Eye of the Erime
What I Did
- Designed and implemented the tutorial
- Created a flowchart for the tutorial
- Led the settings and accessibility options for the game
- Led external playtest data gathering and deciphering
- Designed the plantable flowers and planter spots
- Created all UI layouts, including the majority of its functionality
- Chose and implemented each colorblindness option
- Created and implemented functionality for custom controls
- Created and implemented player HUD elements
- Assisted puzzle designers test puzzles for user experience and player communication
- Provided feedback on puzzles and level design that improved user experience and player communication
- Playtested each puzzle and assessed their level of challenge at each point in the game
- Chose the default controls layout for both keyboard and controller
- Wrote, discussed, and maintained spec docs
- Used Jira for my task management
- Collaborated with others towards a shared vision
Game Summary
Eye of the Erime is a 3D puzzle game where you solve puzzles of an ancient civilization, the Erime, in order to save your mother from the same aliment that eradicated the Erime. In Eye of the Erime players play as Quin searching for his mother who got lost in a cave. While exploring the strange and fascinating caverns, players will uncover remnants from the Erime and the ailment of entanglement. Players will solve puzzles using their modified camera to take pictures of entanglement flowers which cause different effects depending on the type of flower.
Ephemeral flowers will cause attached objects to become intangible, allowing the player to see, walk, and take pictures through it. Binding flowers will cause attached objects to freeze in place, unable to be moved by any force applied. Echo flowers will cause the attached object to create a time clone which when the photo is deleted will cause the attached object to return to the time clone’s position.
The player must master entanglement in order to solve puzzles so Quin can save his mother.
Tutorial Flowchart
The flowchart below demonstrates the actions the player takes as they progress through the tutorial and first area. This was created in Figma to have a better understanding of what the player is doing for the tutorial and was given to the programmer as a reference on how the tutorial system would be implemented.
Looping Behavior node is only used for the cube tutorial which acts differently than other tutorials. The note says: This Cube Tutorial is a description of how this tutorial acts as the player is near the cube. The player does not have to preform these action in order, but for them to progress the player needs the cube to be on the pressure plate.
In-game Tutorials
I led the tutorialization of the game. The goals were to have something simple to understand, not too intrusive, and provide need hints or controls at that point in the game. With goals set and the help of a programmer, we created the tutorial system displayed to the right.
There are a two types of tutorials and a couple ways of displaying them. The first shows an action the player is able to do while the second directly tells the player what they should do to progress. Tutorials appear at times where the player needs to learn a new action or after a short period of time as a hint.
I chose to display tutorials in three different ways. One way is by having them appear under the reticle, indicating that this tutorial is preformed by the player. The second is the tutorials appearing on objects themselves like buttons, these tell the player that this object needs to be interacted with in order to progress. The final way is through tips, tutorials that appear after a short amount of time if the player has not progressed. For example, the tutorial for IRIS (the machine) which will appear after the player has been next to IRIS for a few seconds. IRIS and other story related objects also have particles which were added to draw the player’s eye to something they needed to interact with.
Plantable Flowers
The plantable flowers and planter spots was an idea I had part way through our alpha milestone. This was a solution for our puzzles having little to no experimentation with the flower mechanic. We wanted to add more player choice to our game.
So we added experimentation by allowing players to place their own flowers in designated spots. This way we kept the same game mechanics while allowing for the question of “what flower would work best in this situation?” This planting mechanic added depth and mastery of the flowers to our game. Players are now able to grab a flower, plant it into a planter spot, then that object will be affected by the effects of the planted flower.
Implementing the planting of a flower operated similar to how puzzle designers were already applying flowers to objects, we just gave the player the ability to do it as well.
HUD Iteration
I designed the player’s HUD which for this game required a rather large region of the screen be used for taking photos. The goals were to have UI elements not take up too much space, have a resemblance to real life camera reticles, and show the bounds of the photo.
The camera reticle went through over fifty iterations and tweaks. Displayed in the images to the left, showcase some of the iterations and the final in game product. Ultimately, a more simplistic yet refined look was selected.
The most challenging part of designing this camera reticle was making sure that it was prominent enough on the player’s screen so they knew the boundaries of the photo they were taking, and keeping it thin enough so the player is still able to see beyond it to play the game. To aid in this, the player is able to select the color of the reticle in the settings.
This camera reticle design was used as a reference for the shapes of many other UI elements, most notably being the buttons. All buttons in the game have corners like the camera reticle to visually connect the UI and the in game camera.
Playtesting
Internal and external playtests were conducted frequently. Internal happened the most, but external playtests gave fresh eyes on the game which helped tremendously. Talk about how playtests were conducted and what information was taken away.
Problem Solving
Use this section to talk about the issue of key binds for keyboard and mouse and controller, talk about how controller influenced the decision to have the secondary interaction be a hold.