Year
2021
Genre
Simulator
Platform
PC
Team Size
9
Engine
Unity
Puzzle Design
Level Design
Game Description
The Stowaway is a first-person point and click adventure game in which you explore the isolating environment of a spaceship. You will encounter a variety of different puzzles and challenges that you will need to overcome in order to repair the engine.
Look for clues and navigate through the ship, search for items left by the people who once worked there and try to piece together the story of the ship.
Puzzle Design
Tower Of Hanoi
I thought the idea of Tower of Hanoi was interesting so I came up with this puzzle that was similar to it. But the point here is to move each colored slab to it's correct column.
I also decided to use different icons for the different colors, to make it color-blind friendly.
I thought this was a really interesting puzzle, but it proved to be very challenging as well for most players.
Inspiration
Concept
Result
Concept
Engine
Result
Module
Rotating Engine Puzzle
The goal of this puzzle is to align the different parts of the engine, so that the red wires are all connected.
You interact with a module that has three sides which you can rotate up or down. Each side rotates different parts of the engine.
Concept
Result
Slide Puzzle
This is a regular slide puzzle, where you can slide a slab to a missing spot with the goal to complete the pattern.
The problem with this puzzle is that the finished image is just a bunch of wires, which makes it a bit more tricky than normal slide puzzles since you can't form a clear image in your head of the finished picture.
I decided that we should add borders to the slides so you can more clearly tell where each piece is supposed to end up. (See the brown colored edges to the sketch and image)
Level Design
Map Sketch
Planning
One of the requirements for this project was to have three distinct areas in which the game takes place in. So as I planned the level design I took this in consideration and broke down the level into three different areas.
I drew a simple but comprehensive overview map of all these rooms, which would make it easier to plan out the sequence order to progress in the game.
Pink Rectangle: Puzzle
Pink Circle: Item
Pink Circle with S: Player Starting Position
Yellow Rectangle: Container
Grey Rectangle: Door
Circle with P: Sleeping Pod
The pink dotted lines is there to convey that the objects are connected.
Pod Room 01
Our narrative to why only you are the person aboard the ship that can repair the engine is because all the other people are inside sleeping pods. Therefor I chose the first area to take place in one of the pod rooms.
But I wanted to give the pods a gameplay purpose, so I decided to use them for a puzzle. Next to the pods there are screens that give you general information about the pod owners, like the pin code for their locker.
The player is also locked in this room and would need a screwdriver to access the panel that would open the door. By reading the information of the pod owners, you could deduce that the one that is a carpenter, would be the one most likely to have a screwdriver in their locker.
Engineering Room
In this room you need to open a door via the control panel. We used these cables that goes from the door to the control panel to convey to the player that you open the door through the control panel.
But before you can do that you need to find the key card to access it. The key card is hidden among the cargo, you would need to look around and open the correct box to find it. Then you need to enter the correct sequence into the control panel to open the door.
A notepad can be found in this area that has the correct sequence scribbled on it, except that 3 numbers have been scratched over.
But since the sequence has a simple pattern you should be able to figure it out.
Engine Room
The last room contains the engine that you are supposed to fix.
The engine can be fixed by interacting with the module next to it, but the module is missing two out of it's three components.
One of them is next to it, to get the player to understand that their next objective is to find the last component.
Right behind the module is a window which you can peak through to a little room, where you can see the engine component. Just like the last room, there are cables on the floor from the door to the little room that leads to this wire slide puzzle that is also right next to the window.
After solving the slide puzzle you can enter the little room and grab the engine component and then you can get back and solve the engine by completing the final puzzle, which then completes the game.
