Isaac Carman's Work&Math Blog.

Work Blog

This week, we have started our first game jam of the year! We were given the theme “Safe!” for this jam, so I decided to take the theme as literally as possible. My game pitch & concept was a puzzle roguelike named “Safest Safes Safely Unsafe’d”, where you play as a locksmith tasked with picking various types of safes. I was a little worried about the jam pitch, but I gained a large team of 8 people with the pitch, so it seems that it worked out! Throughout the week I have been designing the different lock types and refining the main gameplay loop for the game. I haven’t done any coding this week unfortunately, but as the lead designer on this jam I have lots of designing to do.

Math blog

When designing the puzzles for the game jam this week, I had to use randomization and probability at every step of the process. The game is a rogue-like, and as such, every “run” has to be different. Because of this, I had to use and design randomization for each of the puzzles that the player has to unlock in the game. For example, for the key lock puzzle, the player will have to set a randomized number of pins, each of which has differing random attributes. Along with this, multiple puzzles directly depend on randomized numbers to complete the puzzle, such as the combo lock puzzle, where the player will use randomized clues on the safe (such as a randomized serial number) to be able to determine the code that they have to enter into the lock. Adding these randomized elements to the game was essential for both replay ability, and