UNIVERSITY NEWS LAST UPDATED : 18 MAY 2017
In their final year, our students get to embark on a truly creative challenge: scoping, designing and pitching the creation of their own game as a group for their final project.
We caught up with a group of five NTI students in the midst of their final group project to offer some insight into what they are doing and how.
Alex, Joeb, Dan, Beth and Joe all study different disciplines across the three strands: Video Game Art, Video Game Development and Video Game Design and Production. They have banded together to formulate and create from scratch their own original concept for a working game.
Q: How have your previous two years’ study prepared you for this point?
A: During previous group projects we have completed on this course, we were set up in a studio-like environment, and we were coming into university every day from nine until five. This makes you realise what working full time in the industry entails! We’re used to being given strict deadlines, we have sprint reviews regularly and we always plan work out for each week in advance. So I would say that we were well prepared for working together on this big project as we have always worked as a team on these other projects.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about your game?
A: We are currently working on Solys (our working title), a roguelike adventure game set in a dystopian world. The idea is that you must battle enemies and rescue villagers to build up your town, and fight back against the evil of the world. You’ll explore different environments and face many types of puzzles, enemies and bosses in an epic adventure.
Q: Sounds exciting! What sort of roles are involved in creating a game like this?
A: We have 2 artists and 3 programmers working on this game full time.
All 3 programmers, Dan, Alex and Joeb are working on the gameplay, and Dan is focusing specifically on the Camera, Audio and UI (user interface) where Alex and Joeb are both concentrating on the Level Design, Controls and UI. Alex also gets to take care of Visual Effects and Joeb has the job of Tools.
Our artists Joe and Beth have both been developing the concepts for Solys, and both have responsibility for Character and Visual Effects design. In line with their own specialisms, Joe is concentrating on Level Design and UI in addition to this and Beth is responsible for the art and design of the Environment.
Q: You sound ready to go! Are you confident?
The support and weekly feedback we have had from the lecturers on this course has helped improve our knowledge and confidence greatly. The module work we have completed up to this point far has helped us to learn the core skills required to develop our own game of choice as part of a team.
Thanks and good luck!