In Febrauri 2008 I joined the NLGD GameDevelopment Rally for the second time. Earlier on in 2006 I finished second place with the game SubMarine. But this time I finished first with the game: Project IceCube.
Project IceCube is a one-switch 2d platform game. The whole game is played by just one button: the space bar. With the idea originally created by Richard van Tol, I used the concept to make the game more accessible. The target audience are children form 8 to 12 year with a long term disease. So one of the features of the game should be a high happiness and accessibility value. With this reason the setting is a world with alot of happy environments and litte cute IceCubes who live in peace.
The goal of the game is to chear up the world even more. This is done by giving seeds water who are still in the ground. Well where do you get water from? You as a IceCube are water yourself offcourse. So by sacrificing your own life, you give bearth to a new plant, tree or even a little snowman! In the meantine you collect more IceCube friends who wants to join your adventure throughout the four Worlds. After you finished the game, and cheared up every world for 100%, you get acces to the bonus stage. With extra platforming challenge to see if you are really the super star gamer!
The game is developed individual in a rough three months. Gamedesign, leveldesign, graphics, sounds(most of them), music and programming, you know the drill. Well being in my graduation year, I made advantage of the fact I was creating a 2d platform game. By writing an engine first, which is flexible enough to create different kinds of 2d tile-based games and levelscenario, it took me less time to tweak and create new levels and scenario’s. While I also had to create a game for my graduation project. I reused the assets and created even more, and finished a whole new version of the game in just one week. With a total different story, objective and game mechanics, it showed that writing an engine first was really my way out for quickly building another game for my graduation project.
Project IceCube – May 2008
IceCube Adventures – July 2008