Lyzzy
Lyzzy is a 2D side-scroller puzzle platformer developed for a university project over the course of 6 months. Lisa has her DNA mixed with that of a lizard, making her grow tail which she can detach at will and it will grow back. With it, she must use it to solve physics based puzzles and save all the lizards from the hostile environment.
​
Tail Dropping
Lisa can use her regrowable tail to solve obstacles throughout the level. Must of these consist of using it as weight on either that serve as levers for doors or at one end of a seesaw so she can jump to a ledge.
​
Save the Lizards
Spread throughout the level there are the little creatures Lisa is there to save. Sometimes they are in plain sight but sometimes they like to hide from view. Once you save one, you can see them on the little terrarium you Lisa brought with her!
​
Initial Research
-
This was my first real attempt at making a game. ​
​
-
After deciding on the general concept of the game, I started researching similar games to see how they dealt with the challenges I was facing.
​
-
The biggest influences were:
-
Limbo (Physics based puzzles)
-
BoxBoy (Level Design and puzzle design)
-
WitchWay (Level design and overall flow)
-
​
Dropping the Tail
-
The main reason why we chose to make a side-scroller platformer was due to the fact that we believed that some really interesting puzzles could be made with the tail dropping mechanic.
​
-
I first I made some mockup puzzle designs so my programmer and I could start testing and iterating them.
​
-
At this point I also worked with my artist to get a better sense of the overall look as well as character proportions.
Puzzle Concepts
-
After figuring out how I wanted the puzzles to feel like I tried to make some mock-ups on how they would fit into a coherent level.
-
I made some sketches of non-connecting areas with puzzles integrated into them.
​
-
This worked decently well, since it gave me an idea of what type of challenges I could throw at the player.
Ingredients and Patterns
-
As I designed the puzzles and challenges, I compiled the assets that we would need into a list.
-
This list would tell the artist the size and visual of the asset while also telling the programmer it's functionality.
​
-
This helped with the communication within the team, while helping me give objective values to design features.
-
To better organize and design the challenges, I then put these ingredients into patterns.
​
-
Patterns would be a way to judge what challenges I could make and their difficulty
​
-
This tremendously helped further down the line, making designing the map more of a modular process instead of trial and error.
Level Design
-
After compiling all these designs I started making level mock ups.
​
-
I went through various iterations, some even with mechanics that eventually got cut, and puzzles that didn't quite fit.
​
-
Even when a challenge wasn't being presented to the player, I tried to engage the player, either with interesting geometry or on the visual side.
​
-
As I was making changes to the level, I was also making block-outs so I could test them.
-
I tried placing the collectibles (lizards) in 3 different types of locations:
-
Spots where the player would see, but would have to think on how to get there
-
Hidden and rewarded player exploration.
-
In the path of the player as "freebies".
-
​
-
The lizards that the player collects are displayed in a separate screen, living in a terrarium.
Testing
Once we had a working prototype, we started to gather people from our target audience and had them test the game so we could gather data on what needed to be improved. These were the main points to improve:
​
-
Hitboxes didn't line up. A lot of the feedback we received were that the hit boxes on both the platform and the character felt off. This was a relatively easy fix only requiring some tinkering in Unity.
​
-
The game was a bit easy. Due to some design choices by me the game ended up being on the easy side. Although this was intentional, I overdid it. After messing with some of the puzzles and adding some more movement challenges, it added the bit of difficulty the game needed.
​
-
The art could be improved. Unfortunately, our artist left the project close to the end, so we did what we could with the assets they had made. The final result was below what we wanted but there was little we could do in time for the delivery date.
What I Learned
As stated before, this was the first real game I worked on. There were a lot of skills I had to quickly develop and some challenges that I had not foreseen, but overall this was an invaluable experience for the rest of my game development career. These are some of the main things I took with me moving forward:
-
Good Documentation makes a big difference. Having all the details for a certain region of the map, or for a certain mechanic neatly written and documented makes life a lot easier for everyone on the team. This project taught me the basics of how to write them.
​
-
Making games is hard but rewarding. As someone who never really delved into game development before this, I was incredibly surprised by the amount of work that goes into making a video game, the sheer number of things one has to think about and decide is enormous. But at the same time it felt incredibly rewarding yo see your idea come to life in front of your eyes.
​
-
Prepare for the unexpected. Sometimes things don't go the way you expect them to. This project taught me to prepare for that.
​
-
Game Design in general. Level design , gameplay design, puzzle design. These and many, many, more were all the things I started learning in the process of this project's development.
​
-
Unity, C#, Adobe XD.