kubika

Roles:
creator
Lead Game designer
Lead System Designer
Sole level designer

now also
art director
tech artist

summary

presentation

KUBIKA is an Addictive Systemic

Puzzle game that will make your head spin!

It was originally a mobile game for a 4 month project at Supinfogame RUBIKA.

People loved the game, and we did to.

So, we have decided to continue with it, as a team of two!

Here is the trailer of the original version for school:

I designed alone more than

100 levels, and became very comfortable with puzzle design.

I also got significantly better at teaching new players every mechanics step by step, for introducing the game (Level Design as an intuitive tutorial).

Tech art

Notice how the water and the trees are gently moving...

(when the gif is loaded...)

I made a bunch of tools for working on Kubika.

The first one is a smart mesh selector that automatically checks its surroundings to select the mesh with the right numbers of rounded corners to use, and rotate it as it should be.

The second one is a UV triplanar projector.

In order to optimize cubes the background, I am currently recreating a smart tiling system in blender with geometry nodes, so I can create decors and export them directly in Unity as one mesh.

This is WIP, here is the basic corner logic in action:

After this step, I plan to explore this same philosophy of mesh creation, in C#, to determine whether or not it would be beneficial and more optimized to recreate the initial tiling systems using this new approach.

initial prototype & presentation

Even before my project was shortlisted, I built a real prototype, to quickly test the concept and to realize a stop-motion for presenting my game pitch to my whole year group, in our amphitheater.

puzzle design process

I use 2 documents:

- A Spreadsheet for listing all levels and their tags (difficulty, production state...)

- A Dropbox Paper (Google Docs equivalent) for detailing every level, with images and intentions

the google sheet:

Each world introduces a new cube with it's own mechanic to discover.

I decompose every interaction that the new mechanic brings to the system, and prioritize them by the order in which they need to be learnt. (see below)

I also note here some cool ideas of interactions or paradoxes that can inspire me for future levels.

the Dropbox paper:

For this game, I have 3 approaches for starting a new level:

1 - Pragmatic, efficient

I start from something I need to teach to the player, at a specific point in the game.

2 - Aesthetic

I start with aesthetical level foundations

3 - Experiment, discover the system

I start with no specific inspiration and craft something, experimenting interactions.

...but then during the level design the 3 ways of creation always get mixed

Long ago:

new workflow in magicavoxel, for quick testing: