Professor Pemda's Puzzle Pyramid

I worked on the game over the course of the whole 3-week period. The first week was spent coming up with the idea and building the basics of the game. Once I came up with the game idea, the sci-fi setting came pretty naturally: nothing on earth combines in different ways based on the direction it’s moving, so the game had to be sci-fi. Why not escape from a space station filled with hazardous materials? In the second week I added in the graphics and designed the levels. In week 3 I built more levels and added finishing touches.

Originally, I had ideas for several different games based on the theme "Escape", but I ultimately chose this because I had a clear vision for what it would be and how it would play from the start. I like puzzle games like this because they lend themselves to so much variety from a simple base of mechanics. I was inspired by Baba is You, which is a fantastic showcase of a simple ruleset creating infinite variety.

I've always been interested in game development, but I only started about 5 years ago. I think it's a great and fun creative outlet that mixes problem solving and creativity. For this game I used Unity3D. I created all the graphics myself using primitive shapes and Probuilder. The biggest challenge I faced was the undo system: you need some way to save the state of the board 2, 20, or even 200 moves ago! I decided to save the state of the level every time you move as a string of text, and built in the capability to load levels using that. Once I had this functionality, I decided to add a level editor and let people play with it themselves!