Brief
As the team leader and game designer, I contributed to designing the game theme, background story, levels, and a series of game mechanics for Timeless Easel.
Theme Design
The game demo was made by a team of ten members in the creation of a puzzle game demo titled “Timeless Easel” over a period of two months. I worked as the group leader . Achieved a group grade of 97% awarded by Teesside University.
Game Concept:
First-person puzzle game
>Three levels
>Four maps
>Set in 20th-century France
Story Line:
>Centers around the disappearance of famous artist Emily Blanc
>Players take on the role of a detective
>Investigation takes place in Emily’s art studio。
Gameplay:
>Players enter different time periods through paintings
>Objective is to find colored elements to complete a final painting
>Uncover the truth about Emily Blanc’s disappearance
Background Design
When I was young, I was ill and spent three months in a hospital room. It was a gray, stark place. There was only one window in the room, overlooking a forest. The green of the trees was so vivid, like a bright square of life embedded in the dead wall. I gazed at it from a distance everyday, I could gaze at it endlessly, who knows? and now, all that remains of that time is the memory of that patch of green.
I’ve always believed that colors are more than just what they appear to be on the surface. We can feel them and communicate with them. A truly colorful world belongs to those who are willing to feel the colors and life. Like the first time I resonated with color in my childhood.
This is how I created Emily Blanc, a female artist born in a colorless world. However, she could feel the sensation of color through her emotions and memories, and brought color back to the world.
Her childhood glowed with warm yellow. Like the gentle sunset light on a hillside, warmth that felt close enough to touch with just a lift of her fingers. Bathed in her mother’s love, her days were filled with happiness.
Her teenage years were painted in vibrant red. Like a rising sun, warm and bursting with energy. She had boundless creativity, spreading her imagination and youth around like wildfire.
Her midlife was the color of deep blue. Like the vast and boundless ocean. Her mind remained lively and spirited, while she appeared composed on the outside. It was the kind of resilience that only years of life can sculpt.
Level Design
Here is the 2D block out for the environment with all the assets needed and the interactions labeled.
Here is the 3D top view for the environment created with all the assets imported.
Mechanism 1 Scene Teleport
I created with this Level shifting mechanism. While the player looks closely at the painting, they will be teleporting to a new level. We have these three paintings work as portals, leading the player to Emily’s childhood, teenage years and adulthood.
The mechanism is achieved through the Blueprint coding system in Unreal Engine 5. When the player hitbox overlaps with the hitbox of the painting, the player will be forced to look at the painting. After a short flash screen, the texture on the painting will change and load the new level. Once the new level is loaded, the player will be free to look around in the new level.
Crosshair while not aiming at the painting
Crosshair while aiming at the painting
Vignette effect added while approaching the painting
Mechanism 2 Colorblind Test
We were making a game about experiencing and feeling colors. However, there are individuals in this world who, due to congenital or acquired reasons, are unable to fully perceive the myriad of colors. This condition is known as color blindness or color vision deficiency. We want these people to enjoy our game too, To ensure that these individuals can also enjoy the gaming experience, we have decided to implement a colorblind mode within our game.
Following some research, we discovered that color blindness primarily manifests in three forms: Deuteranope, Protanopia and Tritanopia.
I’ve designed a created a simple color blindness test before starting our game, inspired by the Ishihara test. I made our team’s logo into six different color combinations. This test can detect the presence and severity of color blindness in players, allowing them to gain insight into their vision condition.