The idea of our game is a competitive multiplayer one on one rendition of Bomberman where players are pit against each other on round based skirmishes where the goal is to destroy the other player with bombs with the help of different power ups that are dropped by destructible blocks. There is also a skill based component in the ability to kick and push the bombs placed so players can try to catch each other off guard with a well timed push and explosion. Rounds are fast and power ups are plentiful so the game stays fun to play.
Progress of the project
At first we were making a single player level based Bomberman game, but pretty soon we switched to multiplayer, mostly because we thought it would be more fun to play. At the start we focused on the base mechanics, such as player character, bomb and game stage functionality and art. At the midway point we started focusing on the flow and functionality of the game itself, such as scenes, managers for game states and rounds, UI, menus, audio and settings. We also refined and added to the mechanics such as the power ups and bomb kicking. Later on we focused on polishing the game, adding different UI elements, lots of small but impactful animations, more sounds and transitions for scenes and rounds.
For the July period of the Game Camp, our team decided to try creating a simple top-down tower defense game. We figured that the scope for the game would be reasonable to be completed within a month. All of us had played a tower defense game at some point and the basic gameplay aspects were easy to understand, all we had to do was to implement them properly. We did consider a few different games to be used as our main reference (like “Plants vs. Zombies), but decided to stick with more “traditional” approach.
Main menu
The gameplay consists of enemies spawning from the bottom of the map and player placing different defensive towers on available spots on the map. The goal is to keep the enemies from reaching the exit on the top left of the map. Unlike many other tower defense games where enemy attacks are implemented in separate waves, in this game the flow of enemies is constant.
Tower purchase menu
Development
We had several changes to the game during July, especially regarding the gameplay. We made small additions and gradual implementations to the weekly builds of the game so that we could monitor and adjust things in an orderly manner. Especially bug fixes became an early focus for the development process, since adding code from different programmers is not always as straight forward as one could expect.
Tower upgrade menu
We managed to try different mechanics and additions like mouse camera controls and tower purchase/upgrade menus. Probably the biggest difficulty was finding a proper way to balance the game so that things would not be too easy or hard. This required hours of testing and adjusting, but fortunately we also learned to implement our game elements to be easily adjustable. Also one of the major head aches was the functionality between the enemy pooling system and the tower targeting, these two components did some serious voodoo magic at some point that forced us to figure out how to use these two together without literally breaking the game.
On a general note, this project was pretty fruitful in terms of learning experience. We have not released the build to the public (and probably will not, the game still needs some polishing) but regardless it is a decent game for a Game Camp project.
Team members:
Matti Nurmi – Programmer
Pasi Sundelin – Programmer
Joni Honkanen – Programmer
Ossi Hela – Graphic Designer, Effects
Vilma Törmälä – Graphic Designer
You adopt a pet which isn’t like how you expected it to be, though you don’t really mind it. Like any pet yours requires food and affection to thrive. Other than that you’re not sure what else to expect. The most important thing however is that you have given your new pet a loving home.
KitsuCare is a virtual pet game for Android. Currently there’s basic care (feeding, petting and a pet sitter for when you’re busy) in the game. There’s also a minigame you can play to earn in-game currency and one functional item you can buy with it. You also have stats and achievements you can look at in the game. Only some of the endings have been implemented so far.
Development in 2022 (been in development since 2020)
After getting more feedback I realized some of my design choices were still well… bad (or at least too unintuitive), so I changed some of them for the better. Surprisingly many things needed to be tweaked and there were also some bugs I needed to fix. At the start of Game Camp, I thought that I would work on my game’s endings during most or at least half of it. Turns out even minor improvements take surprisingly long to implement, so most of Game Camp was actually spent on those and finishing working on one unfinished feature.
What you think you’ll work on next will be delayed for a while if you discover bugs or improvements that are a clear improvement in your game. I’ve learned not to give a release estimate after the two earlier years of KitsuCare’s development. The important thing is that I’m still developing it and getting closer to eventually releasing it.
My next priority is implementing the endings. After that it could at least technically be called a finished game and I at least imagine it’ll stop feeling like an unfinished game. At this point most of the work for this game is already done, which has made me patient with making tweaks and improvements. I want to release a game I will be proud of having made.
After implementing the endings I can start thinking about what features would be a nice bonus to a game that is otherwise ready. I’ve gotten great suggestions for potential extra content, and I’d definitely like to have them in my game (though I am a one-person-team and will think more about if I will add more content later and what would it be).
We started brainstorming with the team from the viewpoint of what the coders would like to work on. Our main programmer is into fast-paced first person shooters, so that was what we based our ideas on.
Since online PvP did not really feel like an option, we ended up going for a roguelike arena, where more AI enemies would spawn in waves. We wanted two different types of enemies, one that would come up to the player (all close and personal) and another to shoot from the distance. A bit of variety, yeah?
The graphic style and art of the game was pretty quickly decided, since many artists of our team really enjoy cyberpunkish sci-fi style, robots and neon colours.
Development
I started development with the movement mechanics since that can be hard to get right in unity. I mostly followed a tutorial i found on youtube. It has some downsides and i had to make some adjustments but overall it felt like a good choice. After i was happy with it i moved on to weapons. For weapons i picked common and easy to code things. I was heavily inspired by games like Doom and Ultrakill.
Samu Lehtineva, lead programmer
Additional shaders and particle effects were added in Unity, but most of the 3D assets were developed and animated using Blender and then imported into the Unity project. Trying to get Unity and Blender to play nicely with one another was at times challenging, and we had to sometimes accept that “turn it off an on again” is as good an answer as we are going to get! We had separate 3D artists for the environment assets and the player character / enemies. The design of the player character is a complete character, even though in-game the only visible bits are the hands and guns.
Team:
Ada, Coral, Ere, Erika, Siiri, Samu, Danielle
Samu Lehtineva – Lead Programmer
Daniella Azouer – Programmer
Siiri Syvänen – Lead Artist, Unity Art, Sound design
Ada Ikonen – Environment & Level Design, 3D Artist
Coral Nguyen – UI Artist
Ere Kreula – 2D Artist, Concept Art, Sound design
Erika Markkinen – Supreme Animator, Character & Gun Artist, Environment Art
Game is still under development. It will be available on itch.io, stay tuned folks!
Play in a wonderful and soft dreamworld, defending the innocent dreamer against gruesome nightmare incarnations! Plant super cute towers to stop the monsters from getting through and ruining the lovely dream! Try to manage your money to handle bigger and bigger waves of even scarier monsters! Use different towers to counter different nightmare creatures!
Development
The development started with the concept of nightmare vs dreamworld tower defense game. We wanted to have gruesome monsters and cute critters in the same game as it would make all the parties happy. We also had some very specific technical things we wanted to use, like automatically generated tilemaps and a pixel graphic filter on top of 3D-models. We started very early with some concept art of the towers, the monsters, some moodboards and planning of color palettes.
Tower concepts
Basic enemy type from concept art to final 3D model
Though the start’s motivation began to fade after the initial weeks, we still managed to turn out a pretty awesome game. Of course, as with every game, our initial scope was too large and we had to cut out some amazing ideas. They included things like a spreading corruption that visually showed how far the enemies had gotten, a couple more towers and a backstory with a sleeping child whose dreams the towers were protecting.
Unused idea: As the enemies advance, the environment would corrupt.
Team
Programmers: Kaarlo Kangas Ville Karilainen
Artists: Emma Erjanne Mikko Nystedt Liisa Pirhonen
The concept formed when we wanted to make a simpler game after the overly complex tycoon on first year’s spring game project. After some of the members played vampire survivors,we decided to implement a copy game inspired by its game mechanics. The gameplay was incredibly simple as the weapons worked on their own and the only thing the player does is moving around and avoiding enemies.
We decided to change the theme towards a botanical one to have a chance to make silly plant-based enemies and weapons. The game was divided into 3 main levels which took their inspirations from three different biomes, one for each level. First level was based on arid climate with cactuses and sand. The second one focused on forest and its familiar greenery and the last level took its inspiration from jungle and aquatic plants like flytraps and rafflesia.
Development
The development started with a design phase where at first the core loop was detailed. After we ended up with two separate loops for the game and the store. Where the game provides currency and shop provides the place to spend it for upgrades. The second design phase was for the themes and enemies, so that the artists would have a good direction for each enemy mob and boss to keep enemies consistent.
On the programming side the game was much simpler to make after our overly difficult project on spring. The development was done in a leisurely pace with both coders mostly working on their own scenes. The main programmer focused on combat area and the designer helped with the store scene. The only real difficulties were with individual weapons and their implementations like the persistent damaging aura.
As for the artists. In the beginning the artists split between one doing shop art and other focused on the combat area, but as the development progressed the combat area artist took over most of the art duties as the other one went missing during the summer. Overall, it was the first-time doing sprite art for our working artist and every part was a learning experience on its own. The software that was used for making the sprites was Asesprite and the new artist had to learn working with it from the start.
Monster Mayhem is a 1v1 FPS style Deathmatch, inspired by early Quake and Doom games. The game is played as local multiplayer, with split-screen mode. The game has two different levels, one focusing on king of the hill style capture point controlling and the other on pure deathmatch.
Development
During the concepting phase, we played around with a variety of ideas, and eventually settled upon a priest and a demon goat in a battle of good vs. evil. Visually, we were inspired by stylized, low-poly games, such as Solar Ash and Overland. We focused heavily on making the main mechanics and gameplay as fun as possible while creating an eerie atmosphere with the environments.
We knew that it would be incredibly important to keep the scope reasonable for this project. The initial plan to have the game be online multiplayer was changed to be local instead. It took us quite a while to get combat that felt good to play, as it was suprisingly nuanced, but it was important to get right, as it was the core of our gameplay. We also wanted to implement very asymmetrical gameplay. Unfortunately, this proved to be too complex in the time that we had, and it was scrapped for slightly more even gameplay. However, we were able to implement two different game modes with different layouts and objectives.
Weekly in-person meetings were incredibly important in keeping all the team members in the loop as we continued development, but towards the end of the project, we had to switch to online meetings. We noticed that we should have had a playable prototype and begun playtesting earlier on in the project. Overall, despite any issues we faced, we all learned a lot about creating a 3D game, and came out with a game that we all feel quite proud of.
A great escape from the high life of the elite city to the depths of the slum – back to your people.
Isla is a platformer game with mixed 2D and 3D elements, where you take on the role of a spy who escapes through a city on a floating island. Be fast as the time is running and avoid the traps and evil robots who are sent after you by the high class of the elite.
The game features:
Mixing 2D characters into 3D environment
5 different levels with platforms and obstacles
Development
We started the project by choosing a couple of games we wanted to use as a reference. We wanted to make a 2.5D platformer game with 2D characters and a 3D environment. Disney’s Hercules – an old classic videogame, used mixed 2D and 3D elements like that and was one of our biggest influencers. That game also had areas where the character could run back and forth between different depth dimensions, and that seemed like a good idea to try in our game too. We also had other game references, for example, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, AC: Chronicles China and Indivisible, just to mention a few of them. We didn’t have too much previous experience with 3D art and we figured that making 2D characters instead of 3D would save us time. Mixing 2D and 3D elements would be an interesting experiment in any case.
The idea of a floating island with solarpunk inspired, partly utopian elite city atmosphere and partly dystopian poor lower area came quickly to us at the very beginning of planning. The prosperous but evil high class and poor lower class workers at the bottom of the city became the main conflict of the story. We wrote a script about an underground spy who gets revealed in the very beginning and starts her escape through the city with important information to people of the slums – her people. As the setting was futuristic, we decided to have robots as the active enemies of the game.
During the first weeks (and even later on) we spent a lot of time on concepts and ideation. There were multiple ideas that we had to abandon due to lack of time, for example, level six, small jump as a mechanic, a huge robot enemy in the middle of the game, a third robot enemy, 3D tree assets and so on. The basic mechanics of the game were decided quite fast as we tried really hard not to make the scope of the game too big and complicated. Despite that, after some valuable feedback in the middle of the game development, we felt that something needed to be added to give the player more of a feeling of pressure. We decided to create a timer and an hourglass collectible which would give the player more time. To make those work in the game we needed a lot of level design changes and playtesting.
Early concepts for the main character and the enemy robots.
Isla’s design went through multiple different looks and iterations to ensure she would shine as the main character.
For art stuff, dividing the tasks came quite easy to us, and everyone got to do things they enjoyed while also dabbling with something new. We knew 3D would be hard and time-consuming so we made sure most of the artists were focusing on that. Lots of voting was used both for artistic choices as well as gameplay and story aspects, to ensure fast decision-making as well as fairness.
The artists focusing on 3D had to start pretty much by learning the basics. Especially most things considering textures and materials, and importing the assets successfully from Blender to Unity, seemed to require a lot of trial and error. At least we can say we learned a lot on that rough path, and the team members were helping each other out.
Storyboarding for the intro and logo ideas.
3D process was shared through Discord.
Overall, our biggest problems clearly had to do with difficulties in the level design, and our artists being pretty new to 3D. Despite encountering multiple problems we thankfully managed to solve most of our problems and ended up with a project we’re all very proud of as our first 3D game.
Just a portion of all the sketches and moodboards we did for the game.
Team Korvapuusti
Joni Nevala– Programmer, Project Manager Ilmari Huhtanen – Programmer Janina Korpela – Artist, Project Manager Mona Westman – Artist Niina Lahti – Artist Nina Lahti – Artist Aris Helin – Artist
Deniz Kirci – Music Producer Akseli Koskinen – Sound Designer Ioana Vasilache – Voice Actor Lukas Ekberg – Audio technician
In Pookie Island, you step into the moon boots of Space Kitty, whose adventure didn’t start quite as planned. You find yourself on a planet with islands inhabited by frogs and their elemental companions: Pookies, which will help you on your journey through these islands.
We were inspired by titles such as Super Mario Sunshine, Jak & Daxter, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, to name a few. Our main aim was to make a fun platformer with puzzles and some sense of discovery, the latter one influenced a lot on how we built the world; giving the player the opportunity to explore.
Development
Initially, our scope was a lot bigger than the end product. We planned to have fully, (or at least making it look like so) walkable mini planets with a bending horizon and all different biomes, but the whole idea and how to do it slowed us down a lot at the start. We ended up ditching the planets, changing them into islands with different themes. But the concepts we had already made didn’t go to waste, as we used a bunch of it as an inspiration for the islands.
Since we knew from the beginning our world was gonna be relatively big, we set up a plan to keep the graphics fairly low poly, textures simple and utilised a toon shader to cut down the time spent on creating the assets.
Mid-development
Due to unforeseen circumstances we had to leave out some features, like enemies chasing the player, and one pookie type. Cutting things down allowed us to keep the project a bit more manageable, but still by no means an easy feat. Biggest challenge was definitely easing the player into the game and what they’re able to do. Doing open-world level design and making all the features fit coherently in different places also proved to be quite tricky.
PookieSuckazz Team Jere Joensuu – Programmer Otso Alenius – Programmer Elisa Pantea – Artist Liisa Pirhonen – Artist Karin Aimonen – Artist Katariina Paulaniemi – Artist Néd Richard – Artist, Project Manager
The game “RÄKDOLL” is a 2-4 player local multiplayer fighting game where the goal is to be the last one standing. The player can pickup a sword or a gun during the match and use them to defeat their opponent. We took great inspiration from games like Gang Beasts and Human Fall Flat.
Development:
When we first started to figure out the game idea we had many ideas for the weapons that the players were going to use. We wanted to have everyday normal objects like bowling balls and leaf blowers but had to wipe that idea due to lack of time. That’s why we went with the basic sword and a gun. For the stage theme we wanted to go with a pirate/tropical island. That’s why you can see a deserted ship and barrels on the stage.
(Early gun and character designs)
For the character we wanted to make a simple model that would have ragdoll physics. Implementing the ragdoll physics proved to be more challenging than we expected so we had to figure out a way that would work for us. We wanted the game to be purely gameplay that you could enjoy with your friends.
