Breakdown
I'd made games before but never a puzzle game. Puzzle games don't need incredible visuals to work, what makes them hard is designing solutions that aren't obvious at first glance but feel earned when you find them. Can't be too hard or too easy. It's the balance between "I have no idea" or "This seems too easy" and "oh, I see it now" that I wanted to learn. When a puzzle themed jam came up, I teamed with my friend Josiah to figure it out.
My initial pitch was sokoban but instead of pushing blocks, you're collecting them. You'd control this tall stack of shapes that drops one block at a time as you move through the level. We started building it, got about halfway through, and realized we just couldn't do it justice in the time we had. So we pivoted.
We kept the tall stack idea but simplified everything else. The word TOTEM stuck with me, something almost spiritual about it, so we committed to that. But the visuals needed rethinking since players had to understand what was happening at a glance. That's when I noticed our stack kind of looked like those cursed long furbies, which was definitely not the vibe. So I went the opposite direction, long pink rat with big eyes, collecting cheese. Much cuter.
The minimal art style came out of pure necessity since we had no time for anything elaborate. I'd been messing around with orthographic cameras in Unreal, and the flat but 3D look just worked.
Key Accomplishments
- Designed all puzzle levels from concept to completion
- Created full art pipeline: character models, environments, UI
- Developed orthographic camera system for unique visual style
- Shipped playable game within jam deadline after mid-project pivot