Dream Catch

About Dream Catch

Dream Catch was a part of the Brackeys game jam in February 2022. My role as a level designer was to design 4 game puzzles, script blueprints, character animations, and basic blender modeling.

Game concept

Collect key artifacts and bring them back to your bed so that you can escape the lucid dream and sleep again. The More objects you bring back, the more points you can score. Avoid the holes and spikes!

https://youtu.be/dGttDeJBQN8

Brainstorming

Created a brainstorming and concept creation session for the team in miroboard based on previouse UX experience. We created a game concept around the theme “it’s not real”. With voting rounds on game idea and mechanics.

Concept brainstorming, show and tell session with a voting round on the best idea
Concept brainstorming, show and tell session with a voting round on the best idea
Winning concept ideas were placed in another frame to be further discussed. What can we make and what is out of our scope for this jam period
Winning concept ideas were placed in another frame to be further discussed. What can we make and what is out of our scope for this jam period
Narrow down the concept idea to only a few
Narrow down the concept idea to only a few
expand upon the chosen or winning idea, how can we make a game out of it and what will it include in mechanics, player, enemies, game type, etc
expand upon the chosen or winning idea, how can we make a game out of it and what will it include in mechanics, player, enemies, game type, etc
Mood board once everyone was on board with the game plan. We created 3 different frames to figure out how the game will look and feel for each category, the player, environment, enemy, and puzzles
Mood board once everyone was on board with the game plan. We created 3 different frames to figure out how the game will look and feel for each category, the player, environment, enemy, and puzzles
Very early sketch concept showcasing how the game will work. The bed is the starting point and everything outside of the bed frame are tiles made out of 3x3 100 grid size in the engine that spawns in when the player camera gets near these blue boxes
Very early sketch concept showcasing how the game will work. The bed is the starting point and everything outside of the bed frame are tiles made out of 3×3 100 grid size in the engine that spawns in when the player camera gets near these blue boxes

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Low Fidelity

As a level designer, I got to create puzzle tiles fitting for the programmer’s procedural level system. Each tile/puzzle is 3×3 in size consisting of a 100 grid size. In total, a tile would be as big as a 300 by 300 grid size. I worked on creating the sketches in Figma and recreating them in 3D with blender and unreal engine. Bad practice to continue creating the puzzles in blender as I was too slow in prototyping in the blender environment. I decided to keep making them in an Unreal engine actor blueprint, making prefabs out of the tiles to be reused by programmers in the spawn system.

This sketch is based on the tile spawn system. A 3x3 tile puzzle with name color-coded objects to be placed on specific locations, this puzzle did not make it into the game but the objects such as spikes that were present in the sketch made their way into the game, as static and moving objects.
This sketch is based on the tile spawn system. A 3×3 tile puzzle with name color-coded objects to be placed on specific locations, this puzzle did not make it into the game but the objects such as spikes that were present in the sketch made their way into the game, as static and moving objects.
An early prototype of a sketch that did not make it into the game. The player enters the puzzle and will try and collect the yellow artifact. Artifact collecting is based on the tile spawn system and is procedural. The player gets a set of colors to collect at the start of the game and represent what the player must find in terms of color and object type. Objects to collect can be anvils, rocks, clouds, and boulders.
An early prototype of a sketch that did not make it into the game. The player enters the puzzle and will try and collect the yellow artifact. Artifact collecting is based on the tile spawn system and is procedural. The player gets a set of colors to collect at the start of the game and represent what the player must find in terms of color and object type. Objects to collect can be anvils, rocks, clouds, and boulders.
Same tile puzzle concept but with added stairs and floors. Making the player able to climb up in the level.
Same tile puzzle concept but with added stairs and floors. Making the player able to climb up in the level.

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High Fidelity

Created 4 puzzles. Some puzzles only consist of static objects and other puzzles have moving objects such as spikes. I created a blueprint for the spikes to emerge from the ground and back into the ground based on the world located inside the puzzle actor and a timer.

High Fidelity prototype from Sketches. The red color indicates the tile spawning platform and everything above in blue indicated the puzzle. The puzzle would only be deemed good to solve if the object inside was the objective to collect based on the mission objective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2LgVacTdQ8&feature=youtu.be

Generalist

Apart from level designing puzzles I also created a cel shader to imitate cartoonish looks based on a youtube video tutorial. I also made sure the character animations worked with walking and jumping states. Lastly, I also created a scoring and saving system in blueprints but unfortunately, it did not make it into the last iteration of the game as time was up.

Cel shader results in the beginning of creating the material
Cel shader results in the beginning of creating the material
Cel shader results after configuring numbers and colors to match the look we were after.
Cel shader results after configuring numbers and colors to match the look we were after.

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