Puzzle Development

Main game objective: Restore beauty by lighting up clearing the skies, lighting up the region and establishing peace. The player can achieve this by successfully completing environment puzzles in order to light up five lanterns throughout the level.

Mindmap to explore interaction ideas:

I have created a basic eight part storyboard that shows the interaction with the environment and how the player will be traverse the environment, with use of the Boulder Throw and Gust abilities, in order to carry out the objective.

1. Use the gust ability to clear the skies of clouds and unveil the game environment. They will be introduced into the air region which is a beautiful scene of floating islands with decorative Japanese nature and architecture such as blossom tress and koi windsocks.

2. Use the boulder throw to smash debris to get to the first lantern and light it.

3. Use gust to clear a small fire that is blocking the path forward.

4. Use the boulder throw ability in order to climb up onto nearby floating islands. This lantern could be potentially missed by the player meaning they would have to backtrack if they miss it the first time they pass by.

5. Place boulders on two pressure plates in order to open up a door and reach another lantern.

6. A dangerous stream prevents the player from progressing. They will need to place down boulders so that they can use them as stepping stones across the river.

7. Use the gust ability to clear fallen tress/other debris.

8. Bamboo pan flutes! The last and most difficult puzzle. Along the journey, the player would have heard a tune be sung by a spirit flying through the skies/sat in a tree. They must play this tune, using the gust ability, on the pan flutes in order to clear a path blocked by some distressed spirits.

After coming up with this simplified puzzle design, I created this storyboard to show the basic structure for how I vision the gameplay.