Le Royaume - Le Pari (2012)
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School Project | Supinfogame | PC | Flash
Project description This was my first-ever “large” game project. The objective was to make a flash game based on one of the new licenses owned by the Belgian comic publisher Editions Dupuis (the original publishers of the Smurfs). We had two-weeks to deliver a playable prototype that they would eventually be able to put up on their site. Basically, this game was made “by command”. The game is a runner where the player takes control of a little bird who has to guide one character, Anne, to the end of the level, all while avoiding to get caught by a blacksmith, François, who’s made a bet with her: if he caughts her, she will have to marry her! However, if he loses, he will have to go back to school. The player doesn’t control Anne directly. Instead, he interacts with the environment in order to help her reach the castle in time. He can trigger falling traps by sliding his mouse over chandeliers and beehives. He can also pick up object to fill up holes, and pick up heavy objects and letting them fall on François to slow him down. The team The team was composed of twenty people who were part of different classes, namely, first, second, third and fourth years. I was a first-grader when I worked on this project, and I collaborated directly with the other game designers on the group. We were leaded by the project manager and lead game designers who were fourth year student. On the game design pole, I was the only first-grader. My role As one of three main game designers, I was charged with writing the game concept. Later, I was the one responsible for the behaviour document. This document descrived every aspect of the game (interactions, power-ups, AI and so forth) using an organised flowchart, and it was a document destined to be used by the programmer to help him program the game more easily. Then, I helped with playtesting and tweaking in order to reach the level of polish desired by the whole team. My second role was to come up with the story. I wrote every cutscene in the game and came up with the main story for the game. Since we were working on a comic license, our game had to be canon so we were very restricted in what we could do with the story. However, I overcame this challenge by reading all the comics and creating a story that didn’t interfere at all with the story arcs of the original work. In the end, the editors were very pleased with the story and found it quite funny and mindful of the Le Royaume license. What I learned
What I would have improved Despite the project being successfully finished, we ran into quite a few problems. Namely, I didn’t participate in the level design, a pole who had trouble keeping up with the schedule. I would have liked to be more aware of the whole project and helped with the level design all while learning more about this discipline. Play You can download the game here. |
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