Mirage: Illusions (2017)
Description: Mirage: Illusions is a 3D puzzle game developed for Android and iOS. The overall theme of the game is about optical illusions and perceptions. The playstyle is straightforward - the player, in the shape of a cube, has to move from the start to the end of each level. A grade based on the player’s speed and the number of moves taken will be given to each completed level.
Organization/School: Illam Software Entertainment
Project Team Size: 2 people.
Duration: 4 months.
Roles I worked: Lead Level Designer, Game Designer
Programs Used: Unity 3D, Adobe Photoshop, Maya LT
How did Mirage: Illusions come about?
Mirage: Illusions is my first published project after graduating from Temasek Polytechnic.
The team consists of 2 people:
Clement Kang (Myself)
Roles: Lead Level Designer, Lead Game Designer
Richmond Lim - Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richmondlcw/
Roles: Game Producer, Lead Programmer, Level Designer
One fine day, Richmond pitched a game design idea about impossible 3D shapes puzzle solving and that's how I decided to collaborate with him after seeing some examples and a short sharing of the concept.
It was a great learning experience, to invest actual time and money in software to produce a published game from the ground up using Unity 3D Engine. During the 4 months, we have to adapt to operating system (iOS and Android) constraints and do mobile market research for coming up with the standard screen resolution that would fit most of our target audience globally. As the game level design is the top priority, we first settle on the standard mechanics we wanted and then brainstorm on the level design together.
As it is the first time we publishing on a mobile platform, we were not so familiar with the process, we ended up publishing Mirage: Illusions on Android OS first then followed on Apple iOS by few weeks apart as we have to comply with Apple guidelines.
Up next is our promotion trailer for Mirage: Illusions...
Mirage: Illusions Promotional Video
Mirage: Illusions (Links)
Website: https://illamsoft.com/
What I did for game design and level design:
As for the game design, there are only to settle a few core game mechanics, 4 camera angles, and some obstacle blocks that change the player's path, and start/end goal. We want to use various impossible shapes to allow the player to transverse on the shapes as a 3D puzzle game.
As for the level design, Richmond has done a great job to create a tool to save the game level and allow me to create and test levels after saving levels with the image shown below where top of the image is referring to the work area and the bottom is referring to the game scene.
Most of the game levels are made by referencing impossible shapes and then dissecting the shapes in perspective camera view with a fixed game view that allows me to rotate to the 4 camera angles during play mode and build the level on the go and save it whenever the level is deemed completed.
The completed levels are refined further during playtesting in order to create a different spectrum of difficulty in order to prevent the levels to be too easy to solve as we prefer our players to think about the moves they suppose to do instead of breezing through the levels.
To conclude:
As a first published game, Richmond and I still have much to learn in terms of our technical skills in game development. As Mirage: Illusions is a 3D puzzle game, mainly focused on allowing players to transverse on impossible 3D shapes with a start and an end goal, it was a pretty daunting task as we were fresh into the game industry however we persevered and made it possible, and placed our first baby steps into the industry!