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Valo: Frozen Light (2018)
Designer • Gameplay Programmer
Group Project (8 Members)
Summary
Valo: Frozen Light is a puzzle game where the player must reach the goal using the ability to freeze all blocks of the same color. I joined this team as a designer in the middle of development. My contributions centered around iteration on the game's mechanics and implementation of gameplay code in C++. The game was selected by DigiPen to be presented at their PAX West 2018 Booth.
Challenge — Needs More Stars
A problem design was having when I joined the team was that solving a puzzle didn't feel as rewarding as it needed to. Players got to the goal and moved on without any burst of accomplishment. Playtesting eventually led to two solutions. The first was simply better feedback on all individual actions in the game. This meant more particles, more lights, and more sound effects. Little touches like increasing the charge time on freeze shots or modifying the pitch of heavy collisions had a huge impact. Another important step was the addition of stars to the game's levels. The stars rewarded alternate solutions to puzzles and left players who didn't earn all the stars a reason to replay the game.
Challenge — Latecomer
The most notable challenge with this project was having to jump into the project mid-development. I was iterating on mechanics that were created before I arrived and implementing them in a custom engine that everyone on the team was familiar with but me. To solve this problem, I had to find information. Information about the mechanics came from playtesting and notetaking. Watching people play showed me how they interacted with the system. I could see where engagement dipped or feedback was lacking, and that made my design work clear. For the engine, it was just a matter of reading any existing documentation and building a friendly relationship with the programmers. Frequent communication ensured I always had easy access to whatever I needed to know about the engine.
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