Living Rock

"Living Rock" is a prototype game created as part of a university gamejam, Unijam. It is a jam organized by the collaboration of the ENSIIE and the IUT of Bobigny, over the period of a weekend to create a game between the specializations of video game.

The theme of the 2022 gamejam was "distance makes everything infinitely more precious" (la distance rend toute chose infiniment plus précieuse).

On my team, there were:

• Justine Guillou : Game Art (Bobigny LPJV)
• Sally Niasse : Game Art (Bobigny LPJV)
• Robin Lefebvre : Level Design / Game Design (Bobigny LPJV)
• Louka Doz : Game Dev (JIN 3A)
• Gaston Rouquette : Game Dev / Sound Design (TSP 1A)
• Emmanuel Dietlin : Game Dev (JIN 3A) (TSP)
• moi-même : Game Design / Level Design (Bobigny LPJV)

From this theme, the idea came to us to make a game based on the distance between a life source and the player.

At the very beginning, I had the idea of a combat oriented game where a life source gives us a stronger combat power and vitality compared to our proximity. So we would have had a combat/adventure oriented game.

However, with the skills of our team, it was more interesting to start on a game with little animation, because in the time allotted the animation of characters and creatures would have taken too much time.

So we decided to go for a puzzle game where the character ventures into ruins to find his nemesis. The rooms are full of riddles playing on a main mechanic the distance to the crystal. But also on secondary mechanics:

• Plates that can only be activated by the crystal or energy boxes
• Unidirectional conveyor belts
• Levers to keep the doors open

I assisted Robin Lefebvre on the realization of the level design, we thought of the rooms in such a way as to bring a learning phase, which is followed by an application phase and a twist to bring a surprise before the end.

This was a very rewarding experience and I am very satisfied with the game. The discovery of working with a team with different skills in different areas was positive, the possibility of creation was greater and the scope of the game was correctly chosen from the beginning.

When I have more time, I will continue to work on it to try to have a much more developed prototype.