MAGNO DORIAN
TECH LEVEL DESIGNER
DorianMagnoPortfolio
THE CONUNDRUM
HELIX
DESCRIPTION
The Conundrum: Helix is a puzzle game where the player is stuck in a strange facility. He has to solve plenty of puzzles to reach endings. For each endings the player gets knowledge about his world and level elements that let him explore further behind and interact with new contraptions.
This project is a remake of a small game I did for a game jam.
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My Roles:
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I worked on almost every aspect on this project.
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I worked on the level elements, puzzle elements and level design.
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I worked on the narrative with the help of Cica'.
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I programmed the 3C and level elements.
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I made the 3D assets and the animations.
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I also worked on the lighting and some shaders, like the water going done of the hexagonal grids.
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I recruited a small team to help me on parts where I lack skills: Music, UI and textures.
GENRE
PUZZLE
DURATION
+2 YEAR
GAME'S CONTEXT
The Conundrum: Helix is a puzzle game where the player needs to go through the same rooms, discovering hidden contraptions and abilities to gather clues and maybe find an escape.
The game is made of 3 Acts, in each Act the player gets a new vision revealing hidden paths and cryptic instructions.
DOCUMENTATION
THE COMPLEXE
The Conundrum: Helix has two different environment. The Temple is the environment the player will see the most. This place is an artificial temple made to test the player. The goal was to make something familiar yet strange.
The Complexe is the "envelope" of the Temple. It's purpose is to gather data gained from the Temple and analyse it.
When the player start the game, he has no idea that the Temple is fake and that the Complexe even exists. When replaying the game, the player discover a hidden path, revealing that all he thought was real was actually based on lies.
The game is builded on surprise and mysteries and this environment is one of the most important "wow" effect of the game.
A room from the Temple (red indications can be seen with a special vision)
The same room seen by an observation room from the Complexe.
FLOW OF THE GAME
In The Conundrum: Helix, the player evolve in small area. During their playthrough, the player will unlocks "visions" to discover secret messages. Thanks to these, the player can learn new mechanics like secret properties for the box or secret paths.
All the element are available from the start of the game. When designing the features, the goal was hide the interaction, but be easy to use when discovered.
When designing the rooms, the goal was to design puzzle on multiple layer, and also consider all the room as a large "space". During their exploration, the rooms will feel more like a "sandbox".
FIRST ENDING
END ACT I
END ACT II
END ACT III
MULTI-LAYERED PUZZLES
For designing the puzzles, I made a set of rules to follow. I also playtested a lot to see if the multi-layered puzzles were fun and intuitive. The hard part was to keep the right balance between clarity and difficult puzzles.
As the development progressed, the goal was to design puzzle that were fun to solve rather than obscure and complicated.
One of the first room in the game. The player has to figure out how the levers and the doors work together.
For the second act, the player discovers lasers that goes from A to B. The player needs to prevent all the lasers from reaching their goal. They'll need to use everything they learned from this point.
On the third act, the player discovers that the roof of the room is also usefull.
There's an other room above, where's the doors also use the same system as the room under.
MADE WITH UNREAL
Thanks to my knowledge of Unreal, I could quickly build up the game in my spare-time. Thanks to Unreal Engine material system and plugins, it was easy to create the rooms quickly and add variety with WorldAlignedTextures.
I also added diversity with VertexPainting and different lighting mood.
