This was a game jam project for school in December of 2021. In this project I designed levels and puzzle mechanics.
Standing Out with Very Little
As a game jam game, TrailBlazers had to be completed quickly; we had less than 2.5 days to plan, design, and build the project. With this in mind, mechanically, the game needed to be very simple. This, along with the premise of "light" led me to the torch mechanic.
The way the torch works follows simple and intuitive rules:
pressing the torch button lights wooden things on fire
steel things cannot be set on fire
water will put out your torch
if your torch is out, you can't light things on fire until you relight it
stuff takes time to burn
Other than telling the player which button is the torch button, all these rules and functions are understood inherently due to the common knowledge of fire and how it works. This allows more focus to be on the puzzles rather than trying to learn the game.
Fire is a very interesting mechanic that is found within many games. From a form of damage, to destruction of environment, to puzzles. In the latter case fire is either used as a temperamental key or as a means to destroying an obstacle, which can be the same thing if you think of it more abstractly. So to stand out the torch needs to be capable of more. The prominent examples I came up with is burn time and the phoenix flowers.
Burn time is used a couple times to act as a player controlled timer. Instead of merely destroying an obstacle, the player can set up a box on a button, light it, and get past an open gate (controlled by said button) before it burns. Once burned, the button is released and opens the farther, closed gate. While still using the destructiveness of fire, this method requires both more thought and more action out of the player.
The more interesting use of the torch was the phoenix flower in the final level. These flowers could be burned, but in their bud form would grow under the torch's effect. The player then can use the top of the flowers like moveable platforms to reach higher points or move objects into position. For this mechanic I wanted to emphasize using the fire to do something other than destruction, in this case combining the myth of the phoenix with growing plants to create an interesting puzzle.
