Mark Scheurwater

Sophie in the Sky

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This project was done for the Global Game Jam 2012, made in less than 48 hours.
The goal of the game is to jump over platforms to reach the end of the level. The player can hear sound effects in the distance which are actually the sound effects of other people who played the game earlier. In fact, the only default background is a constant blowing wind effect.

The game was build on the Dex engine, just like the gamejam game the year before. The difference with this project is that this was the first time the software tool was used I am developing since half a year in my spare time. It allows a designer, artist and programmer to work at the same time, with exactly the same assets, while a remote backend database takes care of all the synchronization between the users. The ability to change a level, while someone is playing it in-game and seeing that change happen real-time, allows for incredible fast prototyping (no rebooting+SVN issues!!), as every user is using the same set of tools.
As this was the first time this tool was used in a production situation, and in a stressful one as this, I was quite worried it might go wrong at some point. But to my amazement it actually went extremely well, apart from the slight performance loss when all developers used the database server at the same time (never optimized).

Smooth controls, a trippy yet relaxing sound, unique and user generated background 'music'(?) and a simple yet challanging level brings the player something interesting to do for at least a few minutes.