The original idea of “first person actor” was abandoned for its practicality for a small development team and limited budget. The project then turned to the idea of  a FBI agent’s detective discovery of Nikola Tesla’s life and work.

To demonstrate the possible game mechanics of the game, which are supposed to be related to the Tesla theme, two puzzled demos were created.

The first one is a general acoustic puzzle, which introduces the player to the puzzle mechanics of audio pattern recognition. The player will hear a sequence of electric current sound and three shorter sounds that make up the sequence. The puzzled is solved when the shorter sounds are clicked/tapped in the correct order.

Now, the second puzzle takes the pattern recognition further by introducing the visual patterns.

This puzzle features Tesla’s early and most applied invention, AC motor (three-phase), requiring players to choose three stretch cables from the boxes of AC power sources of different phases and connect them to the corresponding terminals marked “1”, “2” and “3” on the AC motor. Players have two ways of identifying the matches:

1. Acoustic: By moving the mouse to or tap the central gear and the three boxes with curve patterns, players can hear a sequence of electric current sound and three shorter sounds that make up the sequence respectively. This approach has been introduced to the player in the previous puzzle.

2. Visual: Next to the number marks of the terminals there are three coloured curve patterns (representing the wave form) and each of them is a complementary vertical inversion to a curve patterns on the box.

Players can click/tap on a box to choose a cable of AC power source and then click/tap again on a terminal to apply the match. Signal sounds are played to indicate whether the match is right. The puzzle is solved by completing all three matches.

When the puzzle is solved, the player can get some related source information about the puzzle as a reward of the Dossier system. Also, since the AC motor is powered up, it functions to interact with other contraptions and becomes part of the whole room puzzle.

Demos Download:

For Windows: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zrfib0hwovwhzjs/4jW2OOqsoj

For Mac OS: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/muwbbjlh5p9prbh/IxJ_n9wX3z