Design Process

The concept is born from the theme "roll the dice". While brainstorming with my teammates, instead of making a usual dice-related game like puzzles or strategy games, we are more excited with the idea that "play as a dice observe through the number holes and move by rolling".

Based on this idea, we build a prototype with this dice player controller. However, a following design challenge coming from the dice character is the partially blocked first-person view. For a first-person walking simulator, navigation is a constant challenge throughout the whole level but the player it hard to see the surrounding environment in the dice even though the current dice surface is 1 (i.e the biggest hole on the dice with the best view to see outside) so that it's hard to find the right way to pass the level. For a horror game, the limited view could help create claustrophobic feelings, a sense of danger from the darkness, and the unseen part of the environment in the dice.

After several iterations on level, character, and monster, we found a way to balance this design. The transparency of the dice surface will depend on the monster's state and the distance to the monster. While the monster is patrolling and not seeing the player, the player still has the view that is partially blocked by the dice surface. While the monster finds the player and starts chasing the player, the transparency of the dice surface would increase together with the glitch effect. In this case, with the approaching monster, the player gets the reinforced ability to see the surrounding environment to hide from the monster as soon as possible. For changes on levels, we placed intentional lighting, and guided props to make it easier to navigate from the normal view through the number of holes