs to position a box in such a way that it is in front of the player while they go through the gap. To do this, both boxes are necessary, as one box needs to fill the hole on the left, so the other can fall on top of it.
In this level I also used the spikes to ensure one possible solution.
solution: L-L-R-L-L-L-L-L-R-R-L-L-L-L-R-R-L
