GA Autumn 2023 – WizWood

A wizard whose spellbook pages were stolen has to fight their way through obstacles and enemies in an enchanted forest to get the pages back. WizWood is a top-down shooter inspired by the arcade classic Gauntlet. 

The idea 
In the very beginning, we liked the idea of a top-down game and all the artists agreed to work on a fantasy theme. Gauntlet was a natural reference and a good starting point to develop our own game. However, there were things we wanted to change about Gauntlet. We did not like how the controls felt in the original game, and we thought it would be cool to turn the usual dungeon crawling into a more open-space world, which would also allow the main character to use a wider set of abilities. 


The idea of progression in the game through the acquisition of spell pages was almost immediate, and so were the main character design and most enemies. We also liked the idea of having three levels with clearly distinct environment and we started working towards that goal. 

The Process
The initial progress was quite slow as we did not have a clear idea of what the main mechanics would look like. The feedback we received was very useful and helped us understand in which direction we wanted to move. 

Once we had the complete set of spells for the main character, it became easier to develop the game further by calibrating the enemies and designing the levels. 

The work was mostly done individually at home but we had a weekly meeting to gather ideas and opinions and to help each other. Both programmers and artists had some major individual areas to focus on but everyone helped here and there whenever needed.

Play the game here!
https://overlunch.itch.io/wizwood

Our Team

Programmers:
Esa-Pekka Palonen
Oskari Kuusisto

Artists:
Helmi Voutilainen
Leonardo Fedi
Riina Koivisto

Games Academy Spring 2018: Splash

Team

Manuel Gabarron – Lead artist, the hero we need but don’t deserve
Justin Granger – Lead programmer, and damn good at it
Mitja Immonen – Programmer, Unity guy & sound designer
Elli Leppänen – Artist, level designer
Sam Payne – Artist, character designer

The Game

Splash is a casual arena shooter centered on couch co-op. Currently in the game it has up to four person co-op, with one map, and four distinct guns. It is currently possible to be played against time, with max kill count or in endless mode.

Our original idea was to make a lan style shooter. We were quickly told though that it would become a beast if we didn’t immediately change scope. With that information we ended our sights on a couch co op game with a unique theme of water guns.

The game is already fully playable and people seem to enjoy playing it even longer periods of time. In-game pickups and switchable weapons make the game more interesting and engaging.

Design Process

Bazooka vs. Pistol – 2 Player split screen, Splash

After our brainstorming, and quick refocus, we took our idea to the drawing board. Coming up with map layouts and art boards. We spared no time in getting to work and with our three artists we set a person on the character, another on the environment, and our final artist on the guns and drops. As for the programmers we started creating the game control to make it as fluid as possible and the second on our particles and lighting as they would both be important to get the proper feel for the player.

As we progressed through the semester our team kept up a fluid pace communicating and passing work between us. There are still some optimization and improvements to do and we will be working on them after this semester.

Plans for the future

Menu rework render

We still want to improve our game and see how far we can take it. One of our last improvements is a complete rework of the menu, we discussed several ideas and ended up with a new unity scene that shows a cafe where the avatars will appear as the players join the match by pressing start, and the avatars are animated!

Cafe where players can join and spawn on the chairs

Player character sitting poses for cafe joining.

In the end we all were very happy with the outcome and proudly present splash!

Minimum requirements:

  • Beefy laptop
  • Two gamepads
  • Two humans

Google Drive Link (zip-file)