The Chain

Summer 2018

The Chain is a top-down puzzle game that was created in a team of three people during the summer of 2018. The game is built around one specific mechanic of being chained up to a wall. The length of the chain determines where you can go, and the player has to work around this limitation to solve puzzles in order to progress through the game. The game uses pixel-art and is set in a dark dungeon with gritty music.

The game and its puzzles are based around the mechanic of the player being tied to the wall with a chain. The player has to push boxes around the level so solve puzzles.

This image displays one of the puzzles in the game. Pushing the box onto the button opens the door, but then the chain is too short for the player to be able to reach the goal. How should this be solved?

A full walkthrough of the game is displayed in the video below. You can download and play the game following this link: Download Link

Responsibilities

In the project, I was mainly in charge of game design, project management, and visual assets. I also had to do quite a bit of programming. More specifically, my tasks were:

Brainstorming and developing the game's mechanics
Sketching out, testing and implementing the puzzles and the level layout
Preparing and conducting game-testing sessions
Creating visual assets for the game
Managing deadlines and project tasks
Preparing team-meetings and work sessions
Helping out with programming where and when it was needed

The goal of the project was to create something new and challenging for the team members and to improve as game developers and designers. We tried to work with the specific idea of the player being chained to the wall, with the goal being to have the player constantly have to think about the limitations provided by the chain. This provided us with some challenges when it came to designing the game's puzzles, as we wanted to always include the chain in some way.

Learnings

Cooperating with a team when creating a game
Inventing and experimenting with new game mechanics
Designing puzzles

I also got some valuable experience in managing deadlines and tasks for more people than only myself, as well as how to work with and program in the Godot Engine.