Claira G. Ames

During my time studying at Vancouver Film School, I developed this title with five other alumni. Alchemy Frogs is a couch co-op puzzle game developed in six months where two were pre-production. It was developed in Unity and is available on Itch.io and was also published on Steam.

Development Timelapse

Here is a development timelapse of how the game progressed at milestone one all the way to our final build of the game.

Alchemy Frogs

Alchemy Frogs is a cooperative puzzle game where the two players must work together by brewing potions to remove obstacles and stack on top of each other for an additional height advantage.

Early in production for the game I and another level designer began work on the 2D layout attached below. This allowed us to establish metrics, and give us a template to iterate on obstacle & puzzle placement as well as terrain elevation.

Once the layout was done we used Unity’s Probuilder to build the level in game-space and begin testing.

Alchemy Frogs has various puzzles and obstacles that require both players to craft a certain potion to be thrown at the problem. Player 1 and 2 have different potions, this means that the players must cooperate by combining their potions to solve various problems to make progress.

They can work together in various ways to creatively solve their problems as opposed to using the ‘lock-&-key’ potion mechanics. Both players can stand on top of each-other to gain additional height. In addition each player is equipped with dynamite they can use to push certain platform blocks, and the other player, around as they progress through the level.