Responsibilities

  • Designed and prototyped language-based puzzle mechanics using contextual glyph deciphering to gate player progression and communicate in-world meanings without direct instruction

  • Developed a dynamic event system to connect gameplay event sequences within the editor

  • Created custom Unreal Engine editor tools to streamline designer workflows and accelerate iteration

Details

  • Team Size: 18

  • Role: Tech Designer

  • Engine: Unreal Engine 5

Designing Puzzles

On Husk Planet I designed one of our main game puzzles. Our main design constraint for our puzzles is language. The player is exploring an ancient civilization with a glyph-like language that they must decipher in order to progress. This puzzle, dubbed "The Air Puzzle", involves using glyphs on alien devices to transport fuel rods through air tubes to a refueling area.

As someone who had not designed puzzles before I quickly realized during development how difficult it was. What we were doing at first wasn’t working. We weren’t getting the results we wanted. This stalled our development for a bit while we racked our brains trying to figure out what we were missing.

After weeks if meetings and discussions we came up with a new plan. We crafted a pipeline to get puzzles from idea to the engine. This involved multiple check ins to see the progress and make sure it was working. This pipeline had massive success. Instead of spending a few days writing a multi-page document describing a puzzle only for it to get rejected in its entirety, we now had a step-by-step process. Our puzzle output vastly increased.

Implementing Puzzles

Prototyping is my bread and butter. I love getting in-engine and getting things working. On Husk Planet I was one of the main implementers for our puzzle designs. In order to get consistent results I needed to create some systems for the puzzles to exist within the context of. This included things like generic interactable objects, a generic event system to connect different gameplay elements in sequence, and spline tools to make quick mockups.

Unreal Tools

During development we needed some tools to use in Unreal to aid our development. As a TD, I took the time to flesh those out.

The first tool was a simple spline tool that allowed our LD’s to quickly create winding and curving rows of bookshelves. This was a great success and is one of the most prominent features in our Fire level!

The second tool was a QoL tool. Sometimes, an asset would get put into a level even though the asset was located in a developer folder. If an asset was in a developer folder the build of that level would fail. I created a simple tool that at the press of a button would run through all of the assets in a level and warn the user if that asset was located in the developer folder!

Reflection

Working on Husk Planet was one of the hardest projects I’ve ever worked on in the best way possible. It pushed me to be better every day. Even though a large portion of the work I made on the project was cut due to time restraints I still learned a lot along the way. I made a lot of great connections with great people. FIEA is a tough experience but well worth it!