Overview

Engine: Unity  
Game: Styx
Genre: 2D puzzle sidescroller
Development Time: 28 Hours

Design Goals

  • Create a level with 6 puzzles that teaches the player the mechanic's of the game using assets from Styx​
  • Improve level pacing
  • Improve puzzle design 
Styx is a 2D side-scrolling puzzle game about leading souls through the realm of Styx and into the afterlife. Each level provides a new soul for the dark ferryman Kharr to guide to his master Hades. Each new soul brought into Styx reshapes the landscape. Evil souls make Styx dark and desolate; however, evil souls are easy to guide through Styx since the underworld is full of evil. Kharr’s challenge is guiding lighter souls to Styx. These souls make the realm lighter and full of more life; however, it is much more challenging for Kharr.
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“Styx Revisited” features a level from Styx created a year after the game’s release. This level attempts to teach and introduce new players to Styx in a better why than the original game’s tutorial. The level features six puzzles each growing in difficulty. The first three puzzles teach players how to use the game’s mechanics while the last three reinforce these mechanics but provide some moderate difficulty to the player.
This project took approximately 24 hours to complete. 

Level Layout

​Puzzle 1
  • Teach the player how to place the Shadow Charge mechanic
  • Teach the player that they can only have three Shadow Charges exist at one time and how remove their old Shadow Charges
  • Provide a safe challenge that allows the player to learn how the Shadow Charge mechanic
  • Introduce the checkpoint language 
  • Uses the dark aesthetic style with silhouettes of knives, guns, and dead foliage 
​Puzzle 2
  • Introduce challenge and death to the player
  • Player must use what they learned in the previous puzzle to avoid the hazards
  • If the player dies, it shows them how the checkpoints work
  • Introduction to death is non-frustrating
  • Teaches the player how to use the Shadow Force and provide a safe area to figure out how the mechanics work
  • Uses the dark aesthetic style with silhouettes of knives, guns, syringes, and dead foliage 
​Puzzle 3
  • Introduce a new type of hazard, which is a movable hazard
  • Player learns how to use the Fiend Shout ability through tutorial text
  • Movable enemy is scripted to intercept the AI and the player must use their new ability to avoid them
  • Uses the dark aesthetic style with silhouettes of knives, guns, syringes, and dead foliage 
​Puzzle 4
  • End of tutorial 
  • Introduces a bit more challenge to reinforce the game's mechanics
  • Give the opportunity to the player to solve the challenge before allowing the AI to continue
  • Aesthetic changes to have more white light and silhouettes of living foliage 
​Puzzle 5
  • Two-step challenge puzzle
  • Player must learn to use the platforms in the environment to get the AI stuck in a 'safe zone' 
  • Requires the use of at least the Shadow Charge and Shadow Force abilities 
​Puzzle 6
  • More challenging two-part puzzle
  • Player must use the safe-zone they created in the first part in order to set up the second part
  • Requires the player to use at least their Shadow Force and Shadow Charge ability 
Level layout info 

Postmortem

What Went Well
  • Unity was easy to use
  • Game design is easy to rapid prototype 
What Went Wrong
  • Lack of play testers who have never played Styx
  • Ran out of time to improve art assets 
What I Learned
  • Mechanics from Styx would take multiple levels to adequately teach and reinforce the game's mechanics 

Gallery