Lab Rags

In the first design meeting, we had for this game we as a team had to decide what would be the core mechanic of the game. That is manipulating your dead bodies. The idea behind the mechanic of holding your body is to simply help the player have better control over it and the vacuum was a creative way to store bodies and allow the player to shoot them far to reach farther targets, the vacuum can also, change the form of the bodies stored in it.

Alongside with the Mechanic of manipulating your bodies. I had the idea of unlocking new body types to assist the player to solve the puzzles in the game. With that, I had the idea of putting machines or situations that would make the body assume a certain form. In this case, the player goes into a compactor, and it spits out a body in the shape of a cube. Which can be used to help the player reach higher places or use as shield against projectiles.

The bounce body mechanic is equivalent to the cube body the difference is that the body is transformed into a trampoline by being smashed by a wrecking ball and allows the player to go even higher it can also, be used with the cube body to elevate even more the jump.

The Sphere Body is used to help the player reach areas where it is impossible to fit the character in. In this example, the player first unlocks the sphere body by putting a body into a machine that spins and transforms the body into a sphere, after that there is a hole that perfectly fits a sphere where it rolls dawn until hits a fan and finally presses the button. It made sense to have this type of body to help the puzzle design be more interesting.

The Design for level one is supposed to work as a tutorial to the player. As the player navigates the first part of the level the only way to get across is forcing them to “fail” and die from the spikes, plus the text box also encourages the player to keep trying, naturally, the bridge made by their past attempts will be clear to the new players and they will use it to complete the first puzzle. The same serves for the buttons where it is impossible to click on them until they pick a body up. The rest of the level was designed to encourage the player to play with the possibilities and be creative to reach the finish line, it is also encouraging them to do so by the presence of traps like spikes and torrents that both kill the player making the number of bodies higher. The cool part of this level is that there is more than one way to finish it. (more examples of level one in the screenshots)

This level is a complementation of level 1. As the player already got a good idea of how the game works, no it is time to show them new body types to increase the options the player will have. Level two is a mix of platforming and puzzle. The puzzle part is to figure out which body type is the best to use in certain obstacles, while it is important to the player to have good timing to place the right body in the right moment, and of course, use multiple bodies at the same time.(more examples of level one in the screenshots)