Introduction
Open Sesame is a Kinect based two players coop pattern puzzle game. During the experience, players will use their hands and feet to cover different buttons to open the doors in a dreamy world.
Duration: 1 week (Oct3 - Oct 9, 2018)
Team Size: 5 (2 programmer + 2 artists + 1 sound designer)
Assigned Theme: Fun
Platform: Kinect
Technology: Unity3D, C#
My Role: Level design, programmer
Demo
Concept and design
The game utilizes the body and motion capture of Kinect and provides players with an intense and challenging puzzle solving experience. The ramping up in difficulty of each level is well designed. From the beginning, two hands or one hand one foot are enough to win the level, and then players need to move their body along with the moving buttons. In the end, solving the puzzle not only requires nice coop between players but also need a good sense of rhythm and physical coordination. Additionally, the solution to each level is not limited to one, players have to communicate with each other to figure out the optimal answer.
Level Design
The game contains 10 levels in total. The difficulty ramped up gradually and nicely. The first several levels are easy and tutorials. The second half of the game really requires players to communicate and work together to solve the puzzle mentally and physically use their hands and feet. In level 8 and 9, players need to communicate well to find out the easiest way to press all the buttons at once, as well as following the rhythm and body balance to solve the puzzle.
Level design for level 1 to 9
Playtesting
The difficulty was way more high than we expected when designing the levels. The “press together” button was originally implemented in both level 8 and 9. However after playtests, we realized almost no one can pass these level because of the high requirement of body coordination. Level 8 and 9 required players to move their left and right hand/feet in different shape and direction. So adding “press together” buttons made the game impossible to win. After many times of playtests and modification, we ended up with the version above, which is more and more challenging when proceed to higher level, but interesting and can be won as players finding the tricks.