Game Design
Designed a platformer centered around a realm-switching mechanic, shaping both gameplay logic and world building.
Contributed to world building, mechanics ideation, and iteration, while independently handling the remaining aspects of the project, including concept development, gameplay design, level design, visual direction, and final execution.
Games like Hollow Knight, Mario, and other platformers showed us how strong mechanics create lasting engagement. But most of them placed the challenge outside the player, harder enemies, faster obstacles, more complex terrain. We wanted to explore something different: a game where the challenge came from the mechanic itself, from the inside out. That thinking became DYAD.
The solution was structural. Each realm holds items and paths the other cannot access. A level only completes when all required elements from both realms are collected. This means switching is never a choice, it is the only way forward. The mechanic is the game.
GDevelop's event-based logic system was used to build and iterate on the switching behaviour rapidly. Every interaction was expressed as a clear, testable event chain, which actually sharpened the design by demanding precision in how each mechanic was defined.
