P2: Remnant (Team Lemming)

Remnant

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – WILLIAM FAULKNER

What began as a sunny vacation in Pelau Siring with three of your friends ends in a waking nightmare. Your friends return home carrying strange curses, and to save them you must unravel Pelau Siring’s history and confront the lingering scars of a colonial past that refuses to stay buried.

Synopsis / Artist Statement

Remnant is a point-and-click horror game that explores the lasting consequences of colonialism through supernatural afflictions, environmental storytelling, and historical puzzles. The player and their three closest friends visit a remote, imaginary town called Pelau Siring while on vacation. Shortly after returning home, each friend begins suffering from a strange curse connected to a seemingly minor transgression they committed during the trip. Thia finds herself unable to discard anything, as every item she throws away mysteriously returns. Marcus becomes consumed by work, unable to rest or stop producing. Yuna is tormented by recurring nightmares of her parents being kidnapped, leaving her afraid to sleep. As their conditions worsen, the player returns to the town to uncover what happened and find a way to save them.

The premise emerged from an interest in how the effects of colonialism persist long after formal colonial rule has ended. While many people think of colonialism as a historical event, its economic, cultural, and social consequences continue to shape communities today. We were also interested in making a subversive game about colonialism, as many related games on the market today are in favor of settling and conquesting new lands. 

We wanted to explore this idea through horror: what if past injustices were not simply remembered, but actively lingered, resurfacing in the lives of people who unknowingly repeated the same patterns of exploitation, entitlement, or disrespect?

Throughout the game, players solve puzzles tied both to a friend’s affliction and to a specific aspect of colonial history. Marcus’s obsession with productivity, for example, leads players through records that reduce workers to identification numbers and output quotas, highlighting how colonial systems often treated people as resources rather than individuals. The goal was to create puzzles that reveal a piece of history while drawing a connection between past systems of oppression and the actions that triggered the present-day curse.

Our primary goal was to encourage players to reflect on how historical injustices continue to influence the modern world. Rather than presenting colonialism as distant history, Remnant uses horror and mystery to make its consequences feel immediate and personal. By uncovering the stories behind each curse and helping their friends confront the harm they caused, players gradually piece together a larger narrative about memory, accountability, and the ways unresolved histories continue to haunt the present.

MDA

In MDA terms, Remnant’s core mechanics include point-and-click exploration, clue collection, inventory and journal systems, cross-location puzzle solving, and a five-day time limit with branching endings based on how many puzzles the player completes. These mechanics were designed to support dynamics centered on investigation, connection, and verification. Players are encouraged to gather evidence in one location, carry it elsewhere, and use it to make sense of what they discover. The time limit adds urgency and consequence without turning the game into a test of reflexes. Instead, players must make deliberate decisions about where to spend their limited time and which leads are worth pursuing.

The game’s primary aesthetics are discovery, narrative, and challenge, with a particular emphasis on moral unease, the sense that solving each puzzle also implicates the player in the histories they uncover. 

This philosophy connects to one of our central design principles: we wanted players to slow down. Many puzzle games reward speed and pattern recognition, but Remnant rewards attention. The historical subjects that inspired the game (colonial labor records, displacement, erased place names, and sanitized museum exhibits) cannot be understood at a glance. As a result, we designed every puzzle to require reading, every location to invite close observation, and every clue to demand interpretation. Players who rush through the experience are likely to miss critical connections, while those who take the time to engage deeply can gradually piece together the larger story.

This principle reaches its clearest expression in the game’s ending, which tells the player that they “do not feel like a hero”  but merely feel like “like someone who paid attention.” That line reflects the game’s central argument: engaging meaningfully with the harms of imperialism is not an act of heroism, but a basic responsibility. One of our playtesters specifically highlighted this ending as particularly resonant because it captured exactly what they had spent the game doing. Ultimately, the mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics all work together to support that realization

Game Mechanic Model

Initial Decisions

Our initial decisions about the formal elements of Remnant were shaped by the type of player experience we wanted to create, which was a point-and-click structure because it allowed the player’s actions to be investigation, observation, and clue collecting. We wanted the player to move slowly through the town, paying attention to objects and pieces of information we give them along the way. This format supports the kind of intentional and reflective play we wanted our game to encourage.

We were inspired by games like Cube Escape: Paradox and Fran Bow, especially in the way they use surreal puzzle logic, unsettling visual design, and fragmented storytelling. These references helped us think about how the horror element of our game could emerge through atmosphere and discovery. Due to this, we designed the game around mechanics like choice-based resolution, clue collection, inventory system and cross-location puzzle solving. Our target audience are players interested in narrative games, puzzles, and mystery. We also wanted the game to be accessible to players who may not already be familiar with colonial history or point-and-click conventions, so we went in trying to make the mechanics readable through repeated interaction patterns (explore a location, collect clues, use that information to solve something). This allowed for those who didn’t know a lot about colonial history to still understand the game through a repeated process of investigation.

The magic circle of Remnant asks players to temporarily enter a world where objects, locations, and small actions carry moral weight. The central values guiding our design were accountability, attention, and moral unease. We wanted the game’s mechanics to make players think about what they’re seeing rather than simply “completing” each puzzle. 

Scope of the Game

For Remnant, we chose to develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The game contains a complete narrative experience, including all major story beats, puzzles, artwork, sound design, and an ending. While every core component is fully implemented, some elements have not yet reached the level of polish and refinement we would like to pursue if we were to release. 

Testing & Iteration History

We ran a total of 10 playtests with players of different experience levels, including players who regularly play digital games, players who mainly play analog games, and players who were less familiar with colonial history/point-and-click narrative puzzles. Some of our guiding questions around these sessions were: 

1. Can players solve our puzzles without external guidance?
2. Do they understand what each puzzle is asking?
3. Does the narrative and historical commentary land?

Our first build was much closer to a proof of concept than an MVP. At that stage, we had finalized the broad backstory and were still learning how to work with Ren’Py. The game’s structure existed through a basic map loop where players clicked locations, explored through a few locations, and returned to the village map. Only the Rubber Plantation puzzle was playable. This helped us identify our core player verbs which were investigate, connect, remember, and acknowledge. This was important to us because we wanted the main actions to be reading, collecting, and acts of puzzle solving. We also spent this stage researching actual colonial histories, especially systems of forced labor, missionary influence, and the transformation of colonized places into tourist sites, which ultimately influenced our puzzles.

 

[Iteration + Playtest 1]

Back in week 7, we just finalized the backstory of our game and were getting used to the Ren’Py engine. We implemented the basic loop structure of our game where players click on locations on the village map to explore and return after exploring. We only had one puzzle implemented that was playtestable – the Rubber Plantation puzzle. Therefore, this playtest focused on whether the Rubber Plantation puzzle made sense as both a puzzle and piece of historical storytelling to the player. 

Our guiding questions were:

• Will players understand how to approach the Rubber Plantation puzzle?
• Does the puzzle communicate the historical themes of the game, or does it feel like an abstract matching task?

Playtest Feedback

• The player didn’t understand how to approach the puzzle at first, though after getting the first match, they said, “it’s making sense, slowly but surely”
• The match counter was confusing because “8/8 matches” looked like a correctness score rather than the number of total matches completed
• The different match colors made it harder for the player to remember what had already been paired
• The player said afterwards that “the game feels intuitive,” and that the “topic and structure are really interesting”
• The player also said the puzzle “definitely gets to the mission of the game,” which confirmed that the core concept worked, even though the interface needed significant improvements

Updates/Changes Made

• We made match colors uniform so correct matches looked connected and made entire rows clickable instead of individual cells
• We improved readability since the font was hard to read
• We rethought parts of the worker matching system so players wouldn’t feel like they were only manipulating abstract data
• We removed the “submit” button and gave the player live feedback

This playtest helped us separate meaningful difficulty from accidental difficulty. Bates argued that good puzzles should support plot, character, and story and shouldn’t obstruct them. Our “before” version made players struggle with the interface and our “after” version kept the historical reasoning but reduced friction that distracted from the emotional purpose of the puzzle.

[Iteration + Playtest 2]

Playtest 2 Video Link

After the first playtest, we focused on further developing the game and adding more content since our game was very empty. We filled out more areas and successfully completed adding the second puzzle – the family photo matching puzzle, where the player must visit several locations throughout the village map to collect three photo pieces and assemble them. Alongside the second puzzle, implemented the journal/inventory system that keeps track of items collected throughout the game. The game was still mostly text/menu-based and there were fewer location-specific visuals.

Our guiding questions were:

• Does adding a second puzzle make the game feel more complete and engaging?
• Will players understand how to collect and use items across different locations?

Playtest Feedback

• The player said that the game was “nicely built” and “a really good game,” which showed that the core loop was engaging
• They were able to solve the family photo puzzle on the first try
• However, they also noted that the game would feel “more fleshed out” if it used more visual elements instead of relying heavily on text
• The player mentioned they likely wouldn’t have known to look in the church location without guidance, which showed that our environmental signaling was still weak

Updates/Changes Made

• We defined what we wanted our visual aesthetic wanted to be and began developing a stronger pixel-art style for the whole game
  • We added more background art and the landing map art
• We leaned more into environmental storytelling so players could infer meaning from spaces, objects, and visual changes
• We also started thinking more about accessibility and how to decrease the amount of text that was currently present in the game

This iteration really helped us create a design that told a story that was embedded in a place. We started thinking about game building as narrative sets, and we confirmed that each location in the map should communicate content, history, and power through their design.

[Iteration + Playtest 3]

Playtest 3 Video Link

By this stage, we added the third puzzle, the Mirror Pool puzzle and had a clearer visual identity. The Mirror Pool puzzle connected the character Thia’s affliction to environmental harm via the erasure of a sacred spring. This was the first location where we developed a more direct point-and-click interaction with objects in the scene, like the landing map.

Our guiding questions were:

• Does the new Mirror Pool puzzle make sense as a connection between Thia’s affliction, environmental harm, and colonial erasure?
• Will players notice when objects in the environment change after interaction?
• Does the Rubber Plantation puzzle still require too much memory or guessing from the player?

Playtest Feedback

• The player had an “ohhh” moment when the lore began connecting and making sense; also mentioned that they like the UI
• They said the puzzles make players “test your prior assumptions” and described the game as having a “really strong embedded narrative”
• However, they also noted the game needed “clearer indicators that things have changed.”
  • The player was confused about whether the bottle in the Mirror Pool had changed and whether they needed to interact with objects multiple times to discover new information
  • This was further emphasized by Lucas, “they didn’t realize that the bottle’s state would change after interacting with other objects in the scene, so I would improve the feedback mechanism on this part”
• Another play noted that they were confused about the relevance and logic of the Mirror Pool, and the logic didn’t quite make sense
  • One player noted “how did I change the sign with a marker?”
• Players still needed stronger feedback showing what they had already matched correctly in the Rubber Plantation puzzle; it was hard to solve it all at once

Updates/Changes Made

• We updated the Rubber Plantation puzzle UI to make the task more explicit
  • Instead of requiring all 8 matches to be correct at the same time, we changed the mechanics so players could match pairs one by one
  • When a player matched a pair correctly, the corresponding name appeared on the left ledger and the same on the right was crossed out
  • We did this to make progress visible, reduce memory load, and help players build confidence as they solved the puzzle

• For the Mirror Pool, we began discussing how to make the spring puzzle more materially and narrative grounded in a way that made sense. We thought about ways for it to depend more on investigation and environmental clues
  • We added clearer feedback after the player investigates all objects in the spring locations, in which dialogue pops up that suggests that they should do something with the bottle

This iteration marked an important shift in our designing thinking, where we were thinking critically about how to make a puzzle solvable and how to make the player’s action make sense in the game’s context (in present-day/historical colonialism) and mechanically. For the Rubber Plantation puzzle, the “before” version made the player’s hold too much information in their heads at once and the “after” version created a clearer interaction loop where the players could try a match, receive feedback, update their understanding, and continue where they left off. In MDA terms, we revised the Rubber plantation puzzle so that the player dynamic became “investigate and confirm” rather than “guess, start over, be frustrated.” For the Mirror Pool, the feedback showed us that our intended aesthetic of eerie historical mystery wasn’t quite yet supported by clear enough mechanics.

[Iteration + Playtest 4-5]

Playtest 4 Video Link

Playtest 5 Video Link

By this stage, we had a more complete version of the game with three functioning puzzles, a journal and inventory system, and clearer location progression. We also added onboarding so players understood the basic structures before being dropped into the game. We added a 5-day time limit (can only visit 3 locations in 1 day) and diverging endings:

• Good ending: solving all 3 puzzles
• Normal ending: solving 2 puzzles
• Bad ending: solving 1 or no puzzles

Our guiding questions were:

• Does onboarding help players understand the journal, inventory, and basic investigation loop?
• Will the 5-day limit and 3-locations-per-day rule create meaningful urgency without frustrating players?
• Are players able to recognize important items and directional clues within the game’s text?

Playtest Feedback

• The onboarding helped players realize that the journal existed and gave them a better understanding of how they were were supposed to use it
• We noticed that players weren’t using the inventory system as much as expected, almost as if they didn’t know it existed or didn’t understand that collected items would matter later
• Item collection wasn’t clear enough. In many cases players didn’t realize they had picked up an item because the game only explained it in plain text, such as “you got a key” 
  • Since the game already has a lot of text, players often overlooked these moments
• After adding the time limit, the “finish investigation and leave” button became much more consequential because leaving a location now cost the player one of their limited daily visits
  • The button didn’t have a safety check/confirmation prompt, so players sometimes clicked it by mistake and play testers noted that they clicked it by mistake and immediately returned to the village map. They mentioned it was frustrating because it wasted a previous time slot

Updates/Changes Made

• We made item names red and bolded in the dialogue whenever players collected something important that’s now in their inventory

• We made directional clues yellow and bolded so players could more easily recognize when a clue was pointing them to another location
• We added a confirmation prompt before leaving a location so players wouldn’t accidentally waste a time slot
• We continued refining the Rubber Plantation, making it matchable from left to right, and right to left

This iteration helped us understand that readability directly affects whether players can actually experience the story the way we intended for it to. If players miss an item or accidentally leave a location then the historical and emotional arc of the game becomes harder to follow. The onboarding and highlighted text changes were our way of reducing accidental friction without removing difficulty. In MDA terms, the 5-day time limit and branching endings changed the game’s mechanics in order to create a dynamic of urgency and consequence. The UI updates we made supported our aesthetic goal of careful investigation by helping players notice the clues and interactions that mattered the most.

[Iteration + Playtest 6-9]

Playtest 6 Video Link

Playtest 8 Video Link

By this stage, the game had most of its major systems implemented. We tried to make the Mirror Pool puzzle feel more grounded and more challenging by adding more complex mechanisms, such as adding hidden codes to the sign and having to visit other locations (the empty house and townhall) to find clues. Our intention was to move away from a puzzle that felt too simple or purely magical and instead give players something more concrete to decode. Playtests 6-9 focused more on polish, filling out empty areas, and seeing whether the game felt engaging as a fuller experience rather than a set of disconnected puzzles.

Our guiding questions were:

• Can we make the Mirror Pool puzzle more challenging without making it feel random or disconnected from the story?
• Do the inventory and clue systems still work as the game becomes larger and more item-heavy?
• Do all locations feel purposeful?

Playtest Feedback

• In playtest 6, we received specific UI feedback that the hospital cross should be changed from red to green for legal reasons
• We also received feedback that the inventory was becoming difficult to use
  • Since we hadn’t implemented discarding items after use, players could accumulate 10-20 items as the game progressed
  • The inventory window didn’t have a scrollbar at that point so it was hard for players to find the item/clue they needed in the moment
  • Players suggested that we add a scrollbar and remove items from the inventory after they already served their purpose
• The safety check for the “finish investigation and leave” button helped reduce accidental exists
  • We saw players click it and when they were met with the safe check, they rethought their decision and chose not to leave on multiple occasions

    

• One playtester noted that they “really enjoyed the ledger puzzle” and rationalized aloud the entire time they were completing it
  • They had audible “aha” moments, especially when they found the crumpled paper clue for the Mirror Pool puzzle
  • They also got scared when night fell because they thought someone had been hurt/died, which showed emotional investment in the narrative and confirmed that the time system wascreating tension
• A playtester noted they were “confused why s4 s8 s14 are hidden on the sign”
  • The clues felt random and disconnected from the lore since they hadn’t been narratively explained and seemingly appeared out of nowhere
  • The clues for the Mirror Pool in other locations didn’t feel narratively justified
    • One of the key clues was hidden in a death report in the town hall, which made the connection feel somewhat arbitrary rather than organically tied to the spring’s history
• A later playtest said the Mirror Pool sequence made the player click back on the sign multiple times when it “should just be one continuous stream”
  • They were also confused by the option wording like “throw it away” and “write message on sign”
• Players noted that some locations, like the museum and graveyard, felt underdeveloped because they didn’t provide meaningful clues, useful information, or narrative payoff
• We still continued to receive feedback requesting for more art at locations to be filled, since some locations still didn’t have any

Updates/Changes Made

• We changed the hospital cross from red to green
• We added a logo of our game name from the logo design lecture to the opening scene 
• We added a scrollbar to the inventory window so players could navigate item lists more easily and implemented item removal after items were used

• We filled out art for remaining locations and also added music and sounds to the village map, introduction scene, and locations 
  • For example, when the player moves somewhere, there are footstep/walking sounds
• We filled out previously narratively empty areas
  • The graveyard was initially empty, so we moved the shovel item from the empty home basement to the graveyard. This made the graveyard feel more purposeful and made the item’s placement more thematically appropriate
  • We moved the Mirror Pool puzzle clue from the town hall to the museum where it became part of the spring fragments exhibit. This made the puzzle feel more narratively coherent because the museum was a more believable place for players to encounter historical evidence related to the spring and its original meaning
  • We also added more context about the locations in the museum so players could better understand how the location connects to the town’s larger history
• We clarified the meaning of the Mirror Pool in the dialogue by making the clues more explicit and adding narrative context to the clues, such as why the sign contained coded markings
• We filled in subareas of locations that already had puzzle relevance
  • For example, the city hall and hospital were used for the family photo puzzle, but only the key clue subareas, such as the third floor archive room and the basement morgue, were fully developed. We added plausible items and text to areas like the lobby and second floor for these spaces felt less empty and so it seemed that other subareas could hold important information
• We revamped the Rubber Plantation UI again
  • Instead of crossing out names, we changed the feedback so each correct row turned green and incorrect pairs would not have a color

• Generally made several fixes to the bugs, game flow and UI

This iteration focused on making our existing systems feel complete and intentional. The inventory changes reflected our growing understanding that a clue system is only useful if players can actually find and interpret the clues they have collected. As the game became larger and the player progressed, organization became part of the design challenge we had to overcome. Filling out empty areas mattered because our game depends on environmental storytelling. In “The Role of Architecture in Videogames,” Adams argues that game architecture functions like a movie set where it doesn’t need to be realistic in every way, but it should support narrative, atmosphere and meaning. This helped us understand why empty spaces and subareas weakened the experience. If only puzzle-critical rooms contain meaningful content, players can immediately tell what matters and what doesn’t, which ruins the aesthetic. By the end of these later playtests, based on the reaction from our playtesters, our game helped them enter the emotional logic of the game, care about the consequences of time passing, and engage with the puzzles as acts of historical investigations. 

[Iteration + Final Playtest 10]

Playtest 10 Video Link

Timestamps + Notable Moments

[5:30] As the player learned about the rubber plantation’s history, he remarked that it “feels very reminiscent of the Congo.” This was a meaningful moment for us because although our game is based loosely on imperialism in Southeast Asia, we intentionally designed it to evoke broader histories of colonial extraction. The player drawing this connection unprompted confirmed our success in making the narrative resonate beyond its specific setting.

[7:19] When choosing his second location, the player said “yeah, the museum talked about the plantation a lot, so I’ll go there.” This confirmed that our narrative nudging worked. One of our goals after earlier playtests was to give players directional cues without spelling out the next step explicitly, and this moment showed the museum was successfully functioning as the hint hub we designed it to be.

[8:28] The player clicked around the Rubber Plantation puzzle for a few seconds before having an “aha” moment: “Ohh, it’s a matching thing.” This was significant because earlier playtesters needed external guidance to understand the puzzle’s mechanics. This time, the UI improvements (clearer cell selection, real-time feedback) allowed the player to figure out the mechanic on his own within seconds. We were also pleased that he spent a few seconds figuring it out rather than understanding it instantly; we didn’t want to hand-hold players too much, so a brief moment of exploration before the click felt like the right balance between accessibility and discovery.

[8:30 – 10:50] The player worked through the Rubber Plantation puzzle and completed it in about 2-3 minutes. He rationalized his choices aloud the entire time, looking deeply in thought. This confirmed our design goal of making the puzzle thought-provoking rather than mechanical. The player wasn’t clicking around randomly; he was actively reasoning about the workers’ lives based on the ledger evidence. 

[18:17] The player encountered the locked box and asked aloud, “Is there anything I have that could help?” before opening the Journal to check for clues. He tried a wrong combination first, then returned to the Journal, read that Joaquin Gonzalez was buried in the church backyard, and reasoned that the box “has something to do with him, right?” before entering the correct combination. This moment validated our inventory and journal system. The player used it exactly as we intended, as an investigation tool for connecting evidence across locations.

[24:13] After finishing the family photo puzzle, the player exclaimed, “Yes! I got it!” The audible satisfaction confirmed that the puzzle’s payoff worked, and that the assembling-photo-pieces mechanic provided meaningful resolution.

[28:18] Attempting the Mirror Pool puzzle, the player figured out he needed to pour water over the sign and said aloud, “Water reveals hidden writing, let’s see some hidden writing.” He was directly referencing a clue he had found earlier in the Old Home. This was a rewarding moment during the playtest because it demonstrated behavior we hoped for: a player carrying clues across locations, remembering them, and applying them at the right moment. The narrative threads of the game were holding together in the player’s mind.

[34:45] With only two locations left, the player expressed real anxiety about running out of time “before we all die.” The 5-day time limit was successfully creating the urgency and stakes we designed for.

[36:26] As he approached the end of his last day, the player said, “I think Thia’s dead, guys. I think we failed Thia.” His shift from speaking about a character to speaking for her (and to an imagined audience) showed how invested he had become in the outcome.

[36:45] The player was unable to complete the third puzzle (Mirror Pool) in time. He audibly expressed frustration (“Dang it!”) and sadness at the failure. While he didn’t reach the good ending, the strength of his emotional response confirmed the game had landed where we wanted it to. The player cared about the characters and the consequences. This also supported our final design decision not to add an explicit pointer back to the Mirror Pool after the museum. The good ending was intended to require careful attention, and this player’s near-miss is not necessarily a failure in our eyes, but a valid first-playthrough outcome. 

———————-———————-———————-———————-—————-

By our final playtest, we focused on making the details more fine-grained. All areas and subareas had art, as well as some interactions. We finished adding sound effects to all locations to make the world feel more immersive.

Our guiding question was:

• Does the completed art, sound, and final changes make the game world feel immersive and polished?

Playtest Feedback

• We noticed that this playtester and other playtesters from previous iterations were able to solve the Rubber Plantation and family photo matching puzzles, but the Mirror Pool puzzle was still the most difficult
  • The main issue was directional confusion. Players had to first visit the Mirror Pool to collect clues, then go to the museum to interpet those clues, and finally return to the Mirror Pool to solve the puzzle
  • This playtester didn’t realize they needed to return to the Mirror Pool after visiting the museum because the game didn’t explicitly direct them there, which was different from other puzzles, such as the family photo puzzle, where bolded text more directly guided players to the next location
• We also received feedback that the game should include a content warning because some sections, especially in the town hall, include descriptions of torture
• Another piece of feedback was that players shouldn’t be notified immediately that a friend has been cured after solving a puzzle
  • They suggested that it made more narrative sense for that update to happen at night, after the day’s investigation was over
• A playtester noted after finishing the game “I had a lot of fun” and that “putting all the pieces together felt very rewarding”

Updates/Changes Made

• After a discussion with each other, we felt that the Mirror Pool puzzle was intended to reward careful reading and deeper engagement with the story. Clues like the repeated phrase “MOTHER SPRING REMEMBERS” and the backstory of the spring becoming a tourist attraction were meant to help attentive players infer that the curve needed to be lifted from the mirror pool
  • Ultimately, we decided to not add a pointer (for the player to return back to the Mirror Pool) because we wanted to preserve puzzle difficulty – we didn’t want nearly every player to get the ending on the first try
  • Our intention was that an average first playthrough might result in a normal or bad endings, while players who carefully read and understand the lore and clues would be able to reach the good ending
• We added a content warning
• We changed the timing of cure notifications so that players are updated at night

This final iteration helped us think more carefully about the difference between unfair confusion and intentional difficulty. Earlier in the process, we tried to remove confusion caused by unclear UI or weak feedback. By this stage, however, the Mirror Pool’s difficulty came more from interpretation, since there were play testers who were able to complete it and some who weren’t able to. Keeping the Mirror Pool harder also supported our larger goal for Remnant; players should slow down, read carefully, and treat the island’s history as something that must be pieced together. The completed artwork and sound made the game feel more complete. 

Future Work

In future iterations of our game, we would like to refine several elements:

1. We acknowledge that the final game had a lot of text. If we had more time, we would want to make some of that information more concise by developing more visual ways for players to encounter clues. For example, instead of having players click on a report and read its content through dialogue text, we could create a visual, interactive book interface that players can flip through and discover information themselves. This would make the game feel more immersive and reduce the amount of exposition delivered through dialogue text.
2. We would want to enable interaction with the environment in every location in our game. Currently, only one location, the Mirror Pool, enables the player to hover on objects in the scene and click on them. All other locations are explorable by a branch menu. We would like every location to be like Mirror Pool, but it was simply quite difficult to implement this in the time frame we had, since we had to manually define the pixel boxes for items in the scene.
3. We would want to extend artwork in the locations. For example, when the player arrives at a location and selects a sublocation or an object to examine, we would like the scene to change accordingly. We were able to build this out for many of the locations, except a few (including the hospital and city hall). 
4. We would like to improve the journal system so that it’s easier for players to use as an investigative tool. Since players collect many clues across multiple locations, the journal could be organized by location or friend. Additionally, rather than relying on written descriptions of the clue, we would’ve liked to learn more heavily on visual representation of clues (e.g. art of a ripped out page from a book). This would make the journal more accessible to players who may struggle with dense text or cognitive load, while also better matching the investigative tone of the game.
5. We would want to continue polishing pacing and reducing accidental friction. While we were able to address several navigation issues through clues and smoother transitions, more time would’ve allowed us to make these interactions feel more seamless. For example, we could further refine how important locations are visually emphasized without making the puzzle too obvious. These kinds of improvements wouldn’t have necessarily fundamentally changed the structure of our game, but they would help players stay immersed in the narrative.

Accessibility Notes

Throughout Remnant, we aimed to follow the principle that important information should be communicated through multiple sensory channels whenever possible. For example, in the Rubber Plantation puzzle, players must match workers’ identification numbers from a colonial ledger with their real names from a census. To clearly communicate when a match is correct, we provide both visual and auditory feedback. Correctly matched pairs are highlighted in green and become locked, preventing further modification. In addition, a short, pleasant violin note plays when a correct match is made, while an incorrect match triggers a brief discordant note.

We also incorporated features intended to reduce cognitive load and support players with memory or attention-related challenges. The primary example is an investigative journal, which automatically records important clues, observations, and story details throughout the game. By providing players with a persistent record of information, the journal reduces reliance on memory and allows them to focus on solving puzzles and engaging with the narrative.

Game 

• Itch.io link: https://jaduksuh.itch.io/remnant
• Google drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13qcU7TWJOMuzvTtHX1Y1L9Z85_FYUiCL?usp=sharing

We attempted to host our game on itch.io, but it turned out not to be playable on the site because the build contains too many files for the zip upload to run properly. As a workaround, we’ve uploaded the game build to Google Drive so it can be downloaded and played from there.

AI Usage

AI was used extensively throughout the development of our game. Due to the large volume of artwork required and the project’s 3–4 week timeline, we leveraged AI tools to generate much of the game’s visual assets. AI was also used as a support tool for programming and writing tasks, helping with code development, debugging, brainstorming, and drafting written content. All AI-generated outputs were reviewed, modified, and integrated by the development team as part of the overall creative process.