Mind Palace - Puzzle Game

Supakorn S.
Dec 5, 2022
2 min read

Updated: Mar 11

MIND PALACE is a game about exploration through the use of text-typing mechanics combined with the exploration of a 3D environment where your goal is to find a way out of the room that you're in.

Mind Palace | Unity

SOFTWARE: Unity

TEAM SIZE; Individual

DEVELOPMENT TIME: 12 weeks

PLATFORM: PC

AVERAGE PLAYTIME: 10 Minutes

YEAR: 2022

GENRE: FPS / Puzzle / Narrative / Adventure

DOWNLOAD LINK

itch.io

The idea for this project was a gameplay concept from one of my group project games (Dream Tape). The core gameplay is to use a text-based mechanic as a way to progress through the game and show a link between text-based mechanics and the world where the player is.

This project is from IDD224 ADVANCED SCRIPTING class. The requirement for this project is to create a 3D game and show the process of how I manage the scripts in the project.

Design Process

Due to the initial idea being concept gameplay from another game, I already got some clear images before the start of this project so I wrote the general description of how the game work, a list of possible events that could happen, and a words bank for the text to be registered in the code.

After some progress in the document, I started working on the system of the prototype. These are the key feature of the prototype

Basic Movement
Interaction system
Mode-based dialogue system
Branching dialogue
Event system

In this prototype, the player can interact with the monitor in the middle of the room and enter a text to interact with the environment in the scene.

After some system tuning, I moved on to additional systems and gameplay that can improve the game such as

Inventory
Pickable item
Story
Misc.

Then I listed out locations, events, dialogue, items, and props lists and start working on the game.

End Result Gameplay

The end result is a puzzle game where the player can explore a bizarre location with help from a vintage computer.

Retrospective

What went well

Level atmosphere: The atmosphere itself was designed based on the concept of liminal space and when combined with the weirdness event from the game, it can create a sense of discomfort and mystery.

Node-based system: The node-based system of the dialogue can be branching out for many paths and can even be linked to the event system as well.

What did I receive

Branching dialogue: Creating a branching dialogue without a proper format or tools can be hard when re-reading the older dialogue or having others read your dialogue.

Advanced structure: Having a clear structure of code can help me and others a lot when working with multiple components or scripts.