Attachment Issues

The Project

Attachment Issues is a puzzle adventure game that lets you explore space while getting to know various creatures. You craft things and help your new friends! 

This project was my graduation project at HKU Games, where I graduated as a Game Designer in 2024. The goal for this project was to create a game that would evoke a feeling of wonder within the player while getting them to experiment with the mechanics. 

To achieve this, I researched this feeling of wonder and drive to experiment to see how other people had defined it. From this research, I defined my own working definition. With this working definition, I created success criteria for the project.

Process

To be able to see what parts worked within my design and what parts didn't, I created success criteria for both the feeling of wonder and the goal of getting players to experiment. For wonder, the following two. Firstly, that the players feel in control of all their actions within the game. And secondly, that players create their own goals.
For experimentation, the following three. First, that players try out different combinations within the crafting system in the game. Second, that players tests the effect of the rope on different objects within the game. And third, that players give multiple items to various NPCs.

During the rest of the process, I tested multiple times with these success criteria to see how I was doing and if the design was working as intended. This helped me a lot to keep all design work facing the same direction. As there was a lot of freedom within the project to do whatever I wanted, using these criteria as a guide to make design decisions helped a lot.

Credits

All artwork in the game was made my Nikki Hordijk, who also helped out with the design process. The music was made by Tim Schippers and the sound effects by Tom de Laak.
This game was made for a school project at HKU Games.