ZHAO ZHANG
'QIU' (Captivity)
”A cage made of pressure that is broken.“
Project: Game Jam
Category: Plot driven puzzle game
Engine: Unity
Platform: Android
-This is a Game Jam with the theme of 'change'.
-The story is based on my friends' real-life experiences. It is about the massive layoffs in the internet industry caused by the economic shock in China in 2019.
-The game is a series of events caused by the changes resulting from job furloughs.
Gluttony and Tetris are both well known to players and fit the mechanics of the 'change' theme, after brainstorming we decided to combine the two gameplay styles to create a puzzle game.
To make the theme more consistent and resonate with a wider target group, I chose the real-life situation of the 2019 mass layoffs in China's internet industry as the backdrop and created the core plot using my friends who had told me about their personal experiences and feelings as a reference.
Being forced out of one's 'comfort zone' may be a failure at first, but this change is equally an opportunity to take advantage of one's former ambitions or dreams.
Therefore, we chose to use 'QIU' (Captivity) as the theme. And I designed the core plot and left the embellishment to the team's professional narrative designer.
To make the level graphics fit the plot, I was responsible for the design of the more complex levels to ensure that the features matched. Given the production time, we cut the original eight levels down to six, in which case it became a challenge to make the 'changes' in the plot obvious. This made the environmental narrative particularly important as there wasn't enough narrative build-up.
We included hints throughout the game that the '1209' number that appears in every level is the code in the final level. But we don't intend to tell the player what it is; when the player realises the unique meaning of the string of numbers for the main character, perhaps they can recall their own unique string of numbers, or password. This will have a strong resonance with the player and is exactly what we hope they will relate to.
Nearby are a few of our final levels with my sketches of the design.
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Level 4
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Level 5
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Level 6
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Bad End
Good End
We've set up multiple endings for the game, depending on whether the player has a high enough hidden score to get through the process.
Test feedback indicated that the game was harder than expected, which made it more likely that players would get a failed achievement. There was also not enough guidance to make them aware of the multiple endings, which is something I will need to keep in mind when designing in the future.