Hyacinth

Demo Video

Project Info

Introduction

Hyacinth is a 2D puzzle game we developed during Global Game Jam 2019 Shenzhen Site , under the theme of “What home means to you?” It tells a story about family conflicts in a child’s view. I believe everyone suffers from family conflicts to some extent. We wanted to use this game to attract people’s more attention to this issue.

Design

In this game, the blue circle, the red circle and the orange circle stand for father, mother and child respectively. There are three scenes in each level and there is a map in each scene. The crosses in the left and right scenes represent the conflicts of parents. The player needs to connect father and mother without passing through the crosses.

This game reflects a common social phenomenon: how dysfunctional family relationships can have a negative impact on children. The idea came from our own experience. I always believe that personal experience is a great source of inspiration. For the gameplay, we offered a narrative which brought the players closer to childhood trauma, with a puzzle-solving process representing a child reconciling family difficulties.

We learned from many famous games such as Florence, Undertale and The Witness. We combined the advantages of those games with our own ideas. Although the theme of this game is sad, this game tells a hopeful story. In the beginning, the child in the game suffered from the pain brought by parental conflicts. He tried to resolve conflicts but failed. He felt so helpless and depressed. At this time, a girl appeared in his world. The girl saved this boy with love. Finally, they get married and have a happy family.

There is a specially designed level. At this level, the puzzle seems very complicated. The player may feel very anxious. Actually, there is no solution for this level. When the player clicks the check mark to submit the answer, the screen will become darker. After three times, the player can pass this level. We want to use this design to let the players feel children’s helpless, fear, anger and the urge to escape from this broken home.

My Contributions

• As a designer, I participated in the design of the story.
• As a programmer, I finished all the programming work such as the gameplay and UI.
• As a team leader, I was responsible for the project management. Making a game in 48 hours is a really challenging job. My solution was to divide the whole project into small tasks and set a deadline for each task. This is a really useful method to control the progression of the project. Also, I made a detailed schedule on the priority lists for all art and sound assets so that we can work more efficiently. Finally, we successfully developed this game in a limited time.

Notable Experience

• Completed a full game production cycle within 48 hours.
• Combined the gameplay with storytelling and successfully struck a responsive chord in the hearts of players.
• Met many indie game developers and became friends with them.

Screenshots

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