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The Last Blue is a puzzle adventure in which you explore an ancient shrine inhabited by a spirit to learn its language, and in doing so learn the mystery surrounding the forgotten ruin.

Contents

Roles: Lead Designer, Technical Design, Sound Design

Team Size: 11

Timeframe: 7 weeks

Engine: Unreal Engine

Tools: Miro, Jira, Perforce, Reaper

Genre: Puzzle Adventure​

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Goals & Contributions

Timeline:

  • 7 weeks production

  • 3 weeks post-production

​​Goals:​​

  1. Send game to SGA and FGA

  2. Become more familiar with Unreal Engine

  3. Answer the question - "How do you teach a language in 3 minutes?"

Contributions:

  • Creation of original language used in the game

  • Onboarding & overall gameplay flow

  • Puzzle design

  • Creation of SFX and BGM

  • Keeping spirits up with impromptu bardic inspiration

The Language

One of the core components of the game is an original, semasiographic (non-spoken) language. It was inspired by the language depicted in the film Arrival.

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Simple shapes form the foundation of each clause, the type of sentence.

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Then, I mapped parts of speech to specific locations on the shapes, maintaining consistency between the shapes and locations.

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This consistency was vital in teaching the player the language. I wanted the player to be able to encounter a new sentence type without needing to learn and keep track of a brand new pattern.

Onboarding

Or, answering the question, "How do you teach someone a language in 3 minutes?"​​

Well, the answer, I realized, is—you don't! Even though we needed to aim for a specific play time in the brief, that's not how languages are learned. 

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Similar to game mechanics, languages are learned piece by piece, building on what comes before. So, I knew I needed to start simple.

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The earliest sentences contain a small fraction of possible parts of speech to ease players in and build confidence.​

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The first puzzle is simple, but equips the player with a lot of knowledge.

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  1. Small objects can be lifted and moved

  2. Small power sources go in small sockets

  3. There are also big power sources for big sockets

  4. There is visual feedback in the form of shining lines when something is placed correctly

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The completed first puzzle.

The final core mechanic to introduce was the magical brush the player can use to modify sentences and thus change the properties of objects.

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I decided it would be easiest and clearest for the spirit character to simply tell the player the solution.

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Even should the player miss this interaction with the spirit, there is the possibility to brute force the solution, meaning the player learns how the mechanic works anyway.

This is nearly all the knowledge the player needs to progress to the end of the game, and can be learned in just a few minutes!

Puzzles

The puzzles were the greatest challenge for me during the project. While I enjoy solving puzzles, I'd never tried designing them before. 

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The puzzles needed to fit the space both figuratively and literally. I worked closely with the narrative and level designers to try to achieve this.

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An early sketch using a snapshot of Edvard's blockout. 

We quickly realized that the workflow of "narrative informing level informing puzzle" would create a bottleneck for the time we had available and hurt the design of the game overall.

 

We decided to do our best to create things in a vacuum and bring them together later. My approach was to list which mechanics should be introduced when and in what order.

 

The idea was that once I had a clear idea of mechanical progression, I could use level blockouts to get an idea of how to situate puzzles in the spaces.

While delays in programming of mechanics, level blockouts, and narrative caused several puzzles to be cut, using my list, I was able to maintain a logical progression of mechanics through to the end of the game.​

Reflections

Initially I wasn't going to include this on my portfolio as I felt it verged too far from technical design. However, after being nominated for "Best Design" at Futuregames Awards, I wanted to show my non-tech design ability as well.

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Creating an original language and basing an entire game around it in just 7 weeks was simultaneously one of the stupidest and greatest ideas. It forced outside-the-box thinking and originality, which I think was great for my development as a designer. But I learned that this type of game needs a lot of time and effort to get right.

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Here are some of my takeaways from working on The Last Blue:

  • While the team was very comfortable voicing concerns and speaking rationally for the good of the project, we could have had more frank conversations regarding narrative if the narrative is the focus of the game.

  • Our decision to develop narrative, level, and puzzle separately probably compromises the integrity of each in a larger production.

  • Taking a lot of care with the new player experience and learning that some of the Futuregames Awards jury members were able to make it to the end of the game was extremely gratifying!

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