The Glitch Witch
August 2023 - Present
Role: Lead Designer
Platform: PC, Mac
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Team Size: 35
Release: Summer 2024
Steam Wishlist: Link
Part of USC Games' Advanced Games Program, a capstone large-scale collaborative project for an entire academic year, Glitch Witch is a retrofuture 2.5D puzzle adventure that takes place in a future devoid of functioning technology. Players connect circuitry in Zachtronics-like puzzles and communicate with the community, in an attempt to restore the town of Tahassee Woods to what it once was.
Experience Overview
The Glitch Witch tells the story of Rosette who discovers that she can complete real-world inspired circuit puzzles to revive defunct 80s technology. She’s ecstatic- until people in town start accusing her of witchcraft.
As a game created for a USC Games MFA thesis, The Glitch Witch hopes to encourage more young women to enter STEM fields while embracing their place in their community.
Roles and responsibilities
Game Design:
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Coordinated workflow with other developers and advocated for the player and game design during cross-functional meetings.
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Utilized mechanics, goals, rules, and components to form a cohesive interactive experience for the player.
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Iterated based on player feedback through usability testing and ensuring the player stays engaged and rewarded.
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Collaborated with narrative leads to refine the storyline to fit the game’s tone while integrating game loops and progression.
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Facilitated the development of in-game assets and 30+ unique puzzles to create compelling and cohesive gameplay.
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Authored and maintained game design documents
Design Core Pillars
Pillars that guided our decisions about the user experience and the games within it.
Physics as magic
Framing magic in the world of Glitch Witch as physics in ours, we encouraged players to reconsider their perspective of science, prompting them to see how dynamic and creative engineering can be.
Retrofuture aesthetic
While most STEM-based games feature an industrial and utilitarian interface, we want to attract a new audience by creating a bright and unique aesthetic of pixel art characters 3D world with volumetric lighting.
Joy of discovery
Like many engineering problems holding a variety of solutions, we wanted our puzzles to have multiple answers and encourage our players to think outside the box.
Gameplay Beats
Solving circuit puzzles
Conversing with townsfolk
Exploring the town
Iterative process (part 1: finding the fun)
As puzzles were the core of our game, we knew we had to 'find the fun' very early on in the process. We paper prototyped initial puzzle designs to understand how different configurations allowed for creative and multiple solutions.
After we found several puzzle designs and components that were liked, we changed the board to the hex grid to reinforce the retrofuture and physics as magic pillars, and continued playtesting. using pipe cleaners to simulate wire drawing.
Paper prototyping the hex grid gave us the insight on what the designers needed to build puzzles in Unreal Engine 5, and how quickly should difficult progresses between puzzles. Transitioning to digital gave players a more fluid experience but also let loose a new set of problems...
Iterative process (part 2: icon readability)
Problem:
Despite our initial playtests, players were not understanding the iconography of each element (which ones were sources and sinks) and the objective of the puzzle (connecting the two different elements together).
Solution:
We added tutorials in the form of GIFs and captions that preceded each puzzle that introduced a new mechanic and improved the readability of each element by introducing VFX (e.g. having the sources emanate energy, the sinks trigger a fill animation when its been connected).
Iterative process (part 3: puzzle design)
Problem:
When the puzzle components were easy to understand and taught mechanics, they didn't seem like engaging solutions for the player. A player would just have to delete the green wire to get the red wire across.
Solution:
In the rework, players still had to delete the green wire to solve the puzzle but had to find a way to reconnect the green source to its sink, while reinforcing the previous concept of branching wires.
Iterative process (part 4: level design)
We based the initial level design on real-world town layouts and locations of quest objectives, but plenty changed over time. From whiteboards to Lego sets and RPG maker maps, we iterated the different positions based on players' behavior and paid attention to what buildings caught their eyes. Planning by using top-down 2D maps didn't translate as well to a 2.5D environment with a specific camera angle!
Iterative process (part 5: tutorialization)
Problem:
How do we ensure the player engagingly learns each gameplay system within the first few minutes of play?
Solution:
Through multiple playtesting, we wrote down mechanics that players needed additional teaching, beats where players got frequently confused and mapped out a new experience flow.
Tutorial walkthrough
Starting the game with dialogue, having the player's objectives centered in the background.
We trigger a pop-up box after the dialogue ends that teaches players movement and interact controls.
We tested the player's understanding of movement controls after, having a quest object with sparkle VFX to catch the player's attention.
The first puzzle triggers a series of gifs to illustrate the objective i.e., connecting wires between sources and sinks, and basic mechanics i.e., drawing and deleting wires.
After the player views the tutorial, they practice their understanding through 3 puzzles involving the mechanics.
Exploration is part of our core loop, and we introduce the mechanic of a quest log after to help players navigate to their next objective.
Our playtests revealed that players were having difficulty finding the next objective, so we placed it i.e., the arcade, within the player's sight in the starting area, and a location trigger outside the it to reinforce the player's search.
Inside the arcade, we darkened the lighting and used the sparkle VFX and 'E' to interact key again to reinforce concepts learned earlier.
The next quest object introduces additional puzzle components i.e., color mixing, which a second tutorial gif teaches.
We put players into practice after, making them solve the color mixing puzzle before being able to proceed.
In the second puzzle of the series, we reinforce prior concepts i.e., making the player have to delete the green wire to make purple, as well as further reinforcing the color mixing concept they just learned.
After learning the basic gameplay loop and core puzzle mechanics, the player is prompted to go out to the town and is ready to experience more open-ended play!
Reflection takeaways
The Glitch Witch was my first unforgettable experience leading the design of a puzzle-adventure game. Looking back, here are a few lessons summarized:
Team Management: Empower your teammates early by allowing them to encourage them to take ownership of a mechanic or feature. Rather than spelling out the steps to implement a mechanic, set a design goal and let them find their way, providing suggestions along the way should they need it.
Meetings: Spending time to think through who needs to be in each meeting goes a long way. Unless you're brainstorming, meetings should be kept to a minimum to align cross-disciplinary teams on a feature, or to solicit feedback from fellow designers. It is obvious but sometimes forgotten, the more time spent in meetings, the less time you have developing!
Tutorialization: Break things down to the smallest learning steps for your player. It's natural having spent hours with a system or control scheme to overestimate its intuitiveness, but players will be interacting with it for the first time. A good rule of thumb is to design your tutorials for players completely new to the genre.
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