Courier X and the Worst Stop Ever

The diorama table, one of the game’s central mechanics.

Courier X and the Worst Stop Ever is a first-person puzzle game created as part of a capstone to my game design degree program. The player takes the role of a nameless courier delivering a package to a wizard’s home. The package drop, however, is hidden past a maze of rooms which can be moved around by placing dioramas in different positions on an enchanted table.

I was brought on to the project partway through, as my primary team’s project didn’t require much of me and the team working on Courier X needed a level designer. As such, this made up my primary role. In the game’s final iteration, each of the four rooms is based primarily on designs I drew—a slideshow of which can be found below, including layouts for a room which didn’t make the final cut. Aside from level design, I created a couple of particle effects for the game using Unity’s particle systems, both for the summoning circle seen in the featured image and the dioramas themselves.

As the game's starting location, it was crucial that the environment frame the first objective in the camera's view—hence the trees on three sides of the player.
This is the first relic of an early puzzle concept—we were going to have a plant the player needed to kill by creating a concoction in the lab.
The primary obstacle in the library is a maze of bookshelves, which the player must solve by returning books to their places.
After the maze is solved, the bookshelves move to form a staircase leading up to the second floor.
The library's second floor, in turn, contains a summoning circle used to obtain another room's diorama. In the final game, this is unobstructed by bookshelves, simplifying the process.
The divination tower was the first room entirely of my design. The central feature is a rotating staircase, which allows access to between different alcoves on the second and third floors.
In the final game, the third floor is the location of the mailbox, and thus the final objective is to reach the pinnacle.
The Great Hall is the hub of the entire game, and the location of the pivotal diorama table. The first puzzle the player must solve requires them to move the greenhouse from its initial position to the door with a forcefield, then go in from above to access the new room and disable the field.
The second floor of the great hall connects to the upper doors of each other room. The doors are connected by location, so the diorama placed in the northwest slot will connect to the upper and lower floors at the northwest door.
The lab was going to host the cauldron required to create the potion and kill the plant. However, the entire room was cut for a stronger overall presentation.
The plant would have blocked access to the second floor of the lab, which was the original location of the mailbox.