Edelweiss

Why make this game

Edelweiss began as a college project in our second year, inspired by Japanese indie horror games made with RPG Maker. We aimed to challenge ourselves by creating a polished game that could stand alongside established titles like Angels of Death and Mad Father. Encouraged by positive feedback, we decided to finish the project in our own time and eventually launched it on Steam.

What is the game about

Edelweiss is a J-RPG style horror game with a suspenseful narrative, gloomy pixel art, and interactive puzzles. The core experience centers on thrill and terror, as players navigate eerie levels, solve puzzles, and uncover the mysteries of an abandoned orphanage—all while being hunted by a relentless nun.

My Contribution

Puzzle/Narrative Designer

Analyzed heat map data generated from play-test telemetry using Microsoft Excel and iterated the puzzle design, improving puzzle flow and readability.

Designed game narratives by establishing the story bible, writing 4 character dialogue scripts and implementing 5 puzzles derived from narrative beats.

Set up 10+ common events which improved event processing efficiency and code readability, enhancing maintainability.

Managed the development progress by utilizing Jira and Trello to establish sprint goals, organize tasks and track team performances, leading to a successful launch on Steam.

Notable Challenges

One of the challenges I faced was optimizing the Chess Puzzle.

The goal of this puzzle is to find the mate in one with the queen piece and push the piece to the checkmate location, but most players were struggling with the puzzle and couldn’t solve it without interference.

To identify the issue, I conducted a playtest to test the discernability, accessibility, and solvability of the Chess puzzle, utilizing a playtest protocol and gathered telemetry data.

By graphing player position data and overlaying it over the puzzle, I generated a heat map that allowed the team see which places the player visited most frequently but didn’t lead to solving the puzzle.

Brighter red means more often visited tiles. Some coordinates from another location were accidentally recorded resulting in parts of the map going out of bound.

The analysis showed that players tended to wander aimlessly, pushing all the pieces and then attempting to move the black king with their character. This highlighted a key issue with the puzzle:

Players understood the goal but didn’t know the exact action required to achieve it. The puzzle lacked feedback when the queen was moved to an incorrect spot, leaving players unsure when the puzzle started or ended.

The Solution

I designed a simple loop for the puzzle by establishing a fixed starting point. I also added a signifier to guide players, allowing them to take an action that provided immediate, dynamic feedback.

New Chess Puzzle with a button to confirm answer and reset puzzle

The player now always starts the puzzle with the queen in a fixed position. They can push the piece to any spot on the board, then press a green button to check their move. If the queen isn’t in the correct position to solve the puzzle, the board gives feedback and resets the pieces, restarting the loop.

I also added dynamic feedback by using region events, combined with an A* pathfinding plugin to manage the branching logic for the queen's movements.

After the changes, a second round of playtesting showed significant improvements in the puzzle's flow and solvability.