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Marziyeh Keshavarz Ramezani (Lead), Jin Kim, Luca Maude, Simon Ardiles Fuentes, Meshal Raveendran, Maya Sonnemann

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The Last Roach is a side scrolling puzzle game in which you play as a cockroach and attempt to get out of a decrepit refrigerator. You interact with items to cause different things to happen and as you work your way down the different levels of the fridge you aim to survive against the life in the fridge which stands in your way.

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Original Beta Plan:

The player is able to move forwards and backwards in the x axis and are able to use the z button to interact with certain objects for taking cover or entering into new areas. The player is also able to pick up items and carry them via pressing a button, when they let go of the button the item gets thrown in a small arc forwards.

This is used to take items from one area to another and helps to separate the puzzle solving without placing everything on a single screen and encourages backtracking/exploration as if a later puzzle needs an item from the past your brain is allowed to put 2 and 2 together.

Generally each floor will have one main puzzle which then opens the way down to a lower level of the fridge, the player can interact with the threat right away but doing so will result in them dying and having to restart, making sorting through the puzzles a game of trial and error.
Alongside these main puzzles you'll have to try to stay out of sight of the owner of the fridge as on different intervals they can come in and you can avoid them via either entering a side room or hiding behind an object.

Finalized Output:

Focusing down more on the grabbing, the main button of Z became the only other input in this game with it now being set to pick up objects. The gameplay of the game is walking through both of the floors and trying to combine the objects in such a way which will allow you to go past the Spider. 

This stripping down takes the focus off of exploration and replayability and focuses the game down into an experience game. You'd play The Last Roach to experience the art and atmosphere however once you've taken all that in and have solved the main puzzle you aren't left with much to go through with the game, specially on concurrent playthroughs. We also removed the hiding mechanics and currently the only danger to the player is the Spider, this happened since there are only two floors and there wouldn't be room to introduce a difficult curve. From the get go we wanted to make the game be simple for the player to grasp and if we added hiding mechanics we'd need to create a separate tutorial to introduce the player to this form of danger, without this there would be confusion and to make it more intuitive via audio cues set to a specific rhythm would take away from the "take your time" and slowburn nature of the game.

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Here are our notes since our first playtest

There's a bug with the collision on the second floor that causes the player to get stuck when they go down the ladder. 
The puzzle can be confusing, perhaps more indication on what to do?
If objects are too close to each other, there's no need to pick up everything at once, fix it so it's just one item carried at once.
Great visuals and animation, very cohesive aesthetic
Consider a longer kill animation for the spider, otherwise it just looks like a glitch
Change the speed to go faster or add some sort of sprint key
Perhaps add in-game controls to show which keys to use
Add a holding object animation for the cockroach
Create an end or kill cut scene