Freedom into
the Unknown
Freedom into the Unknown is a 2D puzzle game with impossible mazes, use the character's ability to glitch through walls to complete the levels
Made in 2020 over the course of five weeks in Unity2D
Solo systems/level design project
Project Development
Freedom into the Unknown was a project for Principles of Game Design the main objective of which was to insure that designers had good design foundations to build upon. The development for this project was split into three parts, a one week concepting phase, then one week of development, and finally a three week period where we could select any prototype we made and elevate it to a full game. This game was made for the maze game project and is the one I chose to make a full game out of.
Process
The image on the left depicts the first level of the game. There is no clear path from the start (purple dot) to the finish (green line). The player is able to glitch through up to three walls allowing them to complete the level. The image on the right shows the completion route for with purple stars as the glitches.
I was inspired to make this game because of the idea of "impossible" mazes. Everyone knows what a maze is and adding the wrinkle where players had to look not for the direct line from start to finish, but rather the line that only went through three walls leads to more interesting level and gameplay design. This change to the standard maze formula motivated me to create interesting levels that would cause people to think in a slightly different way to what they were used to for other mazes.
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The project requirements included narrative context for the game, so I during the concepting phase I gathered some ideas. The one I settled on fit both mechanically and made the process of explaining the environments easier. The player is a glitch in an otherwise perfect world that was trying to escape while being hunted down by the architects of the world. This allowed me to give the player the ability to "glitch" through walls making the previously impossible mazes possible and the environments could be simple places with solid greyscale colors. The whole world could be neat and orderly which allowed for the player and the goal to stand out in the otherwise sterile world.
The other three weeks of development were focused on adding more levels, mechanics, and adding sounds. To do this I added enemies that would patrol and would reset the level if they caught the player, zones of poison that would reset the level if the player entered them as well as buttons to turn off the poison. After I added all of these mechanics I added more levels including tutorial levels for all of these new mechanics. Finally I added sounds to the game, some ambient background music to set the mood as well as sounds for the player moving around and glitching through walls.
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An enemy patrolling a specific area.
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Freedom into the Unknown
The player dying to poison then turning it off.
Particles for the player glitching through a wall.
Reflection
The whole project went really well, the game felt incredible to develop because of how it forced me to develop levels that were not possible to complete while not being obvious in their route. This method of maze creation helped the game be fun to play as instead of just looking for the one path and seeing walls as dead ends, the player needed to think about the paths through the walls and find the ones that required the least amount of glitches. Additionally one thing I did not think of during the development of this project is how to use the mechanics I created as guides. I did not have much time to build things out so the levels I made were not that large. Making larger levels that allowed for me to use the mechanics I made to show players a portion of the path. If there is a poison area, the player likely needs to go through that area so placing a button to turn it off shows two different places that the player needs to go in a specific order. With larger mazes that allowed the player to move around them without just being "can they find the three walls" would make the game so much better and it is something I did not have the time to do.
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If there was one thing I would have liked to do better, it is the particle system. At the time I did not know how the particle system in Unity worked and so I only had some basic particles, but if I could go back and do more on it I would add more robust particles for the enemies, player movement, and especially for the player glitching through walls.