Keyan Zhang
A gamer, and a game designer
NARRATIVE PUZZLE GAME
UNFINISHED POEM
The Unfinished Poem is an escape-the-room-like puzzle game for 1-4 players. Play as a memory technician hired to dig through the last memories of a poet to complete his final work. Solve puzzles and explore the map of the poet’s hangouts, changing the landscape with your memory machine analysis to view the space as he did. Complete each incomplete line of the poem to bring you closer to solving the mystery of the poet’s death.
Role: Game Design, Puzzle Design
Collaborator: Yijia Chen, Rachel Moller, Jordan Jones-Brewster
DESIGN GOAL
We wanted to design a puzzle game with an interesting narrative. To do that, we designed three different puzzles, each including a piece of information to the final objective. We also include hints to help players if they are stuck in the middle.
RECEPTION
From this project, I learned that giving useless clue will make the game experience horrible, for they always pivot players to wrong directions, and thus make them frustrated. After we playtested several times, we removed all the useless clues and changed the order of the levels. The introductory puzzle became easy enough for players to feel accomplished, while still introducing them to the logic of the world.