This project was my baby, and became an obsession for a few months!
Playgroup were approached to produce a fully immersive online experience to support the new teenage vampire series, Demons (which was terrible if you ever saw it?), and indeed tie it in with the narrative from the drama. We exceeded their expectations by producing an innovative crossover of a classic beat-em-up and platform game, with viral functionality.
The game involves the user taking on the role of Luke, the main character from the series as he tries to rid the streets of London of the evil Half Lives. With the stacks as their head quarters (which I designed myself), it’s the users aim to roam the streets of London, where they will find an isometric, rich photographic London scene (that I was very proud to come up with the solution for, and fully comp in Photoshop myself) full of Half Lives. Once they locate these Half Lives, they enter into a classic side on beat-em-up, which uses a rich photographic background and highly rendered 3D character models. Winning a fight means they store the Half Life in their cells back at the stacks, and the aim is to capture as many as possible.
They are helped along the way by the 2 females from the series (Mina and Ruby), who keep the narrative of the game going with regular video phone updates, hints and tips. The user also has to keep their energy boosted by answering questions tied into the series (which they can research back in their library in the stacks), or by picking up energy boost packs. The viral functionality comes in with the users sending their captured Half Lives (which all have unique scores depending on how they were defeated) to their friends for comparison. There is an overall scoreboard, which shows people must have played the game for days on end!
I took a leading role in the project, by heading up the team, which was essentially full of creatives – myself as designer, 2 creative developers and a PM. As well as various partners that I creatively directed, including the 3D artist, script writer and video editors. We worked together efficiently allowing contributions from each team member, using an agile, iterative approach, which saw regular releases of the game every 2 weeks.
I created the visual styling for the game, and produced all design – the user interface, the stacks model, the streets environment, fight backgrounds, Half Life cut scenes, the library, cells and splash page. All of this was completed after producing user flows and wireframes for each stage of the game.
This was a problem solving job as much as a game and creative piece, as we worked within the constraints of a budget to provide the best solution. It was all made worthwhile with the award of the prestigious FWA site of the day in February 2009, as well as 3 Gold Horizon Interactive Awards (Flash, video games, entertainment).
