Presenting a challenge

The difficult part of making a puzzle based game is that people who like those kinds of games expect a real challenge. Make it too easy and they will beat it quickly and get bored just as fast. Too hard and they'll burn out or just give up. They also want the puzzles to be interesting!

Striking a balance in the level design was an equal challenge in of itself. We wanted to keep our available player mechanics simple and limited to prevent the project from going out of scope. So the challenges and puzzle solving had to come from how the player navigated and moved through the game, all while without being too difficult or too easy!

The first level I knew would be easier since I wanted the player to get well acquainted with their abilities without being under too much pressure. But designing the second and third levels proved to be much harder. I liked the idea that the player could explore a bit and had to discover the correct path to an exit. You can see that conveyed in my level design, with multiple paths and diverging routes that can take you either safely to the goal or through the gaze of the security cameras.

So yeah, I'm the one to blame if you struggled to get through the one hallway with two cameras on Level 2. To be fair, that is the more difficult path you could have taken. :P

I did my best to achieve that balance of making interesting challenges. I think it turned out well for the three levels we have. Unless of course, you got stuck on level 2.