Ternary Slime

The story of Ternary Slime takes place in a laboratory. Geometric slimes want to escape from the laboratory and their experiment fates. You will perform the slimes with their special abilities, combine and split, to solve the puzzles and escape from the laboratory. Try your best to solve the puzzles and help the slime team escape!

Game Genre

Platformer, Puzzle

Platform

PC (Keyboard - Mouse)

Tool Used

Unity, C#, GitHub, Photoshop, Procreate

Play Game

Jam Site

Roles

Gameplay Designer

Programmer

UI Designer

Duration

October 2023

48 hr

Jam Theme

1+1 = 3

No Limitation

Team Members

Charlotte Guo: gameplay design, system design, programming, UI design.
Xinyan Wang: game design, programming, level design, audio.
Qinyun Song: game art, animation, font.

Design Process

Theme Interpretation

Since "Many hands make light work," our team understands each “1” of the theme’s equation as one individual. When they team up for “1+1,” the outcome could be “3,” which is greater than each of them. We also want to apply some ideas in ternary ideas to ensure the game logically makes sense. Therefore, we make two slimes in the game that can combine into a big slime containing three small slimes and show the three slimes to the player when they perform splitting. We also tell the player the team-up slimes could have greater power than each individual to escape from the laboratory successfully.

Gameplay Mechanic

Special Mechanics

Combine: Players can combine slimes when there are two or more mini slimes (circle, triangle, and square).
Split: Players can split the big star slime to get three random mini slimes.
Jump Limitation: Slimes can jump and move on the ground, but not on other slimes due to their viscosity.

Level Design

Fundamental Game Elements:

Burettes: Platforms that slimes move on.
Buttons: Puzzle mechanisms that need to leave something on to keep pressing, used to open gates.
Injector: Puzzle mechanisms (obstacles) that need to have several heavy slimes to press down.
Scale Weight: Puzzle mechanisms that need to put on a certain number of slimes to activate targeting gates.

Takeaways

Overall

We (Team Kuromi) wanted to provide players with a short puzzle-resolving experience in Ternary Slime by reducing the scope from multiple levels to one polished one. Players will experience the puzzle elements by using the slime's combine and split abilities to complete the level. The puzzles in the only level were well-designed to ensure players could experience all gameplay and think about resolving manners while playing.

Personal

It is my first time being the main game designer for a game jam to implement my understanding of the game theme with my teammates through Unity. As a programmer, I discussed with another programmer what function of C# we can use to implement the game idea and make it playable. I also explained what sprites, animation frames, and illustrations we need to build the game to the game artist.