Art by Cedric Loehr

Illusion is a Unity-based 2D puzzle game that centers around manipulating optical illusions. I worked on it with 2 other students at the University of Utah. Due to the small team size, we all shared the different responsibilities. However, I primarily worked on designing the mechanics and puzzles, as well as creating a majority of the art assets.

Creating the Initial Concept

When I was creating the initial concept, I wanted to create something that would evoke a sense of surrealism in its players, similar to games like Monument Valley or Echochrome. I started by thinking of things that have always produced that feeling in me and I landed on the idea of making a puzzle game built around optical illusions, which I’ve always loved.

Creating the Art

One of the biggest hurdles we had to cross was figuring out how to make the game look good. We didn’t have any 2D artists on our team so I took the responsibility of being the game’s primary artist. My initial vision for the artstyle was a black and white, almost ink-drawn look that I thought would help emphasize the impact of some of the illusions that rely on high contrast color schemes. We wouldn’t be able to make that, so we switched to a highly geometric art style. This made it easier to create higher quality scenes and emphasized the illusions that rely on perspective. The issue with this was that it made the game look bland, so I figured I needed the color palette to do most of the heavy lifting. I took a lot of inspiration from Andy Warhol and the pop art movement. The wild, psychedelic color schemes supported the trippy feeling we were trying to create.

Designing the Puzzles

When designing puzzles for a game like this, I don’t think it’s necessary to have big, complex puzzles. I think the appeal of these kinds of surreal puzzle games is less about using logic and more about subverting it. You create something that forces players to rethink what they’re looking at and it creates a big shock factor. A single moment where their mind is blown. So my goal isn't to create an intricate web of interactions, but a single interaction that reframes how the player thinks about the game.

Biggest Success: Originality

We created a lot of really interesting mechanics. There's a ton of stuff in Illusion that hasn't been done in any other game. While we had trouble actually turning those ideas into a fun experience, there's value in just making something new. I don't think we made a great game, but I think we made something with the potential to be a great game.

Biggest Failure: Focus

While we created a lot of original mechanics, we would have been better off focusing on just one. We didn't have enough time to really familiarize the player with each mechanic and then also create interesting challenges with them. We also didn't have enough time to polish each mechanic, so many of the puzzles of buggy and easily exploited.

Biggest Lesson Learned: Adjust Your Vision to Your Talent

I put a lot of work into the animations for my proof of concept, so when it came time to turn it into an actual game, I was hesitant to change that original vision. Looking at our team, a designer, an engineer, and a 3D Artist, it's pretty obvious that we should've been making a 3D game. But I didn't want to lose some of the mechanics that only worked in 2D, so we made a 2D game instead. In hindsight, it hurts to think that we could've easily killed two birds with one stone by making a 3D game. It would've forced us to focus on the shadow mechanic and we would've had a better looking game.