Digital Escape Room | Narrative Puzzle Game | Level Design
Game Designer
August - December 2021
Christy Ye - Game Designer
Unity Game Engine
Procreate
Adobe Illustrator
A 3D escape room adventure that takes place between the pages of a pop-up book.
Download the game here.
DIVING INTO THE PAGE
Our primary goal was for players to feel both childlike curiosity and adventurous intrigue. Players can experience the exploration of a "real" and fantasy world and the satisfaction of solving puzzles and collecting items.
The game is intended for players ages 10 and up. It's not made to be extremely difficult for players, but more so plays on nostalgia by transporting our players back into the imagination and physical stature of a child. There are clue affordances within the game that are provided with the intention to help advance players forward.
Each puzzle introduces a new mechanic that players' must learn to solve the puzzle.
The players' switch from first-person to third when traveling into the book to re-inforce the concept of "becoming a character in a book".
The three book worlds players' enter are designed to feel as though paper has come to life, with every character and word popping out.
OVERVIEW OF THE EXPERIENCE
You find yourself stuck in your playroom. When you try to leave, you hear your parents outside say “you’re not coming out until you finish that book report”. If you move along the walls, you can hear your friends playing outside. You try to pick a book to read, but everything seems so boring. Then you notice a large open book on your table. You go over to inspect the book and find yourself teleported into a paper-origami fantasy world.
You enter the book and are given a (new) puzzle. Explore the playroom and book to find clues and hints.
Solve the puzzle by entering the correct code or pattern.
Receive an item from the puzzle that will help you unlock the next puzzle, and eventually escape the playroom.
With each item you gather from the magical book, you get a spark of inspiration and finish writing your book report. You are now able to leave the playroom to go outside to play with your friends.
In creating a puzzle game for younger audiences, we were allowed to be more straightforward with our instructions but still allow for some exploration and discovery to solve the puzzles.
With creating a world inside a book, we were able to utilize and integrate text affordances to guide players along with other text UI to ensure clarity of mechanics. Some important UI elements we included were:
By indicating how to enter and exit the book, players can jump between the playroom and book world with ease.
Important icons and text are littered all around the playroom and book world so players have multiple leads on what to do next.
To represent progress, we created a UI pop-up that indicates when players' complete a puzzle and collect the item.
REFLECTION
The process of creating A Page Turns was my first time experiencing every phase of the game design process while developing a game from start to finish. From ideation to level design, art development and coding and then testing the game and bugfixing, I was thrown into the deep end with a floaty and am so grateful for the experience.
I started the project extremely hesitant and unsure of myself because I felt like I lacked the concrete skills necessary to be able to design and code a game, especially a 3D puzzle game. However, through this experience I grew so much in all the areas I previously lacked confidence in which set me up for success in my later game projects. I would like to thank my project partner Christy Ye for her constant support and superhuman ability of helping me understand every part of the development for A Page Turns when I became frustrated and confused. Forever thankful for the opportunity to work on a game with you! <3
Designed by LXM