Team Size: 6
Project Duration: 4 Months
Role: Manager and Puzzle Designer
Game Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2835370/Memories_of_Misery/
Memories of Misery is a cooperative puzzle game where you play as two siblings trying to escape their mother's grasp.
Memories of Misery was a passion project where we wanted to transform an Arcade cooperative puzzle game into a fully fledged game. In this project i took on the role of lead designer and manager.
Design Work
Memories of Misery is a cooperative puzzle game, meaning that communication is very important to reaching the solutions. As the lead designer I wanted the first puzzles to develop the player's ability to communicate in order to prepare them for more challenging puzzles. The puzzles get more challenging as the game progresses but also more unique in their mechanics.
The first puzzle made named "The Clock Puzzle" required that players align clock handles on a clock. One player could see the clock and the other player had handles that rotated different clock handles. Furthermore, instead of numbers the clock consisted of symbols. The correct combination is inside one of the rooms. The goal of this puzzle is to establish strong communication by having them communicate the different shapes of symbols and the alignment of the handles.
Furthermore I wanted to use narrative design to the tell the story of the game. An example of how I did this is adding details about the family the game revolves around to puzzles. I used the family photos to establish a timeline of the family's history, while also pushing the player to use that timeline to solve one of the puzzles inside the room.
Player 2
Player 1
All the puzzle designs in the game were documented on a Miro board accessible by the development team. The documentation included detailed explanations of the puzzles using text and visuals. It also included reasoning behind the design and how narrative design can be incorporated.