Moon Jump

A vertical-thinking puzzle platformer with a dual-world mechanic.

Genre: Puzzle Platformer
Role: Team Lead, Designer, Artist, Sound Designer
Engine: Unity
Team Size: 2 (Remote)
Duration: 30 Days
Platform: PC
Play: https://nugamedev.itch.io/moon-jump

Development Overview

Moon Jump was created in 30 days for Game Off 2020. While I did not program the game, I served as creative and design lead, owning the game’s core mechanic, level design, visual identity, and production flow.

The game explores a literal interpretation of “moonshot”: the player launches from Earth to the moon and back, solving spatial puzzles that require toggling between two sets of physics, timing, and traversal constraints. This dual-world interaction formed the foundation of the project’s design and identity.

Core Design Contributions

🧠 Mechanic Design:

  • Designed the core moon-jump mechanic, where the player catapults between Earth and the moon, introducing verticality as a layer of strategic complexity.

  • Authored sub-mechanics such as:

    • One-Way Toy Bricks (gravity manipulation)

    • Sticky Goo (jump suppression & placement puzzles)

    • Breath Timer on the moon (soft time constraint that encourages fast iteration)

🧩 Level Design Strategy:

  • Built single-screen levels to keep player orientation consistent across dual-world states.

  • Designed for readability and fairness, placing clear visual indicators for entry/exit points and interactables to reduce friction and trial-and-error.

  • Iterated using a physical dry-erase board for rapid sketching and playflow logic between moon/Earth interactions—especially valuable for quick idea validation during off-hours.

🎨 Asset and Audio Production:

  • Created all art assets including character sprites, environmental tiles, and effects in a cohesive, whimsical visual style.

  • Developed all sound effects, syncing player actions and moon transitions to audio feedback that emphasized tempo and movement intent.

📋 Technical Coordination & Remote Production:

  • Managed the project in Unity Collaborate, ensuring clean versioning, task tracking, and seamless communication with the programmer.

  • Maintained technical documentation on design intent and mechanical behavior to ensure implementation matched player experience goals.

Challenges Tackled

✦ Vertical Dual-Environment Design

Navigating between Earth and the moon introduced potential confusion. To solve this:

  • Ensured visual continuity and mirrored layout affordances between the two states

  • Placed level-critical cues consistently in screen space to ease mental mapping

✦ Deadline-Driven Scope

A tight 30-day schedule limited content scale. We prioritized:

  • Mechanic reusability through creative level composition

  • Efficiency in prototyping using physical sketching and constrained level structure

Outcome

Moon Jump was well-received in the jam for its intuitive design, inventive mechanic, and charming presentation. Its success helped solidify my design philosophy: build around a strong mechanic, use level design to teach it, and trust player curiosity.

© 2018 Blund