“Daina: The Herbarium” is a 3-D adventure game. The game tells the story of Daina, a little girl living with her people at a beach in a land far far away. The story of the game is inspired by fairy tales. Besides experimenting with the graphical style, the game incorporates non-traditional gameplay that might be best described as a refreshing blend of point and click adventure, action role-playing game and farm simulation. The primary target audience of “Daina: The Herbarium” are 10-14 year old girls.

Project lead: Dario Hardmeier (Project lead, programming, game design), Raffaele de Lauretis (2-D art, 3-D art, game design)

Participants: Karan Thamawong (Music, sound design)

Platform: Mac/PC

Budget: CHF 124'500 

Grant awarded: CHF 49'500

Planned release: 09/2012

“Feist” is an acclaimed platform game, which offers a dynamic and emergent game world in the style of a living graphic novel painted in opaque inks. Completely physics driven and inhabited by capricious creatures, “Feist” puts a strong emphasis on exploration, an unpredictable course of action and narration. The player has to guide a fragile but mysterious fur creature through a forest with many unknown creatures living in its darkest parts. “Feist” is more like a narrative toy than a game.

Project lead: Florian Faller, Adrian Stutz

Participants: Reto Spoerri (Programming, game design)

Platform: Mac/PC

Budget: CHF 165'455

Grant awarded: CHF 50'000

Planned release: 07/2012

Since it is very important on iOS devices to offer simple and intuitive interaction, we reduce the “jump n run” concept to “jump” only. The avatar has a constant speed and the player can tap onto the screen to jump. The constant speed forces the player to jump at the right time, which creates immediate and easy to pick up gameplay. The goal is to survive as long as possible and to collect fireflies, which can be used to unlock new features, like more lives or a better jump ability.

Project lead: Gerhard Oester (Game design, graphics, marketing)

Participants: Max Keilbach (Programming), Daniel Hug (Music, sound effects), Leslie-Ann Gesinger (Graphics)

Plattorm: iPad/iPhone/iPod

Budget: CHF 80`000

Grant awarded: CHF 25`000

Release: 09/09/2011

“Krautscape” is an action-packed multi-player racing game for Mac and PC, where the currently leading player builds the track during the race. The track, as the most important part of any racing game, emerges dynamically during gameplay. This leads to a completely original and unique gaming experience for every race.

 

Project lead: Mario von Rickenbach (Game design, visual design, programming), Michael Burgdorfer (Game design, programming)

Participants: Phil McCammon (Sound design, music)

Platform: Mac/PC

Budget: CHF 131'900

Grant awarded: CHF 50'000

Planned release: 05/2012

The player controls a black wobbly dot – black matter – in a top-down view. While picking up other black dots the character gains size and health. The challenges include moving around planets with a gravitational pull and avoiding forces of evil that try to damage you. The aim of this project is the advancement of my former game “Faye”, which was created for my bachelor degree in game design. My goal is to approve marketability by elaborating and enhancing the conceptual features and the levels of the game. The graphics and gameplay will be polished and the storyline will be extended.

Project lead: Klaas Kaat

Platform: iPad/iPhone/iPod

Budget: CHF 10'985

Grant awarded: CHF 5492

Release: 09/11/2011           

“MokMok” is an action-strategy multi-player music game that is currently being developed by twobeats. Its novel blend of user generated content and music gaming concepts empowers users to be playfully creative. The game will be available via digital distribution for PC, Mac and browser and later for iPad and consoles

Project lead: Samim Winiger (Concept & story, game design, development coordination, AI development, music) Marc Lauper (Concept & story, game design, concept art, modeling, texturing, animation, light & rendering, music)

Participants: Mike Hergaarden (programming, multiplayer development, engine design), Jos Hoebe (programming, systems development, front end & FX development)

Platform: Mac/PC

Budget: CHF 176'920

Grant awarded: CHF 50'000

Planned release: 04/2012

The name for this project is “POP”, which fits very well into the concept of the game. “POP” is a puzzle game in which the player shoots round, animated faces with a cannon onto a playing field. The story plays in a world where everything is dark and grey. The little dots work in factories, don’t smile and are sad. But a little dot finds out that above the fog of the factories there is a blue sky and bright light. So he builds a small cannon to shoot the dots high up in the air to make them see the light and the colors so they wake up and get colored again

Project lead: Reto Senn (Director, programming, game design), Andreas Hüppi (Producer)

Participants: Claudio Bomio (Art design, story), Adrian Nägeli (programming), Cornelia Zogg (Game design, level design, story), Zoran Cvetkov (Programming), Jérémy Spillman (Prototyp), René Broder (Prototyp, character design), Daniel Sommer (Music, sound effects)

Platform: iPhone

Budget: CHF 152'000

Grant awarded: CHF 20'000

Planned release: 12/2011