Congratulations to first year Game & Interactive Media student Paul Otake for taking one of three Best Entry spots in this month’s Game Career Guide Game Design Challenge!
This time, student game developers were challenged to create a game along any winter holiday theme. Read Paul’s winning entry below!
Paul Otake, Flashpoint Academy, Revolution X-mas
It turns out the north pole is nothing like you heard about as a kid. The rustic little workshops bustling with jolly fairy gnomes are actually dirty, sprawling factories where elves are forced to work 18 hour days year in and year out. Starved, demoralized, and broken the elves work tirelessly beneath the despotism of Santa Claus.
But don’t worry kids, its not the real Santa Claus, its a clever impostor who usurped the throne almost one hundred years ago and changed the north pole into the industrialized hell it is today. Nez and Tiz are two elves determined to fight back, incite a revolution, and bring the tyrant down.
Standing in their way is an army of evil teddy-bears, giant toy soldiers, and traitorous elves. Players will need to utilize stealth, guerrilla tactics, and a small arsenal of gadgets and make-shift weapons to combat this army. Even then, it’ll be an uphill battle all the way, and they’ll need to free the elves and fight to save the real Santa in order to have any chance of success.
Revolution Xmas is a 3rd person, two player co-op game intended for current-gen consoles; gameplay is a mashup of Fable 3 and Assassins Creed with an emphasis on stealth, parkour, and fast, hit-and-run combat. The world of the north pole is actually a massive underground complex consisting of small, rundown villages set up around a sprawling hub of factories.
The player controls either Nez, a small yet vicious melee fighter, or Tiz, a slingshot sharpshooter who is noticeably taller than her male counterpart. You see, there are four races of elves populating the north pole. Well actually three and a half. There are the Ez, the Iz, the Az, and the Uz. The Ez, the Iz, and the Uz are all physically different from one another, and each have their own talents. The Az are the traitorous half-elves who work for the evil Santa and keep the other elves under his iron fist. They are the progeny of the impostor Santa and elves (naughty!).
Not only are our heroes just tiny little elves, they’re also vastly outnumbered. Because of this combat is mostly hit and run; slinking around in the shadows to viciously ambush an unsuspecting team of baddies before agilely slipping back into the darkness.
At your disposal are Nez’s twin knives and Tiz’s deadly slingshot, they share an assortment of homemade Christmas ornament explosives ranging from flashbangs and smoke to fragmentation grenades. Combine explosives with an army of evil toys, and you have blissful holiday destruction. The player can single-handedly stealth kill smaller enemies like teddy-bears but the larger, sentinel like Toy-Soldiers require strategy and teamwork to take down.
Free the Ez from the dangerous mines beneath the pole, fight to save the Iz from the textile factories, and the Uz from the assembly lines to fuel the revolution and progress the story. Most missions revolve around sabotage and causing general destructive chaos; these missions affect the game world and freeing elves rewards the player with different perks and gadgets. The Az are formidable opponents and serve not only as the evil Santa’s generals but bosses that each patrol a different section of the map.
Beat all of them, and uncover the location of the real Santa. Save old saint Nick and the game concludes with an epic sled chase. But remember, he’s been keeping a list and he’ll check it twice, all your good deeds and bad deeds throughout the game will be remembered and affect the ending in dramatic ways.
