Ludography
Ludography
Ludography
Ludography
Ludography
Ludography
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Kaimera
Kaimera is the very first game that I finished and the first one that I have submitted for a game jam. Kaimera is a simple sokoban style puzzle game with an expanding virus that grows every player movement. Despite it's simplicity and the game being my first game, I included this in my website's ludography since this game was my first attempt in exploring game design.
Game Concept
A sokoban puzzle is essentially a grid-based puzzle where players push boxes to reach a goal. This game doesn't really do anything special in that regard, so I would like to focus this page on the virus spreading mechanic and the level design.
The virus' role in the game is basically as an obstacle that instantly kills the player the moment they touch it. I made the virus expands so the puzzle punishes the player for taking too many movements. This forces the player to consider every step they make so that they can reach the goal with as less move as possible. Otherwise, the virus will just spread and engulf the entire room.
Visual indicator for virus severity and its spreading.
Additional Mechanics
From here, the players just need to find the faster route, but I feel the need to add more layer into the puzzle solving process. For that, I made it so that the boxes that players can push around have the ability to block the spread of the virus.
Pushable boxes blocking the virus from spreading.
As I was designing the level, it feels a little too straightforward if the whole experience comes down to: look for the virus, block every path of the virus with boxes, complete the stage. Instead, I made it so that the virus stops spreading after a certain stage, or rather, the virus only spreads at a particular stage. Since we are in the discussion of it, I should start explaining how the virus growth and spreading works.
In the game, the virus grows every 5 turns. What I mean by "turns" are grid-based player movements. In other words, moving one tile away from the initial position counts as one turn. Every five of that, the virus grows from one stage to another. The virus is set to have 3 stages which is differentiated by the sprites, and the spreading only occurs during the growth from stage 1 to stage 2. So, as long as the virus is already at stage 2, it won't spread anymore since it already passed the "stage 1 to 2 growth".
An attempt at a textless tutorial of showing that the virus does not spread at stage 2 and up.
This intended behaviour then makes the players carefully consider when to block the virus, and when to safely push it away to block another area. However, the first-time user experience during playtests has shown that players sometimes struggle to understand how the virus growth stages work. I did the tutorial for this game with as less verbal explanation as possible, since I want the players to figure it out themselves by looking at clues in the level design itself. The clues are shown by the placements of the virus, boxes, and the overall layout of the level. Everything goes smoothly during the playtest until the virus growth stage spreading behaviour introduction. My idea to circumvent this is by adding small dialogues that might help them a little. Although there might be a more optimal way to do it without, I believe clarity is the utmost priority in this case.