Solar Isles is a Light based puzzle game that has the player bounce a beam of light between mirrors and crystals to guide it towards solar panels to provide power.
Solar Isles was in development for nearly three weeks, and during that time, my two main tasks were designing the puzzles within the game, alongside developing the systems for those puzzles. Four puzzle rooms were created: 3 to introduce the basic mechanics of the mirrors and crystals, and one to put it all together.
Solar Isles
Programmer & Designer | Jubilant Jammers
Project Info
Team Size: 5 (with input from three addition designers)
Time Frame: 19 Days
Engine: Unreal Engine 5.4 (Blueprints)
Left: Casting Light Beam from Mirrors based off trace’s distance from origin
Right: Player Interact code, taking both the detected actor and it’s specific component
The mirrors and the crystals acted very similar to each other. They both bounce light between each other and are able to rotate and tilt. The main difference between them is some mirrors have a crossbar and are able to move between two locations and crystals split the light in two, allowing for two separate paths within rooms.
In the starting area of the game, the player has access to a Shark Airship. The airship can be boarded and flown by the player, able to take them away from their crashed whale zeppelin to another island, where another are able to land and head into a volcano where they find the puzzles previously mentioned.