Design breakdown

Rising Up

When I was initially design uprising awaits I did not intend on having climbing as part of the game’s design. Originally I had intended to have a grappling hook but upon further development I quickly realized that the mechanic was not a fit for the framework I was working with. Upon making this realization I looked at the tools I had at my disposal and found that the framework supported climbing. After messing around the climbing system for a bit I started design climbing sections within the main room of the level. I found that figuring out proper positions to place the handholds to be very important in the process because the act of climbing in VR is quite awkward at times. I also wanted climbing sections to be on the shorter side of things and the player to be able to teleport off of them.

The story behind the block puzzle is also a story of a change of plans. The original plan was to have a elevator take the player up to the top floor but when I was prototyping this out I deemed that it would probably be best to scrap that idea and replace it with something else. At this point I already had the climbing implemented but I felt like if I had added enough climbing section the game would became to much of drag to play. Instead I decided to do something a bit different and started playing around with the concept of moving a block and then teleporting to it. I found the concept to be interesting so I made that the be the final challenge. I like how this puzzle allows for emergent gameplay. It was interesting to the see how my level designer decided to solve the problem compared to how I did it.

A game design document can be found here