{ LENA DIAS }

Games/Software Engineer

Slide Sanctuary

A minimalist browser game about moving around the rooms of a dungeon like a slide puzzle.
The title screen, demonstrating controls mouse and keyboard. The game's title, Slide Sanctuary, is displayed, as well as Team Double Jump. Pixel art of a skull is present on screen. The first level of the game. Three rooms, with exit points, are seen from overhead. Also present are the green player pixel and the blue exit staircase. The first level of the game. The top right room has been clicked on and moved to the left, creating a path for the player to access the exit staircase. A later level of the game, this one containing a yellow key and yellow door. The player is moving towards the yellow key. The black inventory bar at the top of the screen is empty. The later level, but the key has been collected and placed in the player's black inventory bar. The player is moving towards the yellow door. The later level, but the yellow door has been unlocked and has thus disappeared. The key has been removed from the player's inventory and the player is moving towards the exit staircase.

About:

Slide Sanctuary has players click on one of three rooms in a dungeon to move the room into the empty space on the board (like in a slide puzzle); players must rearrange the dungeon and gather keys in order to make a path to the staircase.

Made in Perlenspiel, an intentionally lightweight, Javascript-based game engine, which intentional limits graphics to encourage elegant design.

Development details:

Roles: Programmer, Designer
Languages: Javascript
Tools: Perlenspiel engine, IntelliJ IDEA
Team size: 1
Development time: <3 days
Developed: 2021

My role:

Lead Programmer

Lead Designer

Lessons learned:

Prototype and QA test early.

Prototypes and playtesting quickly allow a designer to discover where their vision is working and where it is not (and find bugs, too!) Surveyed playtesters quickly got the hang of mechanics through the game's traditional design language, indicating to me that my design was successful and saving me a lot of redesigning down the road!

Find ways to communicate with the user wordlessly.

Though Perlenspiel is limited, it does allow for display of one line of text; that said, I did want to challenge myself to make something textless. Through use of color, pictograms, and common game vocabulary, the player can get into the game faster and feel all the smarter for figuring things out themself.