Junk Drawer
| Play | GitHub |
About
A physics based game where you try to remove a battery from an impossibly deep junk drawer. Look out for sharp objects! Made for Ludum Dare 57.
My Contribution:
Responsible for programming and level design.
Designed different types of hazards for the player to overcome.
Created the level the player has to navigate.
Implemented art and audio.
Development:
The theme for this jam was "Depths", and the idea we came up with was reaching into a junk drawer for a battery. We originally had some confusion as to what the objective of the game would be, but I suggested it could be a physics-based game where you have to navigate through a level full of obstacles within a time limit.
The obstacles we came up with fell into 3 categories: regular, sharp, and sticky, all of which could be picked up by the player. Regular items are there to fill up the drawer and block you, sharp objects will hurt you and send you flying, and sticky objects make it so you can't move. The player would have to learn how to navigate through them if they wanted to beat the level.
When it was time to design the level, I worked on one area at a time. The first area isn't very difficult to get through, and it's primary purpose is to teach the player which objects are safe and which aren't. After that, I tried to make each area of the level feel unique and force the player to change their approach. There is an area with stationary knives that forces you to move slowly, and one with a lot more hazards where you have to navigate in a tight space. At the end there is a bottleneck that forces the player to interact with a sticky obstacle to teach them what it does, and a set of knives that make them have to strategize or else they could get knocked in the way of the battery.
We originally wanted everyone to design their own level, but we unfortunately ran out of time. This was originally going to be the beginner level with more difficult levels coming after, potentially with new features and multiple betteries to retrieve. This project taught me the importance of prioritizing the most important features. If I had started by implementing all of the planned content, I would not have had time to design and test the level to the same extent.
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