Introduction
Alena is a Point and Click adventure. The game is set during World War One and we play as the Russian pilot Alena crash landing on an island in the Baltic Sea.
My Contributions
- Level Design
- Puzzle Design
- LUA-script
- Story Writing
- Playtesting
Specifications
- Text Adventure Game
- GameEngine: Löve
- LUA
- TGA-game
The team
- Niklas Briselius(LD)
- Sebastian Madsen(LD)
- Oscar Blom(ART)
- Hedda Peterson(ART)
- Samuel Andresen(PROG)
- Christian Forsberg(PROG)
- Niklas Utterbäck(PROG)
- Pauliina Karlsson(PROG)
- Björn Stenlund(PROG)
Design Philosophy
From the start, I and my level design colleague wanted to make a Point and Click that everyone could finish. We wanted to display the story of Alena more than a just a game with high puzzle complexity. To still have an engaging game we made the puzzles a bit more intractable, instead of just item-combining puzzles.
With more focus on the story, we decided with our Graphical Artist to make a more mystery feeling to the game. No other characters except for Alena, and more focus on the environment, story, and puzzles.
The setting was a deserted island in the Baltic Sea, this made us able to explore a different kind of puzzle and level design than the usual tropical island. This also allowed us to explore the World War one and Alenas part of the war
Working as a level designer in the team
The work as level design was in the start a way to figure out how to embed the story with the gameplay and design. So we started with the story and how Alena got to the island and how you would think as a person to be able to escape the island. We filled the world with “Rooms” that progressively revealed more about the island.
The way we designed the puzzles and rooms with the group was that I and my Level Design colleague did a paper design that we presented for the group to get their work started. Then we explored our possibilities with the puzzles and rooms and continued from paper design to white box, to alpha and beta.
Closing Thoughts
Before this project, I’ve only worked on 3D projects and engines like unity and unreal as a Level Designer. It was very fun and self-exploring to work with a 2D Point and Click game and trying to fill my role as a Designer in this project. I got the impression that many players liked the game while playing it. It was a relaxing fun and somewhat easy game. Our realistic setting made this game stand out compared to other Point and Click games
If we would have had more time I would make the island seem bigger and make the game less linear in the level design. A great idéa would be to have a hub to return to and make it more like an adventure point and click.
