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Enigma Escape

"Title Menu"

The game was made as part of a course I took at NC State. In the course we had to make 4 games that followed a general story and theme. We chose to create a treasure-hunter world that is ruled by a conniving overlord. This game is the 4th chapter, where the overlord has captured the main character and the player has to escape the labyrinth while solving different puzzles. You can play the game at https://sailboat642.itch.io/enigma-escape

The Maze​

"The Maze"

The labyrinth was designed by my teammate Josh Buckner. The player has to navigate the maze and collect all ten coins within the given time in order to open the door to the gate. To get around the maze, the player has to travel through connected portals (shown by the different colours). Each portal is locked by one of two puzzles, however, once unlocked the player is free to travel through the portal as many times.

The Two Puzzles​

A sliding block puzzle that was designed by my teammate Kanv Khare is the first of the two puzzles. To solve, the player must put all the pieces in the right place, once a block is in the right place it will change shade to yellow.

"Block Puzzle unsolved"

"Block Puzzle solved"

The second puzzle is rhythm-based and is solved by awareness of tempo. The player is shown a cassette with 3 dials. All 3 dials are playing the same track, however one of them is off-beat. The player has to figure out which one is out of sync and mute the track. "Dial Puzzle unsolved"

"Dial Puzzle solved" Once the player correctly identifies the out-of-sync dial, the light will turn green and allow them to open the portal.

The Final Piece​

Once they have collected all the coins the player is free to collect the key and escape. "Maze Complete"

But wait!! The overlord has one final test. The Klotski Puzzle. A really hard puzzle that takes a minimum of 82 moves to solve. The goal is to get the square key symbol to the bottom of the board. The player can slide each puzzle into the empty space. "Klotski Puzzle"

Once they solve the puzzle, they are finally free to escape... "Freedom"

Learnings​

This project forced us to combine our different games together in a cohesive manner. We had to look into other's games and decide how to fit them together. One problem is that the art style was not consistent throughout the game. For future games, it would be easier if one person was responsible for all the art. Another learning was the organisation of our project. We each had our own folder for sprites and objects, and our scripts, although they controlled different portions of the game, were named pretty similarly. So navigating the project files was tricky. In the future, I would like to be more communicative with the team and delegate tasks properly so that someone is responsible for each job and we leave no stone unturned. I would also like to lay down rules and conventions for naming and organizing files.