Enhancing Social Interaction and Engagement Through a Cooperative Puzzle–Platformer

Cooperative puzzle–platformers promise strategy-rich, social play, yet many titles still lean on shallow or repetitive co-op mechanics that limit meaningful teamwork and replayability. This work designs and evaluates a 3D two-character cooperative puzzle–platformer, Mizu & Hee Adventure, to address that gap by embedding interdependent roles, coordination-first level design, and progressive challenges. We implemented the game in Unreal Engine and conducted a user study with 30 participants (ages 12–30) using the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) after a guided play session. Analysis focuses on cooperation, immersion, challenge, and post-game experience. Results show strong perceived cooperation (mean = 4.25), high challenge (mean = 4.40), and high immersion (mean = 4.42), with an overall positive post-game experience (mean = 4.41); participants also rated the cooperative mechanics as innovative (mean = 4.60). These findings indicate that the proposed mechanics effectively foster communication and joint problem-solving while maintaining engaging difficulty. We discuss design implications for co-op puzzle–platformers and outline future extensions to broaden content variety and scalability.