That Escalated Quickly– a Game About Going Up

That Escalated Quickly is a platformer/puzzle game that’s all about going up. The goal of the game is to figure out how to get to the top of the screen while only moving left, right, and of course… up.

For this Design Challenge I didn’t have much time to get anything physical OR digital done, unfortunately, but I have a bunch of concepts written down for it as I considered alternative possiblilities. One thing I was worried about with my initial plan was the limited movement, so I added two ways to enhance jumping through the use of power-ups. One of which allows you to freely swerve left & right as you move, and one that allows you to teleport straight to up, instead of the normal rising motion. I believe that these abilities would allow for extra, but simple movement that can greatly enhance the way players can solve puzzles.

I’ve talked with a few friends about the idea, the main suggestions I’ve received were to try and see how complex the puzzles can truly be, as I only ended up having two very simple puzzles for them to try out (by simply looking at sketches I had done).

As of right now, I’m not sure how much detail I can add to this idea, as I feel like I can spend more time to try and flesh it out. I wanted to make the idea simple, but still somewhat interesting and engaging, and I find that this concept can suceed at both with more polish. Or I may take some of the concepts I applied to this game and repurpose them into something else, but that’s a thing that only time will tell.