Escape Time is a puzzle game produced in 4 months by 8 students. It uses the main principles of Escape Games while adding mechanics inspired by its platform
like turning the room upside down to discover what is on in roof with a swipe.
In Escape Time, the player will go through different catastrophes like the Alexandria’s library fire or the sinking of the Titanic to
avoid them in
time
and stop the entity that produce them.
In the current version there is 8 puzzle rooms within 2 chapters and a tutorial, however 2 other chapters are planned.
My roles:
During this project I mainly worked on two aspects: the creation of a Level Design tool and the gameplay development.
- The tool:
To create the rooms quickly, I created a tool for Level Designers and Lever Artists. I converged
every interaction possible in prefabs that only need to be drag & drop in the scene in order to
be an interactive object, then the Level Designers and Level Artiste just had to
chose specifies
interactions and details
about them (like rotate to this point if the player click on int while being
in this angle or rotate to another point if he has another angle).
None of this prefabs possess an Update, all the interactions of the player are in a small script of 100 lines that call an event system after detecting which interaction it is. So, all the interaction are tested at
only one time and allow us to keep good performances.
- Gameplay Development :
I was the Lead Gameplay Programmer and work with another programmer who worked in part time as the Sound Designer. Hopefully, the
tool allowed
the Level Designers to do 90 % of the puzzle
without further code, which permitted us to work on the last 10 % without failing our deadlines.
The other programmer worked on some puzzle while I did the other one and I integrated all our puzzles in the game.
Skills acquired :
- I learn how to create a tool versatile enough to work during all the productions even with the Game Design changes during it.
I worked with the Level Designers and the Level Artists so it will be usable for both.
- - I assist the Manager to create planning for the Game Designers and programmer teams. I learned to estimate the production time and to
look after the skills
and demands
of the Gameplay Programmer under my responsibility.
