relic busters (2013)

This game was created and participated in the St Martin's game development challenge 4, located in Malta.

A point and click PC game that challenges players to dispel negative spiritual artefacts. The player will take control of a cannon which he/she must use to free the trapped spits within objects inside a museum. The player will have a timer which will decide the amount of time they have to dispel all artefacts. However, there will be multiple variety of ghosts, some of which can move from one artefact to another making the game more challenging! Points will be awarded to artefacts that are freed, however the player can combo shots to gain even more points (point multiplier) If the cannon shot bounces off two or more artefacts then the multiplier will increase gaining significantly more points, ultimately gaining a better star rating! 

Discover what happened in the great siege of Malta from the perspective of a Maltese noble. Help him tell his story and put his soul like all the other unsung heroes by dispelling the possessed artefacts that lurk in the museum.

Platform: PC

Role: Game Design, Level Design & Narration

Team: Sean Savona (design & story writing), Mark Bugeja (programmer & design), Nicky Theuma (artist),  Malcolm Tanti (programmer) and Miriana Schembri (Programmer)

Development Time: 4 months

bouncing ball

The main mechanic of the game actually originated from my own bedroom (the bedroom can be used for other creative ideas not adult fantasies) One day I was just having a chill relaxed session in my room when I decided to start playing with a tennis ball (keep your imaginative thoughts in check please!) while I was consciously thinking about something else instead on the trajectory of the ball I failed to catch it and the ball bounced all over the place knocking over some models,books and lamp which lead to a mini panic attack! Once i got everything back in order I realised that this concept would have been fun, If this was not my room!!! I could throw the ball as hard as I could to break as many objects as possible and from there that was how the concept was actually born.

The concept was altered slightly because the game Jam required a theme which was historical, therefore instead of a room I opted a museum and wrote a story to accompany it to add more depth!

COMBOS

This is arguably the most challenging and rewarding feature of the game, by hitting multiple possessed artefacts with one shot; your points will multiply! This made it a lot more interesting for the player because it encouraged replay-ability, players would try multiple times to find that angle which could string the most amount of hits in one shot! To really emphasize this, I constructed lower difficulty levels to visually make these associations a lot easier for the player to understand and figure out; as they progress it becomes a lot more difficult resulting in multiple shots to dispel all artefacts.

story

My narration and writing skills were called upon when we decided to write a story for the game, you could say that It was not really necessary; however it would give a better insight on the war which would contribute towards the players progression and drive players into discovering more about the great Siege of Malta. I wrote enough of the story to fill the amount of levels we had, I could have written more however my abilities were needed elsewhere to finish the game.