Charlie Anderson

Puzzle Design

I designed the ‘escape the room’ puzzle sequence for The Siren. For this design, I focused on creating puzzle elements that were manipulate-able based on the player’s knowledge rather than acquisition of abilities or execution, as well as elements that clearly taught themselves to the player. Each of these elements were designed as short term progression toward completing the greater puzzle for a satisfying and interesting experience.

I started the design process by breaking the puzzle into three different components, each meant to essentially be a ‘rule’ that the player must understand. The puzzle would then be solved by each rule being used to facilitate an escape. The three rules are:

• The Siren relic reverses time continuously while triggered for things in line of sight, including the Siren, the main obstacle of the game. The relic is triggered with multiple fish in it’s presence.

• Fish will follow the flashlight you have.

• You can enter the giant mushrooms in the cave.

• The solution to the puzzle is to reverse time before the pesky Siren even shows up and exit the level.

The most essential design of the game is the ability for the game to teach players it’s rules. I spent considerable effort designing and scripting each element to teach the player if they were observant. The player’s flashlight, for example, when shined on the fish cause the fish to pause, turn, follow and have a sfx response. The mushrooms also emit their own light that the fish react to, which leads to the fish swimming in, and getting eaten - also reinforcing the fact that mushrooms can swallow things. Similarly for the time reverse effect, everything from a UI popup, to objects and music moving in reverse, to your air bubbles returning to you teaches the effect. From our playtest, every player discovered each ‘rule’, and over 50% of players solved the final puzzle in 2 tries.

Finally, an essential part of the puzzles design is the ‘catch’. The moment where you find an initial solution, but there is a contradiction. I designed the rules to have an organic, built in catch: in our absurdist rules, fish trigger the statue, but as you attract them to the statue to be triggered, you are reversed away yourself, breaking the connection. This ensures that the player must fully understand how to use all the rules together to escape - the mushrooms are translucent, and you can shine your light through it and you won’t be affected by the time reversal.

Level Design

I did the level design for the Siren, and it was deceptively complicated for such a small area. Our experiential goals where to create an underwater cave environment that was ominous, a bit claustrophobic, and alien enough to support our unusual environmental rules.

I started with a low light cave with a single exit, that would be cut off by the siren. The centerpiece was to be the siren statue (the time relic, the essential puzzle piece), which draws attention to itself by being in the center and on the edge of a peninsula in the cave. To face the siren statue is to also look down the cave to the exit, so the actual siren enemy would be visible whenever the player was interacting with the statue, which was essential for the player to realize the siren was being reversed when the statue was activated. The player would also be able to see the light of the exit, attracting them there as the goal.

Other complicated constraints were that one, and only one mushroom was to be within range (as to not make the relationship obvious) of the statue, and the crisscrossing fish pathing was not to accidentally cross the statue and trigger it without the player’s intending that (something that occurred in early versions of the level). However, the fish were to be pathed over the mushrooms so that they would dynamically trigger the mushroom eating, demonstrating the mechanic to the player.

To succeed, I had to carefully layout the spatial relationships of puzzle pieces and create a visual hierarchy of importance. Finally, I had the player start near the entrance of the cave facing outward so they would naturally swim toward the light, only to be stopped by the siren appearing. After facing the obstacle, the player reverses direction (shown to work in our playtests) and is lured by the light of the mushrooms.