Transpose
Released Late 2018
Studio: Secret Location Inc
Platforms: Steam / Oculus Home / Viveport / PlayStation VR
My Role: Lead Game Designer & Lead Level Designer
Engine: Unity
Metacritic Score: 80
Summary of Contributions
I was the Lead Game Designer for Transpose. As such, I worked on the game from early concept through to final release. This work included writing GDDs, contributing to funding applications, gameplay systems design, locomotion systems design, level design, time manipulation mechanics design, UI & UX, progression systems, and in-level tutorial design.
Transpose is a single player puzzle game, where players must manipulate time and space to complete puzzles. It challenges players to solve increasingly complex physics puzzles as they explore an extraordinarily surreal world.
A key aspect of Transpose was capturing the players movement in the real world and playing that back over time in VR via a complex character rig. Players will work with copies / replays of their past actions, needing to think ahead of how they’ll work with their future self to complete an objective.
Given the complex nature of this core mechanic, there were many design challenges I had to overcome to bring this game to completion. I worked to design all aspects of gameplay and oversaw level design on Transpose, carefully balancing the difficulty of each level and overall progress to ensure new concepts were introduced to players in a gradual way. As players progressed, each level worked to build upon the former, teaching players all of the mechanics they’ll need to know to master the world of Transpose without the need for dedicated / heavy handed tutorials.
Reception
“At face value, Transpose is a wonderful VR puzzle game that’s as entertaining as it is mind-boggling. However, on the mornings when I started my day with Transpose, I found myself possessed of a calmness and patience that I had difficulty characterizing. As pretentious and hyperbolic as it sounds, the mindfulness and self-acceptance that it imbued in me made Secret Location’s work as transformative — it was an incredible experience to wave to myself, to give myself a high five, to rip my own heart out, or to stand beside myself while waiting longingly for another me. Rating: 9 out of 10”
— Alex Pegram - gamecritics.com
“Transpose is a stunning VR puzzle game that elevates the genre and delivers an out-of-body-like experience about manipulating gravity and bending time. There isn’t much of a story to follow and not all of the puzzles are as satisfying as the rest, but fans of the genre would be doing themselves a disservice to not play this excellent adventure from Secret Location.”
— David Jagneaux - uploadvr.com
“Before long you’ll actually be tossing blocks to yourself, nimbly catching them out of the air and slam-dunking them into the level-completing node in a simple but incredibly satisfying flourish. Furthermore, the act of simply watching a clone stand in place and stare mystified at the level around them — in other words, thinking about how to solve the puzzle, since that’s what you were doing moments ago — is absolutely uncanny, the type of sensation that can only really be experienced on a VR platform.”
— Leo Faierman - screenrant.com
