Art by devyn hogan-Duffy

Designing the Mechanics

Early on in the development process, we had an idea of all the things we wanted in the game. We knew we wanted a dark, puzzle platformer with a sci-fi, Lovecraftian aesthetic. We knew we wanted the player to use a grappling hook to traverse the levels while they sneak around monsters. But we still needed to figure out how to put it all together. So my job was to design the mechanics and create challenges that would let players experience those elements in a more engaging way.

Designing the Puzzles

When we had finished designing the mechanics, I began putting many ideas I had for puzzles onto paper. Many of these puzzles couldn't make it into the build because they used mechanics that we didn't have time to create, but they still helped me form a process for creating puzzles. Once we had a more concrete understanding of which mechanics we would use, I created many levels containing an individual puzzle with the plan to put them all into a larger world. Unfortunately, I later found that our save function didn't reset the environment and only sent the player back to a location, so any puzzle that had a soft lock state was shelved.

Designing the Challenges

When I found out that most of my puzzles would have to be scrapped, I pivoted towards making execution-based challenges. This way, the game would never have to rely on specific game states being saved for the player to continue their progression. I designed the entire final sequence of the game with these types of challenges.

Biggest Success: Atmosphere

One of the best moments in the game comes early on, when you first encounter a monster. To get past it, you have to turn off your headlights and wait for the monster to move past you. It was something that every member of the team was able to contribute to and it shows. The designers conceived of the mechanics and set up the level, the artists created the environment and monster, the engineer programmed the vision and movement, and the sound engineer created the ambient music and found fitting sound effects. The end result is a genuinely tense moment that we received universal praise for.

Biggest Failure: Cohesion

We tried to make NANO too many things at the same time. It was at times a horror game, a puzzle game, a platformer, and a metroidvania. That's too much for a young team to handle and the game ended up being really aimless and not having a clear vision. This was mostly a result of inexperience. Most of us had never worked in an actual team, which led to a lot of overscoping and also all of us just sort of throwing our ideas in a big melting pot and seeing what happened.

Biggest Lesson Learned: Communicate With Your Team

The majority of puzzles I had designed were not in the final version because I kept finding out after I had made them that we didn't have the resources to actually use them. This left my tangible contributions to the project much less than they could've been. My mistake was thinking that being on a team meant staying in my lane. While it's true that each member of a team has their own specialized field of expertise, it's important to make sure you're keeping up with each area of production to ensure your contributions mesh with everyone else's.

NANO is a 2D platformer about a robot who has to escape an underground laboratory. I worked on it at the University of Utah along with 7 other students. My primary role on the team was to design the gameplay mechanics and individual puzzles and challenges.