Seventh Circle | benjaminpantzar.com

Table of content:

1) Gameplay mechanics

2) Level Design

Engine:

Unreal 4

Platform:

Genre:

Team Size:

Time:

PC

Puzzle-horror

9

4 weeks

Photoshop

After Effects

Source Tree

Trello + Miro

Toolkit:

Concept

Seventh Circle is a first-person puzzle game with elements of horror and surrealism, set in a 1950's Scandinavian film noir household setting.

You play as Lars, a distraught man stuck escaping from an unnerving realm of looping halls resembling his former home. He must gather his lost memories by reclaiming scattered journal pages in order to make sense of it all.

This was my second game project at FutureGames,

where I primarily worked on the level design features.

My Contributions

Level Designer

Two full puzzle levels

Level order iterrations

Gameplay Designer

Puzzle mechanics & rules

"Axis flip" level mechanic

Daily agile iterrations

Misc.

Full game trailer

Supervised QA playtests

Sound effects

1. Gameplay Mechanics

Core mechanics

1. Each level loops back to the beginning of the room

when leaving through an exit until the puzzle is solved.

2. The level disappears behind the player when they move

forward, and can only be restored by looping through an exit.

3. To beat the puzzle, all pages in the room must be collected

in order. After they've been collected, the loop vanishes and the player can progress to the next level.

Level mechanics

dm5

dm6

Blue objects can be pushed and lingers through loops,

adding a dynamic element to puzzle-solving.

Press arrow for next slide

dm8

dm7

Red objects phase in & out in sequence with each loop,

reinforcing and diversifying the looping mechanic.

dm9

dm10

An Axis flip occurs when the player enters a horizontally placed

exit and loops, changing their forward movement orientation.

I designed, reasoned for and implemented this particular mechanic in order to take advantage of elevations and the inherent negative spaces of single-exit puzzles.

This allowed for more complex level layouts and verticality.

Press arrow for next slide

Press arrow for next slide

2. Level Design Showcase

alpha1

alpha2

alpha3

alpha4

alpha5

alpha6

A small collection of early prototype screenshots

showcasing the game and a few blockout in progress.

2. Level Design

room2blck

Puzzle 6 Final

purgg

vrheiu

Summary

My contribution was primarily two of the final puzzles towards the end of the game, designed to combine
all puzzle mechanics and challenge the player, bringing
a sense of finality to the game's conclusion.

I designed the switched axis mechanic, which is
introduced in the 6th puzzle room. It adds a new layer

of complexity to the room layouts, where if the player
enters a doorway on their direct left or right instead of
forward, they flip the dimensions and can traverse
the level from a new angle, opening up new routes.

Final puzzle: "The Study"

This was the last room of the game, which incorporates
all of the previous puzzle mechanics into a final trial.
My vision for this level was for it to be fairly challenging, but resolve in satisfaction once the puzzle sequence starts to settle in - without having to restart.

The player must travel through multiple cardinal directions, while positioning objects around each loop

in order to reach different verticalities in the level. Each
of the pushables are set in a way that the player cannot

accidentally displace them, and new paths emerge when

they do so, chipping away at the critical path.