Hyperail
About
Hyperail is a fourth dimensional puzzle game in which players have to utilize 4D rail tiles to get a cart from the start of the level to the end. The game features a level editor and the capability of importing and exporting custom levels.
Hyperail was a solo project developed as my senior capstone from January 2023 to April 2023.
Role: Programmer, Designer
Engine/Language: Unity | C#
Platforms: PC
Contributions
Extended 4D Raymarching package to include raycast hits for 4D objects
Created custom level editor that exports levels through file writing
Implemented file reader to read and load levels
Developed grid-based rail puzzle mechanics
Designed and iterated on gameplay mechanics through playtesting
Lessons
As a result of working on Hyperail, I became much more familiar with reverse-engineering external packages to understand how they work and extend their functionality. The hardest part of developing the game was using the 4D object rendering package. I needed to extend its functionality to include raycast hit detection, but I was unfamiliar with many of the techniques used to produce the objects. It took several weeks of research and poring over the package’s code to figure out an implementation strategy that worked.
Additionally, through designing Hyperail, I learned a valuable lesson on knowing when to scrap features, despite being attached to them. Hyperail’s final design was a result of multiple iterations, first starting with a puzzle platformer design in a 4D setting. As I conducted playtests for different prototypes, it became clear that some of the theoretical 4D concepts were too difficult to understand for players and I had to scale back the complexity of the game so that players would find it enjoyable. It landed on a rail puzzle game in a grid system due to the low complexity in comprehending what’s on the screen and what the goal of the level is, and the design is flexible enough to add more complex features as the game moves forward.
