Intraliminal

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Design Process

The design of Intraliminal is strongly rooted in liminal space and character study media. I combined these ideas with an exploration of my childhood growing up disabled and poorer than those around me. I chose to make the game in Bitsy3D as its graphic style allowed for the sense of scale in the space I desired while still being accessible to create with my limited artistic skill.

From here I planned the game’s location by making a list of spaces I considered liminal and then out of those chose the ones that related to me and my childhood the most. After that, the initial planning was a simple process of writing out the text used in each area and planning the trigger item associated with it (such as the clock and life ring in the image above).

The actual construction of the game consisted of a lot of trial and error. Part of this process came from me seeing how far I could push Bitsy3D as a tool but the majority of it was choosing colour pallets and drawing the art for each area. The art in particular involved drawing slightly different versions of a desired asset and testing and tweaking each one to look visually interesting while staying coherent. A really good example of this trial and error process are the arcade machines which consist of six unique assets which have modified x, y, and z values for each machine depending on its orientation.

Game Documentation

As this was a smaller project the core design document was a single page (included below) and a script for each interactable object in the game in chronological order (sample below).

My Strengths

The games played into my strengths around minimalist narratives, ensuring I could convey as much story and meaning as possible with minimal interactions due to the limits on level size and trying to avoid areas outstaying their welcome. I was also able to leverage my skills in level design to help direct players through each level in unique and interesting ways. Finally, I am quite proud of the game conceptually and I think I managed to capture the atmosphere I intended.

Lessons Learnt

I learnt a lot about art direction while creating this, especially colour pallets and minimalistic art. I was also able to expand my knowledge of level design, experimenting with different elements to test what draws a player forwards and toward important interactions.