Game Designer
Lost Light
About
My Role: Puzzle Designer, GDD-Writer, QA-Tester
Genre: Psychological Horror
Players: Single Player
Time: 9 Weeks
Platform: PC
Engine: Unity
My Role
I designed the puzzles that appeared in the game, wrote the Game Design Document and did QA-testing.
Puzzle Design
Lost Light is a game that's heavier on the story being told than it is on gameplay. Despite this, we still wanted to implement some interactivity to at least give the impression of more gameplay than there really was. This suited me perfectly, as I enjoy designing and balancing game mechanics.
For the sampling station puzzle, my original idea was that, on each test tube, there'd be a label that said what type of material it was. These tubes were then going to need to be inserted into a specific slot on the sampling station depending on whether it was a liquid, gas or solid material. The sorting based on the material made it into the game, but with each tube having a number and a letter on it instead.
The maintenance room puzzle is left functionally intact, but the original plan was for the instruction manual needing to be rotated so that the Player could read the instructions. In the final game, the instructions are simply put on a wall next to the puzzle.
QA-Testing
Over the weeks, I playtested the game numerous times to look for any sort of bug; Anything that could softlock the game or make it crash, or any graphic bugs that needed to be fixed, such as gaps in the models or missing colliders. I also made note of whenever I found any issues with the sound balancing. I documented all of these bugs and errors in documents for my colleagues to look at.
Summary
Lost Light is a first-person psychological horror game with puzzle elements.
The Player takes control of Paul Isaksson, a researcher who works alone on a space station above an unknown planet. He's tasked with analyzing samples from the planet below and keep the station maintained.
But as he completes his tasks, he soon begins to see ghosts on the space station. Ghosts of his tragic past on Earth that he hoped he'd left behind him.
The goal of the game is to complete different tasks and make it to the end of the story.