Welcome To The Great Souhait Union
3D Magic Puzzle Game
Penguin Games - Level/UI/Sound Designer
Award of Narrative Excellence by GameFest 2019
Welcome. We have read through your application files and approved your qualifications being part of us. The Great Souhait Union is the greatest magic union in the world. Upon your entrance, you will be eternally protected by the Association and will have the power to use magic with your own magic object.
Trailer Available At the End of the Page!
ABOUT THE GAME
Welcome to the Great Souhait Union is a first-person 3D magic puzzle video game developed by Penguin Games for Microsoft Windows.
In Welcome to the Great Souhait Union, the player controls a magician named Adam to pass the Ability Test to enter Great Souhait Union, a magical community centering on loyalty, peace, sincerity, and love, by completing a series of puzzles using his wand, which can absorb and release Hitte from/to different objects. It is promised by his test guider, Eve, that, by passing this test, Adam will be aware of the basic principles of Great Souhait Union as well as the necessary magic skills. However, during the process, Adam gradually notices something unusual about this test, about Eve, and even about himself.
INSPIRATION
Plato describes a perfect society that maximizes the happiness of its citizens as a “Utopia.” We have tested it in the real world several times, such as in Robert Owen’s New Harmony. These societies might look ideal initially, but as time passes, the inner problems of these utopian worlds gradually emerge. These are dystopias, where a seemingly ideal society is built but is considered undesirable by some of its citizens.
We believe that the conflicts behind the two groups, behind the dystopian, are the conflicts of different ideologies covering some political vestments. As a result, we want to discuss this topic in a non-political way.
WHY THIS GAME
As the combination of puzzle games and the magic world is not very common, we would like to inspire game developers to try different combinations of elements in game development. In this game, we would like to present a genuine fantasy world where players can do a lot of crazy magical things.
Players can enter different rooms with various themes and puzzles. We designed these environments based on how they are in real life so that when players are playing our game, they feel familiar… but also different. Compared to real life, there are so many magical things you can see and do here.
LEVEL DESIGN
The basic mechanic is simple: Absorb heat from objects -> Store in the wand -> Release to objects; therefore, I choose to use this mechanic in different ways to make the game experience varied.
In combination with the magical background, three natural elements are chosen - air, water, and fire. Therefore, four different puzzle elements appear - three natural elements and the logic puzzle. Puzzle elements are mixed to control the difficulty for each level. The number and type of the puzzles increases during the player's exploration, starting from one single-element puzzle.
Also, I choose these elements carefully to make sure that they match the environment and support the narration. For example, in the Greenhouse Level, water elements appear the most, and during the Observatory Level, it's all about air. Oh, and the Observatory Level is built as a dodecagonal room representing Signs of the Zodiac, and it is my favorite design.
UI and VOICE OVER
The biggest challenge for the UI design is to make it both magical and user-friendly. Most magical and alchemical elements are ornate - which means it's hard to understand. My design follows the rule of formatting magical elements into pellucid units to balance visual effects and usability.
We tested several handwritten fonts during the development, but they are too thin to support the historical feeling we want to express. After many tries, Endor as a type of novelty font shows the best result.
Voice-over is the part that has been judged the most during development since we decided to use Google Translate, a robot, as our voice actor in our magic world. While we don't have any voice actors on our team, we want a voice-over in our game. The most difficult part is fixing Google's unnatural tone to eliminate the sense of conflict. The solution is recording the lines word by word and fixing the weird parts. Google's sound also has its strength. Its electronic sound gives the player a feeling of being observed and forces the effect of the test.
USER FEEDBACK and UPDATES
During development, I designed and ran four user tests (after First Playable Ver, Alpha Ver, Beta Ver, and Gold Master Ver). Based on the feedback, we updated and polished our game to the final version.
"Movement forward and back of objects is a little unclear." => Add cast shadows.
"I'm worried that the player will not want to be branded and will want to escape the test" => Hide the truth of the world in each level to let the player explore.
"The spoken dialog is confusing and takes too long." => Add a skip button to let the players skip the dialog.
"A fun, interesting game with consistent storytelling and art style."
"Love how it feels clean but still has that historical magical feel to it."
"Thorough puzzle design!"
"I like the screen FX and the use of alchemical symbols."
WATCH OUR TRAILER!
WHO ARE WE - Penguin Games!
YUEQING DAI - UI/Level/Sound Designer
Except for level designs, Yueqing also works on designs and implementation
of UI, Sound, and VO. Busy but marvelous!
HUANG ZOU - Lead Programmer
The real MVP of the team, Huang is in charge of all
gameplay programming and visual effects.
ZE TAN - Art Director
The visual creator of this magic world, Ze works on all concept arts,
models, 2D arts and animations.
FANGHONG DONG - Producer/Writer
Also contributing to textures, Fanghong assists every other
person to ensure the game is finished on time.