Fixing Circuits

It probably comes as no surprise that I am a fan of science fiction. This includes both Star Trek and Star Wars. Some of my favorite sequences from these series is the repairing of the Millennium Falcon or the Enterprise. So when I was plotting out One of those Weeks I had to have a sequence when the hero had to repair a space ship drive while being under attack.

When it came to converting this story concept into a game, this is a bit more problematic. My first thought was to go the adventure game route and have the player move through a number of compartments gathering components that then have to be assembled. There were two immediate problems that came to my mind when I started further planning this path out. First, we are dealing with a fictitious drive so any parts and procedures to fix it would be fictitious as well and therefore the puzzle would be more random trial-and-error rather than a proper puzzle. The bigger issue would be the amount of artwork that I would have to create. With such a short development time, creation of assets is a very important consideration. Limiting the scope to a single location with a small number of components was imperative.

This left the alien technology problem. My goal for the episode then had to be to come up with a strange unknown device that the player had to fix, yet familiar enough that there was some type of logical consistency to the puzzle. This got me thinking of circuit boards and the circular flow of electricity.

With the design in hand, creating some circuits with pieces missing seemed like a good puzzle. In hindsight, it was a bit too easy of a puzzle and should probably had more components than the few that I had.