Taking ten students from different schools and asking them to make a game in four weeks sounds more like the plot of a G4 reality show than a PAX 10 entry, but that’s exactly how Puzzle Bloom came to be. Jess Rahbek is the designer for that game, and he’s very focused on that job. Read on for a designer’s-eye view of non-gameplay elements, the future of Puzzle Bloom, and one of Jess’s personal projects.

Pixelsocks: For context, can you tell me about your game?

Jess Rahbek

Jess: The game is a student project that we did in the Spring. We decided to make a casual game that wasn’t just for gamers, but anybody. We were presented with a technology called Unity that allows 3D games in a browser. So you have the accessibility of a Flash game, but it can be in 3D.

The director wanted to do a theme about taking the industrial world and turning it green. So you play a little fairy called Canotila who can jump from creature to creature and make it carry her. So you use different creatures by setting them up correctly or jumping at the right time to solve puzzles. It’s mostly a puzzle game with a few action elements.

The rule is that there’s only one mechanic–it’s all about the jumping–but we add more elements to the game world. It keeps consistency in the design and doesn’t confuse the people playing online.

Pixelsocks: It seems like there’s a lot of potential to controlling several animals, but only one at a time. However, there’s only two levels right now. Are you planning to expand the game?

Jess: We actually have a third level that’s nearly complete, and we’ll try to put it online very soon. We haven’t tested it extensively with casual players as we did for the other two levels, but it elaborates on the first two levels with more complicated puzzles. The gamers here at PAX don’t have any difficulty playing through the puzzles that we already have, and the game introduces new elements fairly slowly. So I think we’ll post the new level to see what people think of Puzzle Bloom once it gets crazier.

Pixelsocks: What do you plan to add for the third level?

Jess: For the second level, we added lasers and crates to push. In the third level, we’ll add moving platforms to stress the timing of your input. So you might have to time your jumps so you don’t hit a laser, or you might leave a creature on a platform and get back to him before he gets fried.

We’ll also use the robots more. Right now, they’re just annoying; they move your creatures and they’re easy to kill. However, in the third level, we have a room that is just filled with robots and lasers that behave pretty chaotically. You’ll have to ride the robots to disrupt the lasers, and it ends up more like an emergent sandbox room.

Pixelsocks: When I was playing the build you’ve posted online, I noticed a section where you hop through several animals, leaving them to be fried. That felt at odds with the rest of the game’s message. Was that an intentional decision?

Jess: You could call it more of a coincidence; it has to do with the way the game was designed. The academy constructed the groups, and so we had to work together. The power in the team was divided between the designer and the director, and sometimes we clashed a little bit.

From my point of view, this game could be all boxes and white with no theme to it at all, so I didn’t mind if they died. I don’t think that’s the vision that the director supported. The story isn’t very developed in Puzzle Bloom, so I thought it would be stupid to restrain the gameplay. However, we tested the game with a lot of girls because the director wanted a game that they could enjoy. They really like the little spirit and things like that. So I suppose that stuff makes the game more appealing as players are getting into it. Playing browser games, it’s easy to glance at something and just go on to the next one. So I hope the graphics will get people to stay until they can actually see if they like the gameplay.

Pixelsocks: What’s in your future?

Jess: Once we’re done with the third level, we’ll polish it and try to erase the bugs. In fact, as people play here, we’re noting the bugs they find. After level three we’ll probably work on something else for a while, but if people really play Puzzle Bloom and want more levels, I’m sure we’ll make more.

The team has mostly split up by this point, and I have my own projects to work on. Some of us are staying together to work on new games, and I think we’ll keep using the Unity technology. Some of the programmers and I are using Unity for iPhone for a game I have planned out. Actually, we have a flash game prototype for it, so please have a look.

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