English Escape
- Role: Lead game designer
- Platform: Web
- Development tool: gamemaker studio 2
-Development time: 4 months
English Escape is an educational game for 3rd-5th grade English learning. It's gameplay is inspired by classical adventure games such as The Legend of Zelda, and it sees students navigate through mazes, solve puzzles, uncover secrets, and complete English grammar challenges to get clue cards, which culminate in a final ELA challenge that sees students using the clue cards they've found throughout the level to complete a fun phrase and unlock the door to Escape Owlery's labyrinth.
As lead game designer, I was responsible for developing the overall game concept, designing puzzles and obstacles in the labyrinth, and concepting and integrating easter eggs and other fun gameplay secrets to make the game fun and engaging for students! I am also pleased to say that, working with one of our concept artists, I developed the character concepts for Lex, the orange dragon and main character, as well as Owlery, the antagonist of the ELA suite of games.
Play the game in the Learning Hub!
Above is a screenshot of one of the content questions that sees players completing a sentence by clicking and dragging quotation marks into the sentence.
In the screenshot above, the player is presented with an optional puzzle where Owlery's portrait conceals a surprise. The player has to figure out how to move the portrait to access the reward.
The answer is to slide the torch that is out of line to line it up with the other torches. This causes Owlery's portrait to move, and now the player can collect the secret gem that both increases the player's score and provides additional coins for them to spend in the ELA Village economy.
Seen above is a simple switch-ordering puzzle where the player must press the switches in the correct order.
Completing the puzzle reveals a key to open a door somewhere in the labyrinth!