Hey it's me, the level designer of Sky Aisle.

After deciding on the core mechanic of build your own platforms, I started doodling the puzzles. I wanted to go deep rather than wide and explore the limit.

If you find this interesting so far, try out the game before reading the rest. Unfortunately I can't post links yet. You can check out the game at the top of this post.

:warning: Minor spoilers from this point on!

*Puzzle Patterns *

This stage includes a lot of experimentation. I find it better to draw them out before making them in-game. I identified interesting concepts we found as "puzzle patterns", and listed them out as a table. Many of these were just consequences of the mechanic.

I made three for each, but many ended up in the game so you'll have to find them there.

| Concepts | Description | Example | | --- | --- | --- | | Break & Place | Core mechanic | | | Rotate | Rotate to break pieces / rotate to place pieces | | | Overchip | Extra tiles in selection are left uncut | | | Leaving Behind | Remember to leave room to escape the island | | | Gaps in the Breaks | Islands are segmented, find where to cut | | | Again and Again | Break and replace tiles that have already been moved | | | Precise Shapes | Break pieces into specific shapes to match a gap | |

From here, it was pretty easy to mix and match more complex puzzles, and design them with a twist in mind.

Each puzzle should be small, and introduce a new concept for the player.

Everything Else

By now it's the end of day 1, and I started implementing the levels into the game. The rest flew by very quickly.

In playtesting, some levels turned out to be too hard. We tossed them into a different section for those who want more.

I'm quite happy with how it turned out. There's a lot more I'd be happy to go into, but I think this post is long enough :sleeping: I plan on making small posts in the future for small bits.

If you made it this far and still haven't played the game, go check out what the rest of the team added to the game and let us know how we did :)