Type: Group
Project Length: 4 Days
Skills:
Tools:
What was the goal?
This game was created for the Sheridan Winter 2025 Design Week! I was placed in a random group of 6 people, and we were tasked to create a puzzle escape room game, tied to a physical component that was required to be used to solve the overarching puzzle of the game.
What was the output?
My team and I came together and conceptualized a game where you played as an astronaut sent to stop the rubble of a crashed spaceship from exploding. The game had a grid-based map that you could explore, corresponding to a physical grid on a sheet of paper that the player could print out. The player's goal was to mark down what they saw in the game on their grid, including rooms that were destroyed in the rubble but theoretically would've existed prior to the ship crashing. By the end the player would've mapped out the entire spaceship, which would show them the layout of the entire map and provide them with the answer to the final puzzle. For this project, I worked a lot on puzzle design, but my main focus was art. I designed the grid sheet the player would print out, and also did all the pixel art, including the astronaut that the player controls, all their animations, and a tilemap for the entire ship. By the end of the week, we had a fully finished game that tied in our physical component perfectly!
Takeaways
This project taught me a lot about puzzle design in conjunction with working in a group setting. The team all had to come together to understand the fundamental parts of the design in order to delegate work effectively and be on the same page as we worked on our different parts of the puzzle.
I also got better at pixel art and tilesets, as well as designing characters in a pixel art setting. Halfway through the project, I got feedback on the design of the astronaut since at first, their helmet was white and nearly blended in with the ship’s tileset.
I took this into consideration and changed the design to be blue instead, and I was much happier with it! I’m also really proud of the design of the overarching puzzle and how it ties into our physical component. The idea of a physical map was really well received at the showcase!
