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SONGE
Top-down
Parkour game
Made in
72 hours
A game about a bubble trying to avoid traps
Context
Songe ("dream") is an Unreal Engine 5 project made for the Global Game Jam 2025 at my school but independent from the program. We therefore worked with 1st and 2nd years and the theme was "Bubble".
In this game you play as a floaty frictionless bubble trying to escape a nightmare while avoiding traps and continously being submerged by darkness.
Role
I worked as a both a Game and Level Designer on this project designing the mechanics, planning the Level Design and making a blockout.
I also implemented music and SFXs.
Game Design
For this project, we began with a simple brainstorming around the theme "Bubble".
We then proposed multiple iterations of concepts including a platformer one using different bubble types to progress through the level (bubble to freeze, to fly...) but it was too complex.
In the end, we abstracted the bubble as a unique floaty frictionless sphere and we used it to make a parkour game from a top-down perpsective.
The bubble was also used for its protective aspect and it was supposed to be a child in their dream bubble trying to escape a nightmare but we never had time to implement the narrative aspect.
Though we implemented the nightmare as a mechanic obscuring the screen, forcing the player to be careful and look for light to chase the nightmare away.
As I say before, I designed the character as floaty and frictionless for the player to feel like controlling a bubble.
Designing it this way bring the players to be very careful in their movements since the bubble has only one life.
This simple mechanic has a lot of mastery to it to be able to beat the level the fastest way possible.
Nightmare
The game lacked of a stressing aspect, of something forcing the player to move forward and therefore I wanted to use the nightmare as a mechanic that kills the player if they don't catch light in time.
But dying by it was too frustrating so the nightmare simply became a constraint for the players leading them to catch the light and take risks by doing so. It's a simple risk/reward element yet an effective one. It leads to a meaningful choice : catching the light by taking risks but being able to see OR taking a simpler path but not being able to see well.
Traps
We needed traps to challenge the players in different ways
for them to fully master the movement mechanic.
Spikes
Simple spikes that kill on collision, the players have to avoid them by slalomming between them.
Wind
Wind pushes the players away so they have to avoid them though they can also be used to go faster in some cases.
The players have to identify where does the wind points at to make the decision of using it voluntarly to go faster.
It's a very useful mechanic for people wanting to speedrun the game !
Moving objects
Moving objects force the players to identify and memorize the pattern of it to avoid it at a precise timing.
Projectiles
Projectiles are almost the same as moving objects, they have a pattern to identify but they're not going back and forth.
Though they are harder to avoid because of the gap between each projectile.
Gameplay video
Level Design
For the Level Design, I had approxiamtely 48 hours to make one with an objective in mind : 5 minutes of gameplay and aiming a mid-core to hardcore audience.
I started by breaking down the game mechanics to create a learning diagram to plan the game flow.
As you can see, I used the learning diagram to plan when to teach which mechanic and progressively complexify the game by mixing mechanics together.
Then, I was able to make a plan of the game : creating the main path, creating alternative paths (risk/reward for speedrunners allowing them to go faster), placing the traps around like workshops following the learning diagram (workshop 1, 2...).
And finally, I could implement the blockout in Unreal Engine 5 using primitives to create the level.
Post mortem
This project taught me that it's better to design a few mechanics that are well polished and that have more than one purpose than making lots of deconnected mechanics that can't be combined together.
As Ludwig Mies said "Less is more".
Credits
Game Designer/Level Designer/SFX - Baurain Ilan (me)
Game Designer/SFX - Scellos Arwen
3D artist - Ben-Hafsa Aymen
3D artist - Santoni Jules
3D artist - Delpierre-Cardona Carla
3D artist - Thaias Timothé
Programmer - Savy-Larigaldie Nicolas
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