The Puzzle Piece Dilemma

 After discussing it with my instructor, I decided to add a new gameplay mechanic to my project: collecting puzzle pieces and completing a jigsaw puzzle.

The original plan was simple:
Each of the three scenes would contain two puzzle pieces, and since the player can use portals to move between them, they’d be able to gather all six pieces across scenes and then complete the puzzle in a final UI panel.

It sounded pretty fun in theory.
But then I ran into a major issue.

When the player used a portal to travel between scenes, the puzzle progress reset — all collected data was lost. The pieces you had found were gone after loading into a new scene.
So I asked ChatGPT for help.

One solution it suggested was to move the puzzle system (UI, scripts, collected data, etc.) into the first main scene and keep it alive throughout all other scenes. Technically possible — but when I tried it, things started breaking fast.

The problem?
All my other UIs disappeared.
Each sub-scene has its own unique UI, and I couldn’t just combine everything into the main scene. That would get messy real fast.

So I made a new plan:
Instead of one global puzzle, I’d give each scene its own local puzzle — three puzzle pieces per scene, forming one small image. This way, there’s no need to transfer UI or data across scenes, and everything stays neatly contained.

Sure, it’s a bit less ambitious than my original idea, but honestly?
It’s way more stable — and still fun to play.