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Sisyphus's Worst Day (Again)
Level Designer
Sisyphus's Worst Day (Again) is a comedic isometric 3D puzzle game where you build traps, manipulate the environment, and engineer the perfect loop to keep Sisyphus from ever reaching the summit.
Sysiphus's Worst Day (Again) performed incredibly well at the USC Games Expo. press this link to check out our Steam page!
My Responsibilities included:
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Creating 2 trap mechanics that complement all traps and feel unique
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Designing a series of levels for each of our mechanics that builds on players' knowledge from the previous series
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Create tutorials that effectively teach all the capabilities of our mechanics
Sisyphus being looped by two spring traps
Main Design Goals
As designers our main goal for this project was to create challenging puzzles with each series centering on a specific trap we made, with every level building on the player's past knowledge. My individual goals as a puzzle designer were as listed:
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Create two themed traps that are one of a kind but compliment other traps created
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create a series of levels around your traps that build on the player's knowledge of what it is capable of and how it can be used with other traps
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Playtest levels often to see how players are understanding the rules around the game and our individual traps
Placing a Minotaur and Medusa Trap
Workflow
Designing Each Trap
After grasping how the Sisyphus AI would work I started creating trap ideas around greek mythological themes. After weeks of discussion two of my traps were approved and I was able to start working on documentation for both.
These documents detail what their central theme is to support our ongoing narrative and how each trap would work so our engineers knew not just how to implement each trap but they would know what sort of errors we should be giving the player based on how each trap works.
Image 1: Lightning Bolt Trap Design Doc
Image 2: Minotaur Medusa Trap Design Doc Part 1
Image 3: Minotaur Medusa Trap Design Doc Part 2
Building Around Design Constraints
Once both of these docs were finished I started to build out the level series with each level teaching the player something new. But we started to approach a problem around how we made levels and our design lead set a few rules we had to follow for a level to be approved.
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Sisyphus AI must always be able to push the Boulder therefore, an infinite loop is the only solution to a puzzle
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Mechanics must be clear in how they affect Sisyphus
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Players should feel clever when finding solutions
These rules, allowed us to clearly define a levels purpose and also understand where player's could possibly be going wrong whenever they feel like they're running into trouble.
Placing a Lightning Bolt and Spring Trap
Tutorialization and Playtesting
After building each series we began to work on our guided tutorials. For each tutorial we wanted to stray away from a great deal of handholding, which had us build these core principles for each:
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each tutorial should gradually feeds information to not be overwhelming
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Allows players to fail so they can learn puzzle solving strategies
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Build on top of the knowledge player's have gained from past levels
This format allowed us to best track players understanding as we playtested the game. After every week of 2-4 playtests made up of old and new players we realized a major issue was being caused by the sequence of each level and needed to regroup the order levels were played in. Here are some of the ways we benifited from playtesting:
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Opened our eyes to iterate on levels seen as too difficult or confusing
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Allowed us to see how players learned from each level to the next
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Helped spot future problems early on in development the team was able to adapt to quickly
Top: Tutorial Sequence for the Lightning Bolt Trap
Bottom: Tutorial Sequence for the Minotaur Medusa Traps
The Results
After months of playtesting and iterating on levels we finally had the game set in a way we could all feel proud of and our hard work paid off. At USC's Games Expo in 2026 we were able to unveil the game and watched players have a blast figuring out each puzzle many getting through a large portion of the game. And now we are out on Steam happy to share the fun with everyone!
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