The Princess and the Hammer
“The Princess and the Hammer” was a game developed for a game jam, with the theme "Tower" and which was continued to participate in SBGames 2021.In this game the player controls Princess Matilda, she was in her deep sleep waiting for Prince Charming, but by accident a hammer falls into her room while she was sleeping, and now no prince will need to wake her up, because she, along with her The hammer will face all the challenges of its tower by breaking its own way out of that tower.A 2.5 D game the player can break parts of the floor to open a path and escape the tower, each floor has its own puzzle.
Some Details
The Princess and the Hammer is a game with simple mechanics focused mainly on vertical pregression. The big challenge for this project was the construction of vertical level challenges.
The first room of the game aims to make it clear to the player how the main mechanics of the game work, making them learn these mechanics in practice and in a fun way, allowing them to break everything and knock down objects from an upper room to a lower room.
In the second room the player learns that gray blocks cannot be broken. The player has different visual and audio feedback when these blocks are hammered.
Some elements of the scenery are placed in this room to help the main story of the game, which is the case of the altar with the photo of a secondary character at the back of the room, if this altar is hammered it changes to another character.
The player comes across his first puzzle a few rooms down, where he needs to break the correct floor to continue and needs to break in an order so he doesn't get stuck. To give the intention of danger when breaking, the elements shown in the image above were added.
As the player progresses through the game, the levels become more difficult, using a combination of mechanics learned during the game. In the example in the image above, the player needs to go through a simple maze with two swinging axes, the level allows 2 options, one is fast and dangerous and the other is slower but easier.
The game faced some 3Cs problems, problems that negatively impact the gaming experience but which were important knowledge to add to my vision as a Designer.
Furthermore, the game suffered from a slightly irregular pacing variation in some rooms, creating a feeling of frustration for some players.
At the end of the project I was very satisfied with the project despite the problems the game faced, it was a solo development that required many hours to be completed. He is available to be a player on itch.io, link available at the top of this page.