X48 Competition, 'Giant Ego' winner of 'ooh shiny shiny' prize!

I've just come back from a fantastic couple of days in Huddersfield, taking part with a team from Newport in Microsofts X48 Games competition. The theme announced was 'Giants' and we saw some really nice takes on it from other competitors.

We won the 'ooh shiny shiny' prize and according to an anonymous judge were in the running for both 'best art' and 'most experimental'.

Here's some screens of the art from our game 'Giant Ego':





Summary:

You play as a personification of the human ego, with faceless peers rushing on screen to either compliment or insult you. Compliments and insults fly on to screen from the sidelines, missile-command style, ensuring a hectic rush to keep your ego balanced as you try and progress from left to right throughout the environment.

Each environment is a subtle reflection on three key fragments of human life: love, work and money. Each of these have a symbolic obstacle with which a certain ego is required to pass through. For example, at the end of the 'love' period, we tried to represent a difficult breakup or divorce through a half-buried engagement ring. In order to successfully pass through this ring, the humbling of the character is required.

Whilst we had this personal undertone, it was really important to us that the game was immediately accessible and engaging for everyone. One way we tried to achieve this was through an eclectic and stylised art style that initially revealed itself as quirky and playful and a control system that played to the strengths of the hardware we were developing it for.
Whilst we're really happy with the art, the innovative concept and mechanic, we were developing the game for an unreleased phone using a beta development kit that had only been out a few days. These technical restrictions lead to the end product not quite being as playable and complete as we would have liked. However our team is really enthusiastic about continuing the project and hopefully turning it into a more well-rounded game.

Here's a short clip showing some of the animations and environments in action. This is in no way reflective of the gameplay and is more of a showcase of the art and animation style.



The Day

The guys at x48 were fantastic, the event was fantastic, the resources were fantastic, everything was fantastic.

Here's our team photo:

Krunch Bunch - Newport

Everyone hard at work:

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Greg and Ahmed sorting things out behind a wall of energy drinks and junk food.

5 hours to go

Me and Ahmed going through our early gameplay ideas:


We all had a great time and are really looking forward to the next x48.


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