Intertwine

The Project

Intertwine is a narrative metroidvania platformer game about a cyborg exploring a strange alien ecosystem, and learning what other kinds of intelligences think about transformation, death, and capitalism along the way. The focus for this game was on telling a story about transhumanism through dialogue but also through gameplay.

During this project I worked as a game designer on the mechanics, level design and game feel. I also assisted in development with the dialogue system and main mechanics.

The team consisted of one game designer (me), four game artists and one game developer. This game was made during a school project, so we only had 20 weeks to complete this project.

The Process

My focus during the project was the mechanic and level design of the world. During the brainstorm sessions, we struggled to get our complex story translated into gameplay.
Eventually, we came up with the idea to integrate the idea of the environment and the people you meet into unlockable abilities.

I iterated on this idea, starting with a system where the player would be able to choose between two upgrades at certain points. This system was a bit too complex and big for our game. But it also did not make players think about their choice too much. We wanted people to think about what abilities to use where. In the end, we landed on the idea to have players switch the abilities they have at any point. These abilities would be related to a certain event that happened in the game. You would "change" the impact that event had on your character by switching the abilities.