Panopticon (2016)
Biography:
Panopticon is a 2.5D platformer where the player must manipulate and evade spotlights to escape a prison. The gameplay experience is inspired by Michel Foucault’s writings on panopticism in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
Synopsis:
Scope: 1 level vertical slice (5-10 minutes of gameplay)
Team Size: 15
Development Time: 3 months (1/16-4/16)
Engine Used: Unity
My contribution:
Designed and oversaw the development of all levels from concepts to final implementation.
I also work side by side with the environment artists to discuss different environmental layouts that can be used for puzzles and narrative contextualization.
This game intends to regulate the player’s behavior by granting them a cigarette that attracts the attention of spotlights. To progress through the game’s challenges, the player must increasingly police the habits of the player character. Working with this goal in mind was a challenging and rewarding experience as a level designer. However, a large portion of the overall level's design needed to be cut from the game. Due to our time limitations, the design had to be done while the mechanics were being fully developed.
I took this experience and learned a great deal from it. An ability picked up from this experience was being able to design 'cookie cutter puzzle maps' which could be molded and contextualized in a game.
