Narrative Designer
Da Vinci’s Formula required some though regarding its setting and implicit characters, even though the game does not feature an explicit narrative.
First, we came up with a puzzle mechanic coherent with the theme and the setting of the game (alchemy in the fifteenth century). Thus, a puzzle requiring manipulating and mixing potions.
Secondly, we added flavor to the props and game items (the book, the potions and the formulas). We strove for a balance between historical accuracy and modern appeal.
Additionally, I made historical research on Leonardo da Vinci and its assistants, in particular Francesco Melzi, who became the main character.
Last but not least, my colleague and I wrote the texts for the book and the dialogues.
Puzzle Designer
While the game mechanics were quite simple to define (first person, move freely within the room, drag and drop objects from a hotspot to the other) with clearly defined constraints, the puzzle of the game required some thought,
My co-designer and I wanted to make the player experience the esoteric thrill of experimenting with alchemy.
What I Worked With
In order to reach our goal, we came up with the idea of a puzzle about de-cyphering a formula for a secret elixir created by Leonardo da Vinci himself (that is, the titular “secret”).
My colleague laid the ground for the work by coming up with the common potions the player would need to mix to obtain the unique one.
He divided them into three groups and established a hierarchy among them (or which potion led to which).
My Puzzle Design
Creating Discreet Information Pieces
Therefore, when I jumped into the projects, there were already the pieces of the puzzle. What was missing was the glue to make the entire machine work.
I should note that this project was my first serious take on puzzle design. Therefore, after some consideration, I decided to employ a fragmented information flow to challenge the player in an interesting way.
I extrapolated three main attributes out of the concept of “potion”:
- a symbol;
- a name; and
- an appearance.
Then, I deconstructed the concept of “appearance” into two smaller components:
- a verbal description of the potion; and
- the visual presentation rendered by the game engine.
At the end of the design process, I could work with five groups of attributes, which I would turn into clues for the player to use.
Distributing Clues
To create a challenge, I broke the connection between objects and attributes and distributed the latter among the informative sources the player could access.
You can see this represented in the diagram below.
Within the book, the player could access the name of a potion, the symbol associated with it and its verbal description.
In addition, there is a section of the book dedicated only to the formulas for mixing potions. These formulas are cyphered with the symbols of the potions. Hence, the player has to know the potion/symbol matches in order to follow the instruction.
Last, the potion instances offer visual presentation to the player.
The Flow of the Puzzle
To solve the puzzle, the player navigates through these three clusters of clues and creates connection to complete their lack of information.
Below, you can see a diagram representing the steps of completing the puzzle. The diagram is linear and does not represent sub-loops or player’s mistakes.
Possible Improvements
From my point of view, I immediately see two ways the puzzle could be improved:
- the puzzle was utterly straightforward and relied heavily on reading; while not flaws per se, I would like to move forward with more complex puzzle structures on my next puzzle design; and
- implementation issues took away huge chunks of development time and forced me and the team to cut away some fundamental polishing; as a result, the book of clues is not as readable as it should be.
Given those, I am still satisfied with my first attempt in puzzle design.
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