Welten der Werkstoffe

Play the game here!

This serious game was created by the Cologne Game Lab in cooperation with the Institut für Werkstoffanwendung in order to help engineering students recap their learnings of materials science. I joined the team while the final 10th level was being developed. In addition I designed four new levels that were commissioned by the team’s leading expert, the material science professor Martin Bonnet.
Here is how I contributed to Level X1-X4:

Point-and-click Puzzle Design

On the basis of the learning outcomes each level should provide, I designed the levels with their puzzles. To be able to design those I had to first gather expert knowledge in material science myself. With the help of a contact partner I dove into the topic and created multiple specialised puzzles that prevented trial-and-error solutions. As the goal of the game is to reward learning, not letting players advance by mindlessly trying things out was essential. To prevent cheating by copying a fellow student’s solution, I created three different modulations of each puzzle.

Story & Dialogues

After I settled on the individual puzzles, I had to connect them with each other through the story. Thereby my creative freedom was restricted by the existing framework of the game, meaning the characters, the setting and the overarching story. Additionally the budget was limited, so I was asked to mainly rely on the existing assets so not a lot of new art would have to be created for the levels.
I managed to squeeze the additional levels into the story by giving some of the existing characters a second appearance. The dialogues were written with the same humour as the dialogues for the existing ten levels. Sadly, a lot of interactions that were not necessary in order to solve the puzzles were cut out due to budget reasons. Still I am proud that I could contribute to such a really funny serious game.

Quality Assurance

The project’s budget might have come to a close, but my work is not yet done. After the levels I designed have been implemented, it is now my job to make sure everything is working as intended. Because the systems used in the code were changed, I am currently also looking at all levels and the whole game in general to find bugs, technical discrepancies as well as major and minor flaws. I am also looking out for things that can be improved further, to guarantee a smooth, carefree gaming experience for the players so they can fully focus on the specialized puzzles and their learning outcome.