Un air de Dofus
Personal project (October 2021)
Genre : Puzzle gameDuration : One week
Un air de Dofus is a puzzle game about perception and reflection. The player's aim is to position several cubes allowing to redirect his laser in order to reach a target on the opposite side of the checkerboard. But be careful, some obstacles are on your way to break your laser!
Why this game ?
This game was born from the desire to realize a solo project to discover the 3D part of Unity (despite the many similarities with the 2D). My different projects being until then collective and realized in 2D, I wanted to make a complete game by myself from A to Z.
The idea of the game has been in my head for some time… As a former Dofus player, I found one of the classes of the game particularly interesting due to of its core mechanics. In order to do damage to his opponents, the Eliotrope sets up portals that allow him to direct his attack. In a very brief way, the Eliotrope emits a laser led through four portals (which it will have installed beforehand). The subtlety is that once the last portal is crossed, the final path of the laser corresponds to the path between the character and the first portal. As a result, I wanted to reproduce this mechanism that I found very interesting in a puzzle game.
Nevertheless, I imposed myself a time constraint of a week to make a first version of this game. In the future, I want to rework on the puzzles and add secondary mechanics to bring diversity.
Moreover, not being an artist, I used graphics assets proposed by unity. The aesthetic part of the game isn't very advanced, although I tried to install a relaxing atmosphere by the music and the pace of the game
Goals and challenges
As explained, the objective is to position cubes in order to redirect the laser coming out of the first sphere (player) to the last sphere (target). The player can place up to three cubes and must avoid that his laser meets an obstacle.
The game offers three main challenges to the player :
- Mechanic understanding of laser redirection.
- Understanding perspective (isometric 3D).
- Solving interesting the puzzles.
At the beginning, a tutorial allows the player to teach him the few controls and to acquire the fundamentals of the game. This tutorial is short enough to not bother the player. The different steps are :
- Position a first cube.
- Remove a cube.
- Position multiple cubes.
- Encounter an obstacle to undestand that he will need to avoid them later.
- Learn that the end of the laser should hit the target
At the end of the tutorial, the most attentive players will have assimilated the redirection mechanism and will be able to use it wisely from the first level. However, this level is simple enough for other players to also understand this mechanism and appropriate it before moving on more complex levels. These levels, whose difficulty will gradually increase, combine challenges in puzzles and 3D perception.