Daniel Ibironke | Unreal Engine Games Designer
Jump and Solve
Software Used: Unreal 5, Microsoft Word, Piskel
Genre: Puzzle Platformer
Referenced Games: Human Fall Flat, Crash Bandicoot, Streets of Rage 4
Gameplay:
The game is a puzzle platformer inspired by Human Fall Flat, featuring simple mechanics like button-pressing and pushing boxes onto pressure plates. Plus, there's a respawn mechanic for when the boxes fall out of bound which was also borrowed from that game. Bonus tokens and the slide move draw influence from Crash Bandicoot.
The combat is inspired by Streets of Rage 4, with a basic attack that becomes a heavy one when the button is held, and an AOE move that uses stars as ammunition. However, like in Portal, the combat is secondary to the puzzle aspect.
Problems I encountered:
While working, I encountered and resolved several issues. One bug allowed the slide ability to be used infinitely in the air, which I fixed by checking a Boolean to see if the player was falling, disabling the slide when airborne, and adding a cooldown to prevent spamming. I also noticed the slide animation caused the player to hover slightly; this could’ve been avoided by importing it with the “In Place” option checked, but the current version still works well enough. A more complex issue involved pressure plate doors closing when the player stepped off, even if a crate remained on the plate. I used a flowchart to map out the logic and added more Boolean checks to track whether the player or a crate was on the plate. Crates also occasionally got stuck and were difficult to push, so I placed a small invisible cube underneath them to smooth their movement and added a reset button on top to prevent soft locks. Lastly, switching between idle/walking and a combat stance after attacking proved tricky, but I eventually learned that the attack and stance montages could be handled directly in the character blueprint rather than through the animation state machine, allowing for smoother transitions.
What I implemented:
In this solo project, I implemented Blueprint Interfaces mainly for button and pressure plate interactions, with an additional interface for item pickups. I applied inheritance to all pickup types and to various buttons based on their functions. I used Event Dispatchers to update UI elements such as the HUD and results screen, displaying stats like death count and clear time. The player character was fully animated using Mixamo assets, including a death animation triggered by health depletion. I created UI elements for the Main Menu, Pause Menu, and Level Complete screen, and designed a HUD that displays health, coins, stars, stamina, lives, keys, and bonus tokens. I developed a Progress Manager to handle checkpoints and the level goal, updating respawn points and showing stats upon level completion. Although I initially planned to use Behavior Trees for AI, I switched to standard Blueprints since combat was not a core focus. I also set up a Game Instance to persist health, lives, and pickups across levels, though it remained unused with only one level built. Finally, I implemented two Game Modes—one for managing gameplay progression and another for handling the Main Menu.
Plans I changed/cancelled:
During development, I had to revise or cancel several planned features. Originally, the bonus round was intended to be its own separate level, with the player returning to the main level afterward, but I couldn’t get this working—specifically teleporting the player back to the correct spot—so I instead made the bonus round part of the base level. I also planned a second character with limited jumping and a bullet-shooting ability that would create jump pads, inspired by Cortex’s gameplay in Crash 4: It’s About Time, but this idea ended up being outside the project’s scope. Other cut features included a three-hit combo system, a platform-tilting mechanic inspired by Breath of the Wild, and visible enemy health bars. Lastly, I had hoped to make it so the button-activated platforms could change direction mid-motion, similar to Human Fall Flat, but this did not happen.