Puzzle Box Palace is a 3D puzzle game for Windows. It was developed over the course of six months in 2020 by a team of 12 graduate students at SMU Guildhall, for a total of roughly 200 hours of development time per person.
In Puzzle Box Palace, players are pulled into a magical puzzle box they received as a gift from their grandfather. Players progress through five increasingly complex puzzle rooms, returning to the puzzle box’s central room between each level. As players progress, they use the game’s puzzle mechanics to move and twist pieces of the puzzle box into place. The central room teaches players new mechanics before they enter each puzzle room, and then the puzzle rooms challenge players with logic puzzles, spatial reasoning puzzles, and observational puzzles. Players can also use light platforming skills to solve puzzles in creative ways as they navigate the puzzle box. Players can find pages of their grandfather’s letter scattered throughout the puzzle box, piecing together their relationship with their grandfather as they move through the game.