A game by Team Marmot (Aanika Atluri, Elisabeth Holm, Matthew Cortez Aguilar, and Sarah Park)
Artist’s Statement
Our intentions for this game are to create a mysterious, hands-on adventure where players feel like they are slowly uncovering a secret hidden inside the world itself. The player takes on the role of a scientist who’s at a jungle research camp and wakes up to find every other researcher trapped in sleep by a curse. As they explore the village, jungle, and temple, they must gather clues, solve puzzles, and fix the artifact before sundown to save everyone. We wanted the game to feel eerie and mysterious without becoming overly stressful, where the tension comes from quiet details like the ringing alarm clocks, sleeping researchers who can’t wake up, and the unsettling emptiness of a village that should be full of life. At the same time, we wanted the experience to stay calm and curiosity-driven so that players feel encouraged to explore the world rather than feel rushed. A core goal was to blend digital and analog puzzle-solving while telling a narrative. Players move through a 2D point-and-click world, but some progress depends on physical puzzles like maps, ciphers, and word searches. This hybrid structure makes discovery feel more active, turning the player into both an explorer and an investigator.
Model of Our Chosen System
Initial Decisions About Formal Elements and Values of Our Game
We designed our game as a single-player hybrid digital-analog puzzle adventure for players who enjoy exploration, mystery, tactile problem-solving, and low-stress discovery. Our target audience is players who like point-and-click games, escape rooms, cozy mysteries, and puzzle adventures, but who may not want a fast-paced, combat-heavy, or highly stressful experience. Because of this, we wanted the game to feel eerie and mysterious while still giving players enough time and guidance to explore at their own pace.
We based our game on a single-player versus game structure: the player is not competing against another person, but against the system of the curse, the environment, locked spaces, hidden clues, and puzzle gates. The player’s larger objective is to move through the village, jungle, river, and temple by solving puzzles that clear obstacles and unlock new areas. Once the player reaches the temple, they solve the final puzzle to recover the artifact that lifts the curse and wakes the sleeping researchers.
In terms of MDA, we thought about the game from both the designer’s perspective and the player’s perspective. From the designer side, our mechanics include point-and-click exploration, object inspection, dialogue, code entry, puzzle gates, physical puzzle manipulation, and area unlocking. These mechanics create dynamics where players observe their surroundings, collect information, slow down, make connections across digital and physical clues, test answers, and gradually open up the world. From the player side, those dynamics are meant to produce the aesthetic experiences of discovery, mystery, challenge, fantasy, and narrative. We wanted players to feel like they were stepping into the role of a scientist-investigator and uncovering the truth through their own interpretation rather than simply being told what happened. This helped us avoid designing features just because they seemed interesting; instead, we asked whether each mechanic supported the emotional experience we wanted. For example, analog puzzles were not included only for novelty. They were chosen because physically handling maps, symbols, word searches, and puzzle pieces makes the player feel more like they are investigating evidence from the world. Similarly, locked doors and blocked paths were not meant to frustrate the player, but to create a rhythm of curiosity, obstacle, understanding, and reward. This is why our main type of fun is not competition or speed, but discovery through low-stress problem-solving.
Our procedures are based on moving through digital scenes, clicking on interactable objects, reading dialogue, solving analog puzzle materials, and entering answers back into the digital game. We chose to include analog puzzles because the physical interaction supports the fantasy of being a scientist or investigator. Players are not only clicking through a mystery; they are handling pieces of it through maps, symbols, word searches, folding or arrangement puzzles, and physical puzzle pieces. This makes the experience feel more active and embodied than a purely digital point-and-click game.
Our rules create structure by limiting progress through locked doors, hidden clues, codes, puzzle gates, blocked paths, and directional choices. Instead of allowing players to move freely through every area from the beginning, the game asks them to prove understanding before they can advance. For example, players may need to solve a symbol code to unlock the historian’s door, complete a word search to clear an obstacle from the path, build or solve a physical puzzle to cross the river, or interpret clues to figure out which direction to travel next. These restrictions are important because they make progress feel earned. When a player enters the correct code or completes the correct puzzle, the game responds by opening a new area, clearing an obstacle, or revealing the next part of the story. This helps the puzzles feel connected to the digital world rather than like separate mini-games.
Our main resources are information-based rather than combat-based. Players gather notes, symbols, maps, dialogue clues, environmental details, puzzle sheets, and physical puzzle pieces. We intentionally decided not to make time a resource because we wanted the game to feel exploratory rather than stressful. Even though the story involves a curse, we wanted the tension to come from atmosphere, mystery, and blocked access rather than from a countdown. This choice supports our target audience and makes the experience more accessible for players who may need more time to read, decode, think, or manipulate physical materials.
Accessibility and inclusion shaped several of our design decisions. Through playtesting, we learned that players could become confused when interactable objects were unclear, when puzzle instructions did not specify the answer format, or when the world allowed too much freedom before the player understood the goal. In response, we added clearer interactable markers, more guiding dialogue, stronger environmental cues, revised puzzle instructions, and blocked paths that prevent players from accidentally skipping important steps. These choices made onboarding more fluid and allowed players to understand the game with less outside explanation. We also tried to support different play styles by combining visual clues, written dialogue, physical manipulation, and environmental storytelling, so the game was not dependent on only one kind of puzzle-solving ability.
Our boundaries move between the digital screen and the physical table. This hybrid boundary was one of our most important formal choices because it directly supports our values of curiosity, exploration, and hands-on discovery. The digital world gives players a place to explore, while the analog puzzles make them physically engage with clues from that world. Together, these elements create the type of fun we wanted: a calm but mysterious investigation where players feel rewarded for noticing details, making connections, and slowly restoring the village.
Scope of the game: MVP
Our project is best described as an MVP. We chose this scope because our main priority was to make the core game loop fully playable from beginning to end rather than focusing all of our effort on one highly polished slice. Players explore the digital world, interact with objects and dialogue, solve analog and digital puzzles, enter solutions back into the game, unlock new areas, and move closer to lifting the curse. Because our game depends on the relationship between exploration, puzzle-solving, narrative, and physical interaction, it was important for us to build the full playable structure of the experience. We wanted players to understand how the whole system works, not just how one isolated moment looks.
This MVP allowed us to test the most important parts of our design: whether players could move through the world, understand their goals, switch between digital and analog components, solve puzzles, and see their progress reflected in the game. Since our format depends on players moving between the screen and physical puzzle materials, a single scene would not have fully tested the experience. By building a playable MVP, we were able to see how the complete loop functioned across multiple areas: exploring, finding clues, solving a puzzle, entering an answer, unlocking a new space, and continuing the story.
We chose an MVP scope because it matched both our larger game vision and our team’s realistic constraints. Since all of us were new to Unity and we did not have dedicated artists or composers, we focused on building a playable and understandable version of the game’s core experience. Instead of trying to make every visual, sound, and system from scratch, we prioritized functionality, clarity, and cohesion. Although we used asset packs rather than creating every visual asset ourselves, we selected and arranged them intentionally so the game still had a consistent pixel-art jungle mystery tone. Similarly, although the audio was not originally composed by our team, we chose and integrated it to strengthen the atmosphere and make the world feel quieter, stranger, and more immersive.
Our playtests helped us refine the MVP into a smoother and more understandable experience. We added clearer clickable indicators, more guiding dialogue, stronger environmental cues, blocked paths to prevent players from skipping puzzles, and revised puzzle instructions. These changes made onboarding more fluid and allowed players to move through the game with less outside guidance. In this sense, our MVP is not just a rough prototype, as it’s a playable version of the core game experience that demonstrates the central mechanics, main puzzle loop, narrative premise, and intended atmosphere.
Testing and Iteration History
Playtests 1 + 2
We focused on testing the analog puzzle concepts for our first level of the game. We began with the jigsaw map, which would reveal a location the player must visit in the research camp. Our playtester found the puzzle quite simple and straightforward, completing it in 3 minutes with no hints. This confirmed our thoughts that a familiar jigsaw puzzle format would provide a gentle introduction into the game. We also tested our second puzzle, which would reveal a code the player needed to get into one of the homes in the research game. Initially, we intended for this puzzle to have a piece of paper with cutouts that could be layered on top of a page of text to reveal important words that needed to be decoded. However, we found that our playtester did not even use this additional paper and just began reading through the text to find the important words listed on the symbol guide. We discovered that the player did not realize the letter was a puzzle and instead thought it was background on the narrative, prompting us to redesign our puzzle presentation with explicit labeling and also build out the narrative in between the puzzles. Explicit labeling would also help make it clear that our puzzles are independently solvable and not related to previous puzzles. We also learned that we need to be explicitly clear about the answer format for the puzzles, for the player did not know they were searching for a 3-digit code until the moderator gave a hint.
For the digital component, there was not much to be seen yet, but our playtester enjoyed the pixel art style and base idea of what the digital component will look like.
Playtest 3
Our playtester completed the jigsaw map with minimal difficulty. They had the insight that we should make the underside of the puzzle a different color to indicate which side should face upwards. We also tested the navigation within the digital world using the analog map, which was a hand-drawn representation of the digital environment. The player easily navigated the environment and reached the correct location, confirming our design. We also tested our third puzzle, a cryptogram that needed to be solved in order to discover the backstory on the curse. This puzzle took longer than expected, but the playtester solved it in ~11 minutes. This playtest confirmed that the cryptogram was best delivered in an analog format so the player could write directly on the sheet as they made progress. After decrypting the message, the player needed to solve the riddle that was revealed. They were not able to solve the riddle, and we learned that we needed more dialogue before this puzzle to help prime them with enough context to solve it. The answer to the riddle was ‘temple’, but the playtester explained that some of the descriptive language we used in our riddle did not evoke imagery associated with a temple, which prompted us to rewrite parts of it.
For the digital components, playtesters expressed confusion as to what they should be interacting with or not, trying to interact with every object to no avail, suggesting that we add clear indicators as to what can be interacted with, as well as more things to interact with. We tried to clear up these confusions in later revisions, implementing a clear indicator that a player can interact with something, and removing props that were not interactable or important to the story.
Playtest 4
During this playtest, we tested the full flow of the research camp level with both analog and digital components in place for the first time. We included skeleton dialogue that led the player from the digital to analog worlds. We also rewrote the encryption puzzle (B) with clarified language.
The playtester enjoyed how an ‘!’ would appear next to digital elements that were clickable. After completing the map puzzle, the player was a bit confused about how to proceed. We saw this as an opportunity to introduce more narrative into the game and guide the player to their next task. We also noticed that the player could enter some of the rooms that were not yet relevant in the game, causing confusion about what their objective should be. During the cryptogram puzzle, the player was able to decrypt the riddle but still struggled to come up with a final answer, despite the dash marks indicating a secret word that needed to be found. They thought they were done after decoding the riddle and did not know what to do next. We thought this could be an opportunity to include a hint that helps the player figure out the final word, such as providing the word in ciphertext. The playtester also suggested using shorter words to make it easier to solve. Overall, they enjoyed the experience of switching between digital and analog but found that there was not enough narrative in the game to make the storyline clear.
While our playtester had no trouble finding the location of the kitchen to begin puzzle A, we found that it would be difficult to distinguish the kitchen from other buildings in the village. As such, we employed more visual storytelling, adding hanging food outside of the building that would be the kitchen. Playtest 7 expands on this to add even more guiding dialogue/hints to direct the player in the right direction.
Playtest 5
During this playtest, we had all the interactive elements available in the digital game. When the playtester began navigating the digital world, they also enjoyed the ‘!’ interactable indicator, confirming that we should keep it in the game. We redesigned the visuals of our analog puzzles to match the pixel-art style of the digital game. The jigsaw and symbol code puzzles were still seamless in their new format, offering an encouraging introduction to the game. We modified the cryptogram to match the styling of the digital game, but we noticed it was difficult for the playtester to identify the spaces between words with the new pixelated font. We also included more filled-in letters at the beginning to decrease difficulty, which proved helpful. Additionally, we added a hint printed upside-down in the corner of the paper, which gave the answer to the riddle in ciphertext in case the player could not reason it out for themselves. Our playtester ended up using this hint in order to solve the puzzle, explaining that she would have needed more context about the game in order to solve it through reasoning.
We also tested a digital puzzle for the third level of the game, which takes place in the temple. The temple game involves navigating through a maze of identical rooms to reach the inside of the temple. The playtester explained that without any instructions, it was difficult to figure out the nature of the puzzle through trial and error. They did not realize they could use the doorways on the left and right sides of the room and kept going through the same door until given a hint. However, after understanding the mechanics, they said they liked how the dialogue repeats exactly when the player is returned to the starting point of the maze, making it clear that they went the wrong way and need to try again. We saw this as an opportunity to add more instructions and dialogue when the player enters the temple to eliminate confusion.
Playtest 6
During this playtest, we tested our analog puzzles for the second level (jungle) and the third level (temple) of the game. For the second level, we created a word search where the player needed to find the names of 6 tools that would help them clear a path in the jungle. We provided the first letter of each word to help guide their search, which the playtester enjoyed and found helpful. However, we found that three-letter words are a bit difficult, as our playtester mistakenly found the word ‘ARC’ instead of ‘AXE’. We decided that a greater emphasis on the theme of words and the use of longer words would help eliminate this problem. The playtester also mentioned that it was difficult to figure out what orientation the words could be represented in, specifically referencing diagonals and backwards. We had a discussion on how this would affect complexity and ultimately decided to keep it ambiguous in order to preserve the challenge in the puzzle.
We also tested the last puzzle of the game, which involves putting together the temple artifact using a slide puzzle. We used a cardboard prototype of the puzzle for this playtest, and the player immediately found the mechanic intuitive. They explained that the main difficulty of the puzzle came from figuring out how to get the pieces into place, not figuring out what the puzzle should look like. The hints we designed were to help the player figure out what the shape they were aiming for was, but they explained that this puzzle was not very conducive to hints and just took time to work through and solve. They wished there was a metric for how close you are to solving the puzzle, but also acknowledged that this was part of the challenge of the game. They also mentioned that it would be helpful to make sure each piece of the puzzle has some identifiable information on it to help identify placement. Overall, they enjoyed the experience and found it to be a good balance between challenge and satisfaction.
Playtests 7 + 8
Playtests 7 and 8 tested the entirety of our digital and analog components, in which we received lots of actionable and helpful feedback for our game.
Digitally, these playtests exposed some of the flaws our game had with certain groups of players. Specifically, players whose first instinct is to explore the entire map prior to following the ‘obvious’ path were given too much freedom to do so, creating the potential to skip entire puzzles or spend time searching for clues in places that had nothing of the sort. (See 7:50 mark in playtest 7 video for a good example, where the playtester, being confused as to what to do, finds the way out of the town and is able to leave without solving puzzle B)
To address these issues, we added many safeguards to prevent players from progressing further than they should. In addition, more guiding dialogue was added to push players in the right direction and put them back on track if they are straying away from the main story.
Monkey Map Boundary Easter Egg
Through these playtests, we also found that the Temple Corridor puzzle was not as fun as we had hoped. Players expressed frustration and disappointment upon encountering the puzzle, noting that having only a 25% chance of being able to proceed per corridor, totalling a 0.3% probability of being able to complete the puzzle entirely in one go, and that “it doesn’t feel like a puzzle if it’s trial and error.” As such, the corridor puzzle was reworked to be far easier and more intuitive. Players are now sent back to the same corridor they are at rather than to the beginning, and the correct corridors have unique distinctions from the other corridors (a bright light, red tiles on the ground). We felt the trial and error was integral to the temple’s mystery and confusion which the protagonist experiences, but with these changes, we hope that the puzzle is not as frustrating and more intuitive to solve.
In addition, some of the instructions for the analog puzzles were rather unclear. Puzzle E (origami boat) and Puzzle F (sliding) were unclear as to how to solve them. Specifically for Puzzle E, there could be multiple correct answers depending on how the player folded the papers while making the boat. We made sure to update these instructions to make more clear how to solve them correctly, as well as inputting the correct codes in the game to progress.
Final Playtest
Our final playtest went quite well. The playtester reported that their experience was enjoyable, with intuitive puzzles and a decent challenge. The game felt very charming and fun, and the narrative, while simple, was easy to understand. They also enjoyed the puzzle variation and tactileness, and they found the digital component’s dialogue helpful when they began to stray in the wrong direction.
Demonstration of Experience.
Note: Our last playtester did not prefer his face to be shown on camera, so it is cut out of the final video. Our second-to-last playtester allowed his face to be recorded, showcasing the combined analog and digital elements of the game better. He only finished ~80% of the game, however, due to the end of class.
See our second-to-last playtest here to understand the full experience of the game
Notable moments:
- 0:08 – Game begins
- 3:12 – Starts Puzzle A after navigating through the village and reading all dialogue carefully. Uses the map effectively to locate the correct destination.
- 5:12 – Solves Puzzle A very smoothly with little hesitation.
- 6:12 – Begins Puzzle B. Mentions having played this puzzle before, but still reads through the instructions rather than skipping ahead.
- 7:12 – Quickly identifies the correct letters, enters the code, and completes the puzzle without issues.
- 8:12 – Starts Puzzle C, the longest and most challenging puzzle in the session.
- 9:00-12:00 – Works through letter relationships and patterns. At one point flips the paper upside down while trying different approaches.
- 12:00-14:00 – Gets briefly stuck and spends time second-guessing correct answers, erasing work that was already correct.
- 14:00 – Asks for confirmation on a word before committing to solving the full puzzle, suggesting he wanted confidence in his approach before proceeding.
- 15:00-17:00 – Uses a hint and appears relieved after learning the puzzle is expected to take longer than previous ones.
- 25:12 – Successfully solves Puzzle C after a lengthy solve process. This was clearly the most time-consuming puzzle.
- 25:12-31:12 – Explores the village, reads dialogue, enters sleeping houses, and searches for the temple. Appears engaged with the narrative and world exploration.
- 31:12 – Begins Puzzle D. Quickly figures out that inputs are entered one at a time and successfully identifies two solutions before the session moves on. Puzzle is cut short due to time constraints.
- 36:43 – Begins Puzzle E (origami boat). Initially seems uncertain about what the puzzle is asking. Receives guidance but continues working through it.
- 40:40 – Arrives at the correct code and successfully completes the puzzle.
- 42:21 – Final interview begins
See our final playtest here to see a full game playthrough, but with a limited view (audio-only) of analog portions
Notable moments:
- 0:00-2:34 – Quickly learns movement and interaction controls. Misses that the mouse can switch menu tabs and does minimal village exploration before heading to the first puzzle.
- 2:34-3:34 (Puzzle A) – Immediately understands how to use the map and solves the jigsaw quickly.
- 4:34-7:34 (Puzzle B) – Recognizes right away that he is looking for a code. Smoothly transitions from the paper puzzle to entering the solution in-game and solves without difficulty.
- 8:34-19:34 (Puzzle C) – Notices the hint immediately but saves it for later. Makes steady progress throughout, eventually deciphering the message before checking the hint. Mentions “temple” during the solve process but is initially unsure. Completes the puzzle successfully.
- 19:34-23:34 – Explores the village while trying to locate the temple. Appears somewhat unsure where to go next, eventually returning to the historian’s house and finding the correct path forward.
- 24:34-29:34 (Puzzle D) – Enjoys the monkey dialogue and quickly finds several words. Briefly confuses puzzle answers with game codes but figures it out independently and completes the puzzle.
- 30:34-38:34 (Puzzle E) – Makes steady progress through the origami folding process. Understands most of the puzzle but is initially confused by the code interpretation. After learning the boat was folded the wrong direction, correctly infers the answer without needing to refold it. Enjoys the boat appearing in-game.
- 39:34-41:34 (Maze Puzzle) – Reacts positively to the puzzle concept and solves it quickly. Appreciates the monkey and dialogue guiding him back after taking a wrong turn.
- 44:34-47:34 (Slide Puzzle) – Solves the slide puzzle quickly but initially enters the wrong code because the number 9 is difficult to see. Corrects the mistake and proceeds to the ending sequence.
- 47:34 – 48:57 – Explores Victory Village, reaches the final crowd scene, and completes the game. Describes the puzzles as intuitive and well-balanced, enjoys the analog-digital gameplay, and follows the story overall, though he does not fully connect the final puzzle to restoring the artifact and lifting the curse.
- 49:20 – Final interview begins
How to Play
Download the digital game on itch.io.
Download the print-and-play analog puzzles here.
Note: Puzzles A and F have high-fidelity laser-cut versions handed into the teaching team, but lo-fi versions are included in the print-and-play as well.
References
- Most of our assets for villagers, UI, and surroundings came from the Ninja Adventure Asset pack by pixel-boy and aaa.
- Temple structure and trees were from the Pixel Crawler Asset pack by anakolisa.
