Monster Maze 10/2/2022

We talked about drives in Game Design 1 this week, which are the strong subconscious emotions that motivate people to want to keep playing a game. I want to design this game to focus on curiosity. The level is a maze, so my goal is to have the player curious about what is around every corner and how to solve the puzzle.

Doors

I began working on doors a few weeks ago, and they have changed a couple of times as I began to settle on what I wanted the gameplay to look like. Currently, doors are connected to a button that can trigger them to open or close. The button toggles the open variable in the door and sets the swinging variable to true. If the swinging variable is true, UpdateRotation will be called from the tick function which interpolates the door rotation until they hit an open or closed position.

Timers

We discussed how to make timers in Game Design 1 this week, and I decided to include this in my gameplay by having the player have a limited amount of time to get to the door after pressing a button before it closes. Each button can be configured to have it's own timer length and will start a timer when activated. This will spawn a timer UI and call the start timer function in the UI. Once the timer reaches the end, it will reset the button and close the door.

Gameplay

I made three button and door combos in the level. Each combination is associated with a unique statue and torch color. In the starting room, there is a colored torch with the corresponding statue below it to act as a key to understanding the level. Each door and button has colored torches in the room with them and the player can follow paths marked by the statues to find the buttons.