Don't Sit Down
Don't Sit Down
Role: Game Designer
Team Size: 1
Don't Sit Down is a short action/ puzzle game about someone who is trapped in a dark chamber, guided by a mysterious voice. Chairs are scattered throughout the chamber, and as far as you know, they hold a sinister power within them.
One of the key challenges when developing this game was how to best combine the mental puzzles being given by "the voice" with the mechanical puzzles being given by the game world. I adopted the tried and true method of setting up player expectations for how the chairs behave in the game and then constantly subverting those expectations with each room they progress through. By using the voice to insist that the player not change their expectations, I sought to add even more challenge for the player to overcome.
I developed the game on my own as a personal project to learn the Source SDK and to experiment with branching stories in action/ puzzle games.
The Source SDK allowed me to easily construct rooms that would react to the player's movement, and with a first-person perspective, I was able to use simplicity - near darkness and empty space - to create moments that were just as unsettling and motivating as any in-game enemy.