Role: Game designer
Worked a lot on game vision
and team communication.
Team:
Programmer: Thomas Giro
2D Artist: Jeanne Prigent
Sound designer: Marc Enciso
Project Manager: Mathieu Renard
Game Designers :
Malo Dalmier & Jonas Dutouquet
A Feel-good game:
- Explore a world made of paper and to cut it as you please!
- Series of cute playlets for the player to mess with.
- The game has its own logic, linked to the cutting mechanic.
- A game for people who never played games.
The cut mechanic:
The game let the player move around and cut any object on screen with a drag & drop input. One of the first design challenge was to limit this mechanic to prevent the player from destroying the game with it.
The things you cannot cut in the final game are:
.the floor (it would break the game if it could be cutted)
.background assets (to let the word still be cute if the player cuts everything)
.Living elements (animals cannot be cutted, it keeps our game non-violent, but they do react to cuts.)
.3D objects (Useful as a tool for lvl design)
Designed interactions with the word:
The players can of course interact with the world by cutting every tree that they see, but we designed a few "puzzles"to reward them during their adventure. Those puzzles are simple playlets that the player can interact with, or key elements to cut and play with.
Most of the playlets that the player encounters are totally optional to solve: we prefered to reward our player when they're curious, rather than punishing them if they don't understand what we're asking them to do. By doing that, we're making the game more accessible to people who never played a game before and don't want to be stuck and frustrated.
When a puzzle is not optional, it's a really simple and easy to understand/execute task, that is there to make sure the player didn't forget the cut mechanic, or didn't miss too much playful content without wanting to.
We also used those playlets to create a unique logic in our game's world, where cutting things can change the way the world works. It gives an extra meaning to our cut mechanic and adds a bit of humor to the game.
It was hard to always be confident about the game not searching to challenge players, it's not something we are used to. But we had a clear vision of what the game was with the second designer and team, it helped a lot.
