Cube Escape Express was made for a brief from Rusty Lake to develop a prototype for a new Cube Escape game. It was created during the second year of my undergraduate degree at Nottingham Trent University, where I worked alongside my class as a designer for the project.

Because the project was developed in Unreal Engine 4, we decided to take advantage of the engines 3D capabilities to design a unique spin on the series’ regular format that usually involves 2D hand drawn assets.

The main benefit in the design space was opportunity for more spacial puzzles, such as grabbing and rotating objects or 3D animations for more fluid gameplay.

Project Overview

In Cube Escape games the player will usually find a powerful glowing cube that changes the players perspective in some way. It could make seasons change, make ghosts visible, etc.

To reinforce the theme of this being a Cube Escape game it had to be involved in some way, so I decided that because you are in a moving train, a power effecting the flow of time would be fun, visually apparent and allow for some interesting puzzle design space.

Sticking to the Brief

Project Info

At the start of the project, the design team got together to ideate. We quickly decided to make a game involving train cabins, where each designer would create their own puzzles and flex their creativity.

I decided to create the puzzles and gameplay for the first cabin, a passenger cabin. Which involved the aforementioned time powers!

My Responsibilities

Designed all puzzles for the passenger cabin, with accompanying flow charts, descriptions and stories for other developers to refer to.
Created an asset list for the level (asset name, description, poly count

Puzzle Examples:

To retrieve one half of the exit key, the player must light a candle in standard time. Then they must use the cube of power to speed up time by interacting with a metronome, causing the candle to melt instantly, revealing the key half in melted wax.
When in fast time, the clock’s hands move so quickly that they look like a disc. The player can interact with the clock to retrieve a phonograph record that they can insert into a phonograph. With music now playing, the player can stop time using the metronome to see musical notes suspended in the air, which they can use to unlock a safe that features musical notes.