2024 / Game
Why Not Leave
A funny 2D action puzzle game where the player acts as a mischievous ghost trying to scare people out of the house.
Overview
Why Not Leave is a funny 2D action puzzle game created at Amazing Seasun Games in Zhuhai. The player acts as a mischievous ghost trying to kick people out of the house.
The player explores the different effects of items in the room and tries to create the best combination of scares. The experience is designed to be funny, exciting, and strategic at the same time.
My Role
As director and lead designer, I worked on concept development, narrative direction, visual design, and core experience goals. I also helped define the scare system, item logic, level structure, and presentation style.
Design Goals
The main design goal was to make the experience both funny and strategic. To achieve this, we designed three levels of scaredness for NPCs, each with corresponding animation reactions. For the numerical system, we categorized objects into types based on how they increased or changed fear values.
The concept development used visual and tonal references to find a playful ghost story direction. The design process then moved into object interactions, level layout, task planning, and production tracking.
Team Responsibility
- Game engineers: Sheldy worked on UI logic, Jacky worked on NPC behaviours, and Lin worked on object interactions
- Game designers: I worked on concept, narrative, and visual design; Allen worked on level design and technical design; Gong worked on level design
