KAMI 2 (2017)
Genre: Puzzle
Engine: Unity
Website: stateofplaygames.com/kami2
Roles: Game design, puzzle design, UI/UX
Sequel to State of Play’s hugely successful papery puzzler KAMI (2014), we wanted this successor to be the definitive and complete edition of KAMI featuring additional game modes and tools for building and sharing puzzles.
I was responsible for the puzzle design, UI/UX, and was actively involved in shaping the game, working closely with the creative director and developers throughout the project.
About the project
Gameplay
As in KAMI, the goal is to fill the page with one colour in as few moves as possible.
Screenshots from an early KAMI 2 puzzle
Our goal
As the complete edition of KAMI with all the features, we wanted this game to have:
Level editor for users to create and share puzzles
Daily challenge and global leaderboard
‘Endless’ mode of the best player puzzles
The ‘explore’ section of user-made puzzles
The level editor
Painting with triangles
As soon as we launched KAMI 2 the ‘Explore’ section was alive with players making and sharing their creations — and still is today.
Players have creatively used the grid and palettes to make recognisable characters, isometric buildings and intricate patterns.
Shapes, faces and places
This was a delight to see, but it was clear that only a fraction of players were deliberately making puzzles as opposed to artwork, and these puzzles were getting buried. We needed a way to cherry pick those puzzles and place them in a separate section — without having to play them all.
The ‘creator’ page lets users browse other users’ collections of levels
Finding the best player-made puzzles
The problem was that a good KAMI puzzle isn’t self-evident from its appearance. We needed some way to detect when a level was both visually interesting but also a puzzle.
The formula I used was the average number of attempts at solving a puzzle per the turns that the puzzle is solvable in.
Imagine a puzzle that is solvable in 4 turns that takes players an average of an hour to solve. This would be an incredible puzzle because it suggests that the puzzle is much harder than it seems. The most compelling and satisfying puzzles seem simple. Likewise, a thirty-move puzzle that takes thirty seconds probably isn’t a good puzzle.
I also heavily favoured a low solution count. Designing a challenging puzzle with a solution of 5 or less is difficult/impossible, but if the solution creeps above 12, a puzzle becomes challenging for the wrong reasons. In KAMI, the sweet spot is 6 to 8 turns.
A hidden gem by a.sizov, discovered by our formula
The golden ratio
Using this magic formula, the game now takes the top few hundred most-played player puzzles and sifts out the best puzzles, which are added to the queue of ‘Daily Challenge’ puzzles, and then in the ‘Challenge’ mode.
These puzzles link back to creator profiles for other players to try out their other puzzles.
As I write this, today’s daily challenge by a.sizov can be done in 6 turns and it took me a good while to solve — the algorithm continues to do its magic!