On Monday, April 18, the second annual Game Festival, featuring First Person Shooter (FPS), Role Playing Games (RPG), and in-game explosions, took place in the Great Hall of the DCC. Many of the games presented were projects for game development classes; others were made as hobbies by RPI students. This year, most of the game designers used Torque, a free game engine distributed by RPI professors. In all, about 14 games were presented.
Banlaen Mist of the Mountain is a simple “hack and slash” game with chests that don’t open. One of the developers, Marc Destefano GRAD, called it, “a rip off of the original Zelda, only not as fun.” A few minutes after the interview, we were off playing a Half-Life 2 mod.
Notebook Ninjas is another “hack and slash” game. The basis of this two-dimentional game is that you have fallen asleep in another boring class, and now you’re killing stick figures with the limbs of other stick figures. With two levels and two-player capabilities, Notebook Ninjas was one of the highlights of the game festival.
RPI Parking Simulator is exactly what its title suggests, a parking simulator that ridicules the hardship of finding a parking spot in Troy. The highlight of this game are the car crashes on 15th street.
Death Don’t Have No Mercy is a three-dimentional “hack and slash” that consists of a lot of glitchy bad guys. The modeling is good, though, and the glitches were amusing to the crowd.
Phrenetic Ataxia was one of the few games that played through a local area connection. One of the creators said that they were hoping to get the same multiplayer aspect that Super Smash Brothers creates; a party-like atmosphere with friends in the same room instead of across the Internet. The game consists of killing your opponents with weapons like soda cans and squirrels.
Puzzle Kingdom was the most difficult game to play at the gaming festival. The puzzles were moderately challenging, but a relatively high learning curve for the controls made a five minute test run into a twenty minute search for the first key. Puzzle Kingdom resembles the game Myst in game play.
Carnage Cup Soccer 3000 is, as game developer Aaron Stewart ’05 said, “In retrospect, a tragic mistake.” The team used the Half-Life 2 engine to develop their game instead of Torque; however, the code was hard to manipulate, so the end result was filled with glitches. The game was amusing, though, with saw blades running around a soccer field and pits with spikes at the bottom.
Abduction is a shooting game in which your ammo is farm animals and you are an alien throwing them. This game was interesting, and it was fun hitting others at the festival with chickens.
Rigel Run was a very well done project. Sam Kaplan said that his group developed their own physics engine to run the game. The object of Rigel Run is to collect enough gems in your vehicle to get out of the level before the artificial intelligence engine collects enough gems itself. With multiple vehicles, levels, and the ability to shoot other players, Rigel Run was another well-done video game at the festival.
Rudolph is a 3-D adventure game and shooter where you play as Rudolph trying to escape from elves and snowmen. The game’s mazes are tedious, but the concept is interesting as the reindeer uses a heat ray to stun his enemies.
Alone and Unsupervised uses a Torque Shader Engine. This game looks good, but more work is needed.
Drill Bit is like the classic Metroid game, except that you only do puzzles. Dan Condaxis was at the display showing his concept art for new game ideas.
Lab Rats is a fun, easy-to-play game. You play against other contestants, or rats, through a networked connection trying to grab the most cheese. You can play tricks on the other rats during the game to slow and confuse them.
Finally, Plan of Attack is another Half-Life 2 mod created by Agora Studios, a local startup company founded by RPI alumni. The game was well done, and visitors playing the game did not play on the network, but instead played on one of the many servers against random people from across the country. The game is the first total conversion mod for Half-Life 2. The game can be played if you have a Steam account, which you get when you buy Half-Life 2.
Overall, the best looking games were Alone and Unscripted, Rigel Run, and Lab Rats (sorry Half-Life 2 mods, but it would be unfair to include you all in this one). Alone and Unscripted had a much different look with its Torque Shader Engine, and Lab Rats had beautiful 3-D models and texturing. The best game concepts were Note Book Ninja, Rigel Run, and Plan of Attack.
Finally, the best games at the festival were Notebook Ninja, Rigel Run, and Plan of Attack. Notebook Ninja uses bodies as bazookas. Rigel Run is a well-done video game with four vehicles, multiple levels, and fun gameplay. Plan of Attack was by far the best game there. The game has seen 30,000 downloads, with 300 to 500 people playing the game at any given moment.
