by Noscope

Solarid is a sci-fi third-person-shooter set in a egyptian desert temple setting. The end goal of the game is to relieve the sun-scorched planet of drought by activating the ancient machinery at the center hub of the temple. To do this, the player has to retrieve four power-crystals from around the temple. Player can engage in combat with three types of enemies using their pistol and psychic-abilities

Development process

Development started late December with some of the team already established. The original idea was to make an action role-playing game with player progression. We also wanted to release the game on steam. Needless to say, the scope was too big so we scaled the game down.

We got the basic gameplay fairly early in the development process with blink being the first skill to be implemented.  We had a couple of different skill ideas in addition to blink but we ended up going with vortex and clone abilities since they flowed well with the shooting.

Last weeks of development have consisted of bugfixes and making the game more polished and player friendly with the addition of tutorials and cutscenes.

The progress hasn’t been so fast during May since a part of the team are busy with jobs and others are busy with coursework. Our personal deadline for the project is 31.5.

Latest build of Solarid can be found behind this link . Final version of Solarid will be released on itch.io at 31.5.2017!

Team

Teppo Hyttinen

Programming  |  Game Design  |  Writing  |  Level Design

Jaakko Takalo

Graphics  |  Game Design  |  Music  |  Audio

 

Others Involved

Lassi Kähärä – Audio Engineering

Mike Bernstein – Voice-acting

 

The Game

“This place is like a vacuum, almost as if time itself was being compressed here.”

Project Monolith is a first-person, narrative-driven puzzle game with heavy exploration elements. The player controls a man who has died in an accident. He has woken up in a surreal place lodged in the intersection of birth, life and death. He must explore this strange world, solve puzzles and riddles and find out why he is there and not simply dead. In order to do this, he must find the mysterious, looming Monolith.

The main mechanic of the game is the pylon puzzle system, where the player interacts with a pylon, and the camera will be moved to the pylon and the player gets to aim the pylon at specific endpoints and by clicking the mouse, the player can attach a beam from the pylon to the endpoint dynamically. The puzzles in the demo are mostly about figuring out what pylon should shoot beams into what endpoints. Careful examination of the beautiful levels is required to find all of the endpoints and figure out what pylon belongs to what endpoint. This system was designed to uphold the core values of the game. We had beautiful levels, so it made sense to make the player to really look at the levels by finding the endpoints and not just rush through all of the rooms. Also, since the player has to use the pylon’s camera, it means that there is a reason for the game to be a first-person game. It all comes together in the end.

 

Development

“The things that this place represents, we have no name for. They are beyond human comprehension. Our minds are clouded, but I have been given clarity.”

Development of Project Monolith started officially in January 2017 but Teppo had already began preliminary testing in December 2016 but none of the testing development made into the final project. The game was under active development throughout the entire spring semester, being worked on almost every day. We decided to work on this project as a small team to make sure that everyone stays on the same page and everyone’s vision is in alignment with the rest of the team. In other words, we didn’t want to have a third or fourth member in the team. We believed that we would get more done in a smaller, but more focused team.

The game was initially inspired by some “walking simulator” titles such as Everybody’s Gone to The Rapture (Developed by The Chinese Room and published by Sony in 2015) but right from the start we wanted Project Monolith to feature much more gameplay on top of the narrative and exploration elements. We felt like the most suitable genre for Project Monolith was a puzzle game. The surreal setting for it made it easy to justify problem solving, as it made sense in the given context.

We concentrated first at the first demo session where we already showcased high quality level design as well as fully thought-out audio (excluding voice acting). After the first demo session, we started almost the entire project from scratch. We used everything we had learned up to that point, to make the same thing again, but much better. We revamped the puzzle mechanics, we re-wrote the story and we made a new, much bigger and much more open level for the final demo.

During the final weeks of development, we had a voice-over recording session where Lassi Kähärä worked as an audio engineer and Mike Bernstein did the voice acting for the protagonist.

 

The Future of Project Monolith

“The fabric is so thin here… I can feel it… The presence… It’s so near…”

Now that the semester is almost over and the project has been wrapped up, we are looking at the future of Project Monolith. This was so much more than a school project for both of us and we are planning on taking this further, by making plans on going commercial with Project Monolith. The game will most likely go through dramatic changes before we get that far, but we’re burning for this project, and we want to see how far we’ll be able to take it.

If you’d like to follow development of Project Monolith, be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook (Links down below)!

 

Download Project Monolith Demo 2.0

LINK

 

Contact

Twitter

Facebook

celestialbit@gmail.com

Last wave at Statron

Team Statroware: Hannes Salo, Eetu Maunuksela, Eeva Säilä, Jonas Forsman, Terhikki Kataja, Lassi Kähärä

The game

Last wave at Statron is a scifi themed RTS/Tower-defense game set on an alien planet. Defend your main base from aliens for as long as you can by building units and structures.

The player starts out with the main base and a couple light units. A few enemies start attacking towards the main base. The player can choose to build generators to provide more income, start making more units through a barracks-building or build defensive turrets to deny enemies coming from a certain direction.

The enemy “snails” and “whales” rush towards the base in ever-increasing amounts, wave by wave. Try to build up an effective defense quick and you might just survive for longer than last time.

Progress

Hannes had the original idea about Last wave at Statron, which was basically just to make some sort of a scifi RTS. So we started to develop the game from there. At the beginning we had several options on how to approach and execute the game from the original idea. We had long discussions between the group, and had some direction from our tutors in order to make the game doable within the timeframe we had.

We met every week, and discussed about what everyone is going to do each week. At first our scope was too big for this time frame, but in the end we were able to make a playable game.

Link to game:  https://statroware.itch.io/last-wave-at-statron

Team Hexapus
Game project spring 2017

Antti Heikkinen, Samu Aaronen,
Oona Laakso, Helmi Pirinen, Ida Tuominen, Annika Aarnio

The Game

Thalassa is an atmospheric game where the player rides the underwater currents of an endless ocean in a speedy little submarine, weaving their way through dangerous waters, deeper and deeper into the abyss.

During the spring of 2017 our team, the Hexapus, developed a deep sea “Race the Sun” -like game with a submarine as the “player character”. The game has technically an endless cycle of atmospheric levels full of dangers ranging from dark caverns and falling obstacles to moody carnivous sea creatures.

The game is very stylized and almost minimalistic. There is no shooting or combat mechanics, but the player’s progress and skill is avarded with speed and shield boosts. The player is encouraged to race for the highest score by online and local scoreboard feature.

Development process

On the programming side the focus was on the shader effects and the underwater feel since it was very crucial for the atmosphere of the game to be just right. The art and design side concentrated to create simple, compact and functional audio visuals that would still remain clean and stylish.

When our group was formed we decided unanimously to have as small of a scope as possible for our game so that we could fully concentrate on making the final result clean, cool and fun without having to cut the corners.

In the end we still ended up with a bit of a time issue and learned the hard way that no matter how simple you try to make something, making it well will always eat your hours. We had to make big compromises with the theme and the mechanics to save time and the last few weeks were borderline hellish especially for the programmers. It seems to have been worth it; The game was released 14th of May 2017 to itch.io with a “Pay What You Want” option. It can be played on PC with either keypad or a controller. We are still looking into the possibility of a Mac release.

The game can be downloaded from here.

 

 

Team Sloth+

Graphics: Veera Tikkamäki, Jutta Urama
Programming: Joni Tasala, Antti Tuomisto, Joel Vidqvist
Design: Joel Vidqvist
External advisor/comic relief: Maks L. Ouhio (name changed)

The game

4 Crosspaws is a cooperative puzzle game for four players. It was developed for PC and requires four controllers to play. Each player controls their own character, all of which are cats.

The game is set in a tower which the players have to ascend by solving puzzles together. Items that can be found on different floors of the tower play a big part in overcoming these trials. Besides puzzles based on the items found on them, the floors also have their own colour schemes.

Crossbow is the most important of the game’s items and also the only one players have from the start. It can be used as a weapon and to get through puzzles. Mana can be collected to upgrade the bow up to two times. Other items include boots that enable the characters to jump, and a monocle that reveals previously hidden objects.

Development process

The development process took about four months. It was the first 3D game our team, Sloth+, had worked on. The team consists of five members: three coders and two artists. The game was built  with Unity Engine. Blender was used as the modelling software for the 3D assets and programs like Adobe Photoshop and Paint Tool SAI for textures and other 2D assets.

It took us a while before we knew what kind of game we were going to make. Eventually we agreed on a Legend of Zelda: Four Swords-like four-player puzzle adventure. We decided to make the characters cats to differentiate it from its inspirer. And also because everyone likes cats. The game’s visual style is simplified, lowpoly, and cel-shaded.

The development process wasn’t without its problems. It turned out that the scope was too big for the time we had. We also learnt that making four playable characters, even if they are relatively similar, causes more work than you’d expect. We had to leave out some of the planned features. For example, originally there were going to be four different items besides the crossbow (boots, monocle, magnet, and sword). We were also planning to have more enemy types and minibosses. The game was supposed to end on top of the tower, but this idea had to be scrapped as well, at least for now.

Having to rethink what was actually going to make it to the game so often caused confusion within the team as to what we should be doing and what wasn’t necessarily needed. In hindsight, we probably should have spent more time planning, scheduling and, once it became clear that everything we intended to make wasn’t going to be finished, reprioritizing features. All in all, our team definitely saw the importance of trying to keep the scale of four-month projects relatively small.

The team gathered at TAMK more or less regularly; some were there almost daily, while others preferred to work at home. The entire team met about once a week. The team also regularly got some external help testing the game.

Sceenshots

4 Crosspaws Donwload link

by team.ToString()

The Game

Forge Wizard is a top-down 3D twin stick shooter, in which an apprentice wizard must regain control of his master’s home. Armed with only a few simple spells (game mechanics), the player has to run, dodge, dash, shoot, and collect his way through four wings of content, each with a thematic boss. From the outset of the project, it was our main goal that we control our scope and present a finished game by the end of the course, and we have. Forge Wizard is ready for release, and will be free on itch.io soon after the submission of this report.

The Process

Our team is proud of the hard work we put in, and the game is ready to publish. We feel it’s on par with some of the indie offerings on Steam, which makes it an ideal portfolio piece. The process wasn’t always smooth, and in fact we made several early changes to our concept that were rather large (setting, camera angle, scene building methods, etc)… but all team members were deeply invested in making a finished, polished game, and that was enough motivation to learn and adapt as we went along.

We used a few basic strategies to reach this point. First, we prioritized gameplay first and fit the art and sound design around working gameplay elements. Second, we avoided feature creep by maintaining the same few core player mechanics at all times… even removing our secondary attack early on in the process, to streamline gameplay. And finally, good programming practices were held up throughout the project, never relying on buggy behavior or half measures. This kept our builds relatively bug free, and made those we found easier to chase down.

There was an initial slow start, as ideas formulated and format changes were made (camera angle, for example). The programmers were familiar with the genre and quickly set about prototyping, but the artist was inexperienced in 3D work and took a couple of weeks to study up, to the point of generating game-quality assets. This caused a little friction on the team at first, but an understanding was reached and assets started to flow soon thereafter. This kind of acclimation period seems normal among new teams.

Feedback was vital to the process, so we’d like to thank the various classmates, playtesters, and of course teachers of the course. The game will be released on itch.io for free in the coming week, pending the creation of a trailer and other publishing media.

Screenshots

Download Link (available until itch.io release):  Forge Wizard on Dropbox