Game Concept and Prototyping
Size:Variable was created for the GMTK (Game Maker's Toolkit) Game Jam 2024. The theme was "Built to Scale", in which participants were encouraged to create games that played with size and scale over a 4 day time frame. Size:Variable was created along with a team of 8 developers. I served as the game's lead designer and lead programmer, responsible for both designing and implementing the game's levels.
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Our team immediately settled on the concept of collecting tokens that could grow or shrink the player, with the player needing to be a certain size in order to progress. This resulted in the first design sketch that would become Size:Variable.
Alright, forgive my very bad drawing. But basically, I was inspired by the idea of "shrinking tokens" from [Our Teammate]s project. I thought it could be a cool puzzle game. So basically the player (green square) is placed in a maze, filled with shrinking tokens (blue) and growing tokens (red).
The player can move up, down, left, or right, but once they start moving, they don't stop until they hit a wall or other barrier. Whenever they hit a shrinking token or a growing token, their size changes, and the token switches to be the opposite of whatever it was.
The objective is the player has to be the exact right size to reach the exit, meaning they have to either grow or shrink, and figure out how to collect the exact tokens they need without running into too many.
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Initial Design Pitch - James VanderMeulen, 2024-08-16
The as the level designer and programmer, it then fell to me to create the mazes and the obstacles that the player would encounter. Crucially, these obstacles had to be intuitive and easy for the player to understand. In a previous, much larger project called Shifting Kingdoms (itch.io page), I also served as a principal designer. This project suffered from unintuitive and bespoke mechanics that were unclear to the player. This made it challenging to design puzzles that were simple enough to be solvable, but still present a challenge to the player, since there would never be an opportunity for the player to become properly familiar with the obstacles in front of them.
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To combat this issue in Size-Variable, I was determined to create a collection of simple and intuitive puzzle mechanics which could then be re-arranged and reused throughout the levels.
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​The first of these mechanics were Push Tiles, and One-Way Tiles. Each of these tiles served to complicate the path the player must take to the exit, but did so in a very clear and intuitive way, avoiding the issue of confusion when the player's chosen path doesn't work out.
As design and development continued, additional obstacles were added, such as the Lightning Wall and the Size Gate.
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The lightning wall created a potential failstate for the player, adding some stakes to their choices, while the Size Gate added a much needed secondary application to the player's size in addition to the goal.
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These elements became the final mechanics that were arranged into the 9 unique puzzles in the final game. The game only takes a short time to play, and a web build is available on the itch.io page; no download necessary.