SOLSIKKE
ROLE
Designer, Developer, and Composer
DESCRIPTION
Solsikke is a short 2D multiplayer game, designed to teach people about the concept of death in an approachable and sensitive way. Players play though a story starting with the death of a loved one and working through levels associated with each stage of grief. I worked on the level design, audio design, visual design, and gameplay programming.
GAME
LEVEL DESIGN
Here we kept the level layout simple in order to allow the player to pause and reflect, and truly feel like they’re going through the motions of something simple and familiar. Though not shown in the still, an inventory UI was added to be always shown at the top left of the screen, to add clarity for players. We did not want an extra button to open and close the inventory as there were only 4 collectables in the first level and all were necessary.
Here we made an intentionally confusing level layout in the form of a maze to make the player truly feel the anger that the player was feeling. However, we did not want it to feel hopeless and added a mechanic of breaking pots and collecting coins in the maze. With each pot smash, the player felt the result of their anger in the game, and also felt a sense of progression in the real world. It also foreshadows events later in the game, and makes the player ask what they will do with the coins inside the pots.
We designed this level to be more expansive than the first level, but much more controlled and calming than the previous one. As the main part of this level was bargaining, we had every part of this level point to the wizard in some way. The letter area (not pictured) only opens up once the talking and “bargaining is done” which is why there is only one way it can be accessed.
In terms of changes to the design after playtesting, we changed the green/grey tint of the background/foreground after noticing some players having trouble differentiating. We also changed the location of the wizard to be static with an idle animation instead of wandering around the area to create a more serene feeling.
We designed this level to have the most “real”, peaceful, and connected feel. We created a fog effect and a natural soundscape and had the paths be linear, yet still meander towards the end. We ensured each gravestone had the feeling that it was surrounded by nature as we wanted it to be as comforting as possible.
This section also functioned as our credits, with each gravestone featuring one of us designers. When the player reaches the last gravestone, the one of their dead loved one, they have the option to plant the soul seeds they picked up earlier. A sunflower blooms, and as it does, it becomes the first and only point where color was introduced to the game.