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Games Academy Spring 2020 – Steel Castle

Hi everyone! We’re from team Left & Right and our game is called Steel Castle.

Steel Castle is a puzzle-platformer adventure game that’s heavily inspired by Playdead’s titles LIMBO and INSIDE. As a player you control a vulnerable human protagonist, solve some puzzles and avoid death. We can’t emphasize the word avoid enough – if you seek conflict, you will die.

Features

  • Controller & Keyboard/Mouse support
  • An atmospheric experience with simple controls
  • A single-player game in a hostile environment

Download Steel Castle from itch.io!

Development

We had kind of a rough start and it felt that the development was running on quicksand and going nowhere. One of the biggest issues was losing two programmers early on and having to make do with 3 artists and 1 programmer.

Our issues became even more evident in mid-March when our progress (or lack thereof) was pointed out in a meeting with one of our teachers. Not to mention the state of the world right now that started to take effect in Finland as well during that time.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, however. One of our big advantages was that we managed to keep our scope small from the very beginning and we were able to add more and more things, building on top of what had already been built instead of leaving a bunch of stuff in the cutting room floor. Granted, some ropes and more threats to the player would have been awesome but hey, you can’t have everything, right?

The biggest reason for our Steel Castle’s success is definitely the fact that one of our artists took the reins in scripting more and more functionality and things to interact with in the game. Importing DOTween was a genius move too that really gave us more time to think and implement new environments to the game instead of rubbing mechanics over and over again. Furthermore they’re responsible for our main character and most of the audio as well a whole host of other stuff that would drag this blog on forever, so talk about a multitasker!

In the end, Steel Castle was a huge learning experience for the whole team and we’re quite happy how the game turned out despite some growing pains.

Team

  • Tero Salmela: Art, Audio & programming
  • Kasimir Haapala: Art & SFX
  • Aino Kauranen: Art
  • Rudi Rutanen: Programming & PM
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Games Academy Spring 2019 – All That’s Left

Anthony Vanoostendorp – Project Manager, Artist
Teemu Niskanen – Lead Artist
Nikolai Jonasson – Artist
Vi Viro – Artist
Teijo Lukkarinen – Lead Programmer
Sami Sipari – Programmer
Ville Heikkinen – Programmer
Santeri Sivula – Programmer

Additional help: 

Pauli Ondruska – Audio

About the Game

 

All That’s Left is a level-based puzzle-adventure 3D game. You take control of Corious, a space-wandering tinkerer looking for signs of life, until his spaceship crashes on a deserted shattered world. The core game loop consists of platforming as well as solving puzzles using little robots called minibots, which Corious discovers on the first level. The player is able to send out minibots at any time and take full control of them. The goal of the game is to reach the end of each level in order to pick up a new spaceship part to repair it.

Development


The idea for the game was already decided during the winter break. We took great inspiration from Clank’s side missions in the game Ratchet & Clank. We used the holidays and the first weeks to do some benchmarking and find more inspirations for the game. Initially the minibots were going to be automated, non-controllable robots that would walk in a straight line before encountering an object to interact with. We later realized our game was nothing but a walking simulator and that the game wasn’t that much fun. With the help of a teacher of ours, we decided to make the minibots controllable as well and this decision really added a whole new level of depth and layer for the core game loop. After this decision was made, development was much more swift when compared to the first month of just pure prototyping.

Minibots

The minibots have three unique abilites; hacking, bombing and bouncing.
Below are gifs showcasing these abilities.


Hacking allows the minibot to hack consoles. These consoles can activate moving platforms, open doors, deactivate traps etc. The hacking ability is essential when it comes to solving puzzles, so put on your thinking cap and asses the puzzle in hand carefully.


Bombing does exactly what you might think it does. Make the minibot explode itself in order to kill pesky enemies such as frogs and scorpions. But watch out, the frogs can be unpredictable at times, so be ready to bomb them at a short notice.


Bouncing is a fundamental ability when it comes to traversing and platforming. Have a good grip of your joystick, since there will be some tight and precise platforming puzzles that will truly test your skills.

Game Contents

The game includes:
– Several control and volume options
– Save feature
– Intro Cutscene
– 8 levels
– End Scene with credits

We truly hope you enjoy this game project of ours. It is a culmination of 4 months of hard work.

Controls

This game is playable with keyboard & mouse as well as Xbox 360 controllers.

Move Character – WASD / Left Stick
Move Camera – Mouse / Right Stick
Jump – Spacebar / A
Zoom – Mouse Scroll / Triggers, Bumpers
Send out minibot – LMB / X
Hack – E / X
Bomb – RMB / B
Bounce – LMB / Y

Download the Game!

Itch.io: https://instance-games.itch.io/allthatsleft
Discord Store: COMING SOON!