Game Concept

Working Title

Photon Phaser

Concept Statement

Photon Phaser is a puzzle game about manipulating photons to solve puzzles at the speed of light. Use mirrors, filters, buttons and more, shepherding light to reach your goal.

Genre

Turn based Puzzle. The game requires a solution to be found in each level to progress, requiring thinking to discover the method. The steps the player takes are time independent, requiring no timed inputs at all. These work well together to create a more relaxed puzzle experience, without the requirements of coordination that may drive some people away.

Concept Creation Process

The idea sprouted from a previous game I made called “Laser Phaser”. Created in Gamemaker Studio 2, it was my attempt at creating a 3D game in a 2D engine. Given this, the game was not optimised, and was difficult to play, however it worked. The game featured lasers, cubes, buttons, doors, coloured glass and a number of other elements for puzzle solving. It had 20 levels, play tested, reordered and refined to create the best game I could at the time. It was based on Portal 2, building on the “Discouragement Redirection Cubes” and “Thermal Discouragement Beams”. While in the original game these only came in red, my adaptation introduced full control over the colour and used this as the puzzle. The name was sourced from the music in chamber 20, in which there are three sections which play only when each of the three laser receptacles is triggered, this music is called Triple Laser Phaser. Bringing this idea into unity as a 2D game made me rethink some of these ideas to make it work. I brought in the notion of the turn/grid-based puzzle from games like Baba Is You, as I thought this would be less awkward for a 2D game. Unlike in 3D where the first-person perspective provides an easy way to line up beams, the top-down view of a 2D game provides little insight without a traced line to indicate exactly where things are pointing. Using a grid does remove a lot of the angles possible with a non-grid continuous world, however, I found that nearly all well-designed puzzles do not require these obscure angles anyway. Sticking to either 4 diagonal, 4 orthogonal, or 8 combined directions would simplify things a lot. The idea to switch up the instant lasers for time sensitive photons also came from making the connection to Baba Is You, as things like the “move” word only apply when an input is pressed, leading to some interesting puzzles taking advantage of movement time, but without involving skill based inputs; you can take as much time as you want to press the buttons, you just have to press them. 

Audience

Since this game sources ideas from games such as Baba Is You and Portal 2, these games can provide insight into the audiences that are attracted toward these ideas. However, in my research I came across the game Laser Attraction available on steam. This is a 2D game about manipulating lasers using mirrors and refraction, similar in concept. The game does not use a grid, allowing for as much precision as you want. Looking at reviews of the game, this seems to be the main drawback, as people find the precision time consuming and irritating once they know the solution but cannot perform it. My game aims to eliminate these issues by not being tedious with controls, limiting non instant inputs (like mouse control or other continuous media). This should make the focus more on the puzzle solving and less on the solution execution, something which usually detracts from the feeling of solving the puzzle. As for the audience, obviously those who enjoy puzzle games are the primary target, but also anyone interested in colour.

Game Treatment and Concept Art

You are tasked with duly deploying, diverting, distorting and delivering different photons to solve puzzles. These photons vary in colour, ignoring the wavelengths underpinning them, purely focusing on the RGB values and how they can be manipulated. With three values (or more) to play with, the puzzles will take advantage of filters, mirrors, boxes and more to create puzzles that require more than simply moving from point A to B. With the introduction of the turn-based format and movement of photons, there is also the opportunity to have puzzles based on the number of moves required to do such things. An idea that will probably not be implemented is making the player’s view respect the “speed of light”, as the gameplay is supposed to be taking place at the scale of photon movement, it doesn’t really make sense for the player to be able to see the entire room in real time, they should see things in the past, based on how far away they are, more or less. While this does sound like an interesting and/or unique idea, I feel that it would make the game too complex to follow and uninteresting.

The elements shown in Figure 1 are as follows:

1. The player: currently looks like an older lightbulb, however the design may change later, the player moves around on the grid tiles and can interact with certain elements such as boxes, they may be able to block photons too as this could provide an interesting puzzle mechanic.
2. Photon emitter: has a colour and emits photons in a direction with its colour; this could be triggered by a number of other elements such as player interactive buttons or other receivers.
3. Photon: a small particle with a colour which interacts with elements before triggering others, travels in at least 4 (perhaps 8) different directions at the same speed as the player.
4. Photon Receiver: when supplied with the correct colour photon, can activate other elements; there may be other variants which can accept more than just a specific colour to make puzzles more diverse.
5. Door: simply lets things pass when opened; can be activated in much the same way as other elements, although it will act more like a toggle than a pulse.
6. Mirrors: reflect photons like you’d expect; perhaps can also be coloured / filtered and be either one or two sided.
7. Boxes; effectively mobile elements, able to be pushed by the player; these could activate buttons, act as mirrors or glass, perhaps even act as receivers or emitters, but that would take some work.
8. Glass: in this case yellow coloured, which lets only the red and green channels through; these are the standard filter, able to do subtractive colour mixing by default, but more advanced filters may play with these expectations.

Figures 2-6 show “Laser Phaser” the game that inspired this game. Figure 2, the first level, shows how boxes can redirect light, and that the first-person perspective makes it very easy to direct the laser. Figure 3 shows how glass affects the colour of the laser as it passes through. Figure 4 shows one of the other types of filters, one that shifts RGB values, meaning passing through the filter twice does something different, instead of leaving the values unchanged. Figure 5 shows mirrors, an element that has potential to be crucial in a 2D grid rather than free 3D space. Figure 6 shows the most confusing, and perhaps least fun mechanics, “refraction”. This mechanic split the laser and its components, allowing for incredibly complex manipulation of the values, as instead of 8 possible colours, there were now all 16 million (if you had enough cubes). I do not intend to add this mechanic as it never got much use apart from overcomplicating things.

Figure 1, A selection of example element concepts (all original work)

Figure 2, the first level of “Laser Phaser”

Figure 3, the second level

Figure 4, colour shift filters

Figure 5, mirrors

Figure 6, refractive glass (possibly one of the more obtuse mechanics) Laser Attraction, available on steam at <https://store.steampowered.com/app/1511140/Laser_Attraction/>