Wild Puzzles

Wild Puzzles is a mobile puzzle game where players compete against each other in a series of challenges

On this project I:

1

Designed one of the puzzle games

2

Created many levels for a wide variety of puzzles

3

Participated in the companywide testing efforts

I started working on this game during my summer internship at CHA Games in 2023. I was later called back to help the team create additional levels.
My first task at the company was researching various puzzle games so my supervisors could pick their favorites. From them, they chose two.
I wrote the documentation for one of them, a version of the famous puzzle game One Line. After that, I worked with a programmer and an artist on the game's development.

My second task was to create levels for almost all the games. I have made over 200 levels during my internship, and when I got called back, I had increased that number to over 400. Each game had unique features that I could use to make the levels easier/harder according to the company's needs.

One Line:

Designing levels for one line was relatively easy, especially since the editor was intuitive (Thanks, Slava!). I had to remember to create shapes that would be satisfying to complete while keeping in mind their visual appeal.

Laser:

The levels for Laser were enjoyable to make. There were a few ways in which I could manipulate the difficulty of a level.

Giving the player more mirrors than necessary or the minimum amount can slow them down or create multiple ways of solving each puzzle.
The initial positioning of the mirrors might give the player clues to the solution or confuse them.
The position of the lamps and sources was also critical. Suppose two lamps are positioned on the same row/column. Usually, the direction in which the laser should hit them corresponds to that row/column to waste the minimum amount of mirrors.

Connect the Dots:

Connect the Dots was another fun one. How the dots' paths wrapped around each other could make the levels difficult or easy.

An excellent example is the third level in the video to the left. In it, you can see how the short way to connect the blue dots is the wrong one because it will cause you to be unable to connect the pink dots. Going around the pink dots' path is the way to go about it.

Roll the Ball:

Designing levels for Roll the Ball is really simple. You start with the solution and then mess it up. In general, the more moves the player needs to perform to organize the board to the solution, the more complex the level will be. Another thing that impacts the level's difficulty is the shape of the path vs the pieces the player gets. For example, you might make a path that appears simple but give the player the wrong pieces to solve it in that fashion, thus getting them creative with what they have.

Blind Maze:

Blind Maze was tricky. In the beginning, when we designed the game, the winner of the challenge was the person able to beat the levels in the shortest amount of moves. Therefore, when I created the levels, I had to make sure there were multiple paths to victory and that these paths looked similar enough so that none of them would be obviously shorter.
Luckily, the levels still worked when the decision was made to change the challenges victory condition to be time rather than moves.
Another thing I had to do was to decide how many hint flags the player would get per level.

Block Puzzle:

Block puzzle was great because it required making small pixel art, something I had never experienced before.

Then, I had to split the pixel art into pieces for the puzzle. A neat trick to control the level's difficulty was to make some pieces that could logically only fit into one position. This way, the player can reduce the amount of spots the more tricky pieces can fit in. With fewer possibilities, the player can find the correct position more easily.

Rolling Paint:

This was the hardest game to design levels for, as the slightest mistake could render the entire level unsolvable. The trick was to use the walls as places that would enable the player to stop and turn and then create a path based on those walls.

I had to be very careful though. Each change could break the earlier stages of the level.