Student Project

This past Game Developers Conference, Synaesthete took home the Independent Games Festival's award for Best Student Game.

Synaesthesia, for which the game is most likely named, is a rare condition in which different sensations run together. Basically, a person with synaesthesia may be able see a word in colors or be able to taste a sound. Mind blowing, isn't it? True to its name, Synaesthete's visuals achieve an almost blurring interpretation of the synaesthetic process in its unique combination of both audio and visual stimulus. The game's abstract quality perhaps surpasses that of Rez, the acclaimed trance rail shooter that Synaesthete so fondly reminds me of.

Rückblende (German for "Flashback") is, in essence, a Quicktime art film with mild interactive elements that qualify it, in some sense, as a graphic adventure. It's notable for its unusual look and the emotions it evokes: a sense of nostalgia and poignancy.

An IGF student showcase finalist by a team from a university in Barcelona, Galaxy Scraper is a sort of 3D platformer set on a succession of planets. You're a little spaceman running about a planet, Super Mario Galaxy-style; controls are straight-forward (arrow keys for movement, right-click to kick and left-click to jump, Enter to bring up the menu), but at times awkward, since the arrow keys restrict you to cardinal directions, and the planet is spherical, meaning you can only face in those cardinal directions even when you'd really like to be pointing off-angle.

Empyreal Nocture is a surrealistic blend of a 3D Gradius and Shadow Of The Collosus. It's the student project of just two guys, up in the IGF Student Showcase, and shows both considerably unique aesthetic as well as keen innovation. You control an arrow as it flies through the clouds, accompanied by a flock of little arrow, and stalk down huge hydras made of interconnected orbs.

A Student Showcase nominee at the '08 Independent Games Festival, Mayhem Intergalatic is a fast-playing space conquest game. My first thought was "Risk clone," but it isn't actually; although combat seems to be per the Risk combat algorithm, there's no concept of adjacency (any ship can move anywhere on the map, though trips to distant stars can take multiple turns), there are no cards, and a fleet can only make one attack per turn.

What it really is, is "4X lite"; your only real actions are dispatching ships to target systems, and upgrading your shipyards. Basically, upgrading a system's shipyards increases the number of ships it produces each turn, but doing so forgoes one turn of production.

Tempo is a third-person adventure game where you play a psychic in a wheelchair. Coming fresh out of España, the work of Cristian Pastor, who collaborated with Pat and Jesus and Alex, Tempo is one of the most technically furbished freeware games you can find on the net. Winner of the game award at the Creanimax Festival 2007, a showcase of Latin American student art. Since it's a university-funded game, the creators had the freedom to come up with anything they wanted, the result is both inspiring and limited.

Student Showcase Winner, 2007 Independent Games Festival

In Opera Slinger, you sing opera--into a microphone. It's a quasi-beat matching game, but your score depends on hitting the right notes as well as singing them at the right times; before you play, you choose the male (tenor) or female (alto) role. Your "opponent" is controlled by the AI, and the game's conceit is that you are competing with him or her for the regard and adoration of the audience--which changes more in your direction the more accurately you sing.

Dune II, WarCraft, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires, and Empire Earth--real-time strategy games have always been about warfare and conquest, right? How could you possibly do a peaceful RTS?

That's the challenge a team at Michigan State University set themselves... and quickly found that their inspiration outgrew their dreams, attracting contributors beyond the university, becoming an Independent Games Festival finalist in 2006--and expanding from a freeware student project with a handful of levels into today's commercial game with 45.