Introduction
To Be Dismantled was my Sophomore project. It's a short narrative-driven game where you play as a small robot stranded on an alien planet, trying to repair a failing spaceship.
Every repair costs you something: you have to sacrifice your own parts to restore the ship’s critical systems.
My Roles:
I worked as Technical Design, Narrative Design, and UX Design, and my main responsibility was making the “repair = sacrifice” idea land as a complete experience.
Technical Design: implemented key control changes after each repair, plus core level tech components (like in-world countdown screens) that support pacing and rules.
Narrative Design: planned the progression structure—what you lose at each repair, why it matters, and how the level flow and environments adapt to those losses.
UX Design: designed level-based guidance (lighting, obstacles, route framing) to keep navigation readable inside a complex spaceship, especially as controls become increasingly unreliable.
Technical Design
（Player Control Systems & Level Architecture）
The technical work in To Be Dismantled centers on one goal: making the difficulty curve feel physical and unavoidable.
I built the core player control system and implemented the mechanical changes that occur after each repair — since the core loop is "fix the ship by sacrificing yourself," every lost ability needed to register as a real shift in how the game feels to play, not just a stat change. I also created level tech components to support pacing and urgency, including an in-world countdown screen that communicates the ship's critical state without relying on a detached HUD. Every repair is progress — but it also makes the robot harder to control.
System Design
（Repair & Ability Loss as Mechanic）
The central design question of To Be Dismantled was: how do you make sacrifice feel meaningful without cutscenes or exposition?
My answer was to tie every narrative beat directly to a mechanical consequence. Rather than telling the player the robot is deteriorating, the game removes abilities one by one — and the world immediately responds. Each repair is both progress and loss, creating a loop where moving forward makes everything harder. That tension is the game's core identity: you're always choosing to keep going, knowing what it costs.
Narrative Design
（Environmental Storytelling & Progressive Deterioration）
I designed the progression structure around a simple idea: each repair should feel like a meaningful sacrifice, and the environment should immediately answer that sacrifice.
Each step removes a core function and the level adapts accordingly — Repair 1 disables the robot's jump, forcing a complete rethink of traversal. Repair 2 damages the treads, making movement unstable and causing the robot to sway. The final repair shifts the world into black-and-white, turning the last stretch into a fragile, bleak ending beat. The goal was to make the story readable through your hands: you don't just hear that the robot is falling apart — you feel it every time you move.
UX Design
（Environmental Guidance & Spatial Readability）
As the robot loses functions, keeping the player oriented becomes increasingly critical. My UX approach was to avoid heavy UI prompts and instead let the level itself do the guiding.
I designed signposting through lighting cues that highlight intended routes and landing spots, obstacles and framing that subtly funnel the player toward correct paths, and clear silhouettes and safe zones that allow quick decisions even as movement becomes unreliable. The goal was to keep the next objective always readable — while still letting the increasing clumsiness create genuine tension.