Gamedesign: Alien ship, keypad puzzle

(Doctors story)

Hello everyone!

Today I like to tell you about the main puzzle I designed for the alien ship :)

But let's start with a recap and some context for this puzzle:

In this story the doctor gets beamed away to an alien ship. And Keen will go after her in an attempt to to rescue her.  But when Keen arrives at the alien ship, he will find himself in a closed off hallway.  


The Puzzle Setup

So the puzzle I designed is all about opening doors.  

1. Now to open a door, 

2. You need to go to the nearby  keypad. 

3. And enter the security code. 

4. But before you can do that, you first need to find the security code.  

Now these codes will be on notes, that can be found around ship. Apperently our alien is a bit forgetful, so he writes down his security codes!

Puzzle Part 1: Placing the Doors & Codes


So  in order to  to reach the Doctor, Keen needs to open 3 doors in this way. And below you can see where I placed the doors, and the codes.

The blue squares here represent seperate screens. So the first hallway consists out of 3 screens, and Keen will find CODE 1 on the right screen, which he can  then use on the keypad on the left screen. This will open DOOR 1.

And if Keen then continues walking to the far left, he will find CODE 2, which he can use to open DOOR 2 again.

And last, Keen has to open DOOR 3 of course.

But if you look closely to the schematic above, you will see that CODE 3 is behind DOOR 3.  Which makes it apperently impossible to get that code, because it's in a locked room.

 
Solution: I wanted to make this last door just a bit more difficult to open, so here Keen needs to use the teleporter to beam the CODE 3 out of the locked room :)

  
Puzzle Part 2: Entering the security codes

Now in this case, Keen won't automatically use the codes that he finds. You have to do that yourself. And for that I made this Keypad closeup.

And here comes the interestig part! So far the inventory (Keens toolbox) had no real purpose in the game besides keeping track of the items you found. But for this puzzle, you really have to study the inventory-picture of the note, to find the code for the keypad :)

It goes like this:

If you study the note, you will see that it show a unique  symbol in white, and by pressing the buttons on the keypad, you need to  recrate that symbol. And this opens the door.

Gamedesign to tell a story

Now adding all these  doors to this alien ship was not a random choice. I actually did all this, because I wanted Keen to slowly discover what is going on here. And each time you  open a door, and enter a new room,  you will discover a bit more about the story. 

• After opening door 1, you will learn why the alien took the bodyscans. 
• After opening door 2 you will learn how the alien looks, and what he's doing with the doctor. 
• After opening door 3 you get an explanation about why the alien did all this.    

Well, this door-puzzle is  possibly the most tricky quest in the game, but I hope you will like it!  I also considered that when you get here, you already played the game for quite a while. So that should create a nice learning curve and hopefully not make this puzzle too frustrating once you get here :)


Well, I had fun making this & I'd love to hear what you think of it!

All the best
-Robin