S-Team
2021 · Team of 5
3D Puzzle game made for the Grand CITM GameJam with the theme women in STEAM jobs, our team won the Best Technology Prize to the game with the best technical quality.
Description
Game made for the Grand CITM GameJam, the theme was 'women in STEAM jobs'.
We were given 36h to complete the game and publish it to itch.io, and won the Best Technology Prize to the game with the best technical quality.
S-TEAM is a 3D puzzle game made in Unity where the player must swap between five women, each one with a power representing a field of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics). In order to solve the puzzles and complete the game, you will have to combine their skills, which are:
- Science: Change her physical size.
- Technology: Repair electronic circuits.
- Engineering: Push heavy objects.
- Art: Create stairs or doors by painting them.
- Mathematics: Decipher hidden messages.
Role
I was one of three programmers of the project. For the design aspect of the game we did a brainstorming session to gather ideas and then we decided as a group what the final product would be.
In the next section I have detailed the features I implemented for this project.
Features
Level 1 Design
For the first level we wanted to teach the player to change the characters and showcase the power of one of the characters, in this case the engineer.
The power of the engineer is to move orange-glowing objects, so I had the idea to make a simple chess puzzle where you had to move one piece to win the match. To make it easier for players who didn't know how to play chess, the problem is a basic back rank mate, you have to push the rook to mate the black king.
Technology Power
I was in charge of designing and implementing the ability for the technology character.
The ability can be used in the yellow controls found in the levels 3 and 5. The puzzle in level 3 is the easy version and the one in level 5 has one more step in difficulty.
The idea was to make a small minigame of connecting the dots, resembling the connection of wires. The player has to connect same colored dots without crossing other colors to complete the puzzle.
Level 3
I was responsible for the design and implementation of the complete level 3 of the game, I decided to have two separate parts with one puzzle in each. The main theme for the level was lava and the objective was to cross two big rivers of lava.
For the first section, the player is in a safe area surrounded by lava and besides them there are several glowing cubes that can be moved with the engineer power.
The solution for the puzzle is to push the blocks into the lava to create a bridge and cross to the other side.
For the second section, the player has to access a control panel but the door is too narrow for the player to go through. The solution is to use the Science character that can change sizes and shrink themselves to cross it.
Once the player has crossed the door, they will have use the Technology character to solve the wires puzzle which is introduced for the first time in the game. For this reason, this puzzle is quite simple to solve but helps to teach the player how to use this power.
Lastly, once the puzzle has been solved, the platform will move to the player and carry them to the other side where the end of the level is.
