Shape Shifter
Concept
2D Videogame (Platform - Puzzle) with an Poligonal Art Style abstract game where you explore issues and stigmas metaphorically and focused on puzzles with beings and environment.
As the player progresses, the main character gains an increasingly human form,
with each polygon he collects throughout his journey, enabled him to perform new actions and face new challenges that the universe of the game place.
This game emerges as a vision of what is the reality of society and the world: the survival of being to the adversities of the world and the nature of the Human Being.
Contains 25 levels (caves) that correspond to social problems, each of them divided into 5 sub levels.
The social problems included in the game are: Hunger, Illness, War, Illiteracy,
Political propaganda, Paranoia, Burglary, Mafia, Contamination (genetics), Abortion, Pollution, Xenophobia, Racism, Machismo, Homophobia, Anti-fat bias, Serological stigma, Genocide, Political Stigma, Age Stigma, Harassment / Rape, Narcissism, Addictions, Sloth, and finally Abandonment.
At the end of each level there is a puzzle that opens the door to a new chapter in the story and lets the player realize a little more of the main character's past through flashback.
Tools
We used Phaser, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, MHO, Tiled, and XAMPP.
Phaser was the tool we chose to develop the game, taking advantage of its benefits:
1. Of all the tools available, the Phaser was the easiest to learn and use;
2. The only one that offered us the possibility of having a game to "run" on the Web, available to everyone and without any complications;
3. All the elements in charge of programming (students of the Faculty of Sciences) were already experienced with the language that Phaser uses - JavaScript.
Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator have been used to develop all the graphics that make up our game universe.
MOHO, a 2D animation tool, was used briefly to animate our logo.
Tiled is a level editor, widely used throughout development. This allowed us to give the shape we wanted to our levels without the need to write a million lines of code!
Establishing the link between Phaser and this tool, we just had to draw the map to our liking and adapt it to the game.
Finally, we used XAMPP so we could test the game and see if it behaved as
expected.
Logbook
March 2 - Group formation
March 9 - Ideas (Character, History, Concept Art
May 18 - Latest retouching of the Demo and divulgation to Mojo
ShapeShifter
May 30 - Presentation of the Game Demo at MOJO 2017 “Mostra de Jogos” at Instituto Superior Tecnico, Tagus Park, Lisboa
March 16 - Constructive planning: levels, Villains, Argument, Premise
March 23 - Beginning of the game construction and Organization of the multimedia
April 6 - Construction of Backgrounds, Tidles (Platforms), repair of technical errors
April 17 - Presentation Planning
April 20 - Presentation of the project in class
April 27 - Redesign of the Logo, New animations of the main character
May 4 - Building the Game Development Document and creating the Facebook
Page
May 11 - End of the conception of the characters, enemies and level and adaptation of the Same as the prototype (Beta phase)
June 1 - Game Development Document Delivery and colect feedback
Game Design Production and Development Team
Fausto Pontes - Art director, Caracter designer, Animator
Diogo Silva - Connection between art and programming, Marketing/Communication Design and Assets animator
Pedro Carvalho - Programmer Lead, Game developer
Catarina Cavique - Programmer, Screenwriter e Game Design Document
Telma Barragão- Programmer, Screenwriter, Game Design Document
Beatriz Curica- Level Designer, Concept Screenwriter
Pedro - General Concept
"Having come this far, I would like to thank my colleagues for all the invaluable effort done into materializing this ambitious project of ours for it has opened a new array of possibilities for my future endeavours. As an animator, this proved to be a compelling challenge towards my formation into the job market and has contributed greatly towards my general portfolio alongside the rest of my other work. If given the chance, I’d eagerly accept another project like this should one arise in the future for me."
Fausto Pontes
"To have the opportunity to work with numerous people from such contrasting backgrounds is an experience I'll forever cherish! Had a lot of fun developing this project (even more so because of my fellow colleagues, who taught me a lot) so this is an experience I would repeat many times over!"
Pedro Carvalho