Following the success of Word of the Day in 2019, I decided to enter the Game Maker’s Tool Kit (GMTK) game jam again this year. We were inspired by one of our favorite games, Outer Wilds, and we decided to make a puzzle game focused on the quantum shards that move when you're no longer observing them. Out of 5,430 games submitted, Escape: Quantum was ranked #177 overall! I invited a friend from UTD, Taryn Allen, to work on the game with me. We made it over the course of 48 hours using Unity and C#.
On this project, I was responsible for helping design the game, writing all the code, and making the UI. I'm most proud of the Quantum Teleportation script, which moves objects when the player isn't looking at them. My partner Taryn designed the levels and puzzles, and is a wonderful friend and a very capable designer in her own right.
Click the button below to check out Taryn's portfolio!
We both feel that the game has a lot of promise, and we would like to develop it further. To do this we will add more puzzles and game mechanics loosely inspired by quantum mechanics.
On Dec 11, 2020, Escape: Quantum was featured on a site called QPlayLearn, an educational website developed by Finnish physicists Caterina Foti and Sabrina Maniscalco. The site's goal is to make quantum mechanics more approachable by combining mathematics with fun web games that foster an intuition of the principles of quantum mechanics. Caterina found Escape: Quantum on Itch.io and contacted me through my portfolio, wanting to incorporate our game! We were humbled, and we hope it can help people learn more about the strange quantum world that surrounds us. Escape: Quantum is located on the Quantum Measurement page.
UPDATE 7/29/2020: After learning of the success of the game, Taryn and I decided to do a little more work on the game by adding a new level. As before, she designed the layout and placed the geometry, and I added the quantum walls and made some minor improvements to the code. We incorporated feedback from the jam in a few key areas. First, we made the hallways feel a bit tighter and lowered the ceiling to prevent the level from feeling too open. Second, we increased lighting across the board and added a flashlight for the player, because the game felt too dark otherwise.
