USC students’ games are ready for graduation

May is a hectic time for college seniors. They’re staying up all night to study for finals, saying goodbye to friends they may not see for a while, and figuring out which relatives they can take to graduation. If that wasn’t stressful enough, the students in the University of Southern California’s Advanced Games class had one more thing to worry about: making a video game.

Five months ago, I visited USC Games’ fall Demo Day showcase and played the games this year’s student teams were working on. They were rough and had temporary music, animations, and art. But they had a lot of potential as well. The purpose of the fall semester is to build playable prototypes, even if all the students have is just one level to experience.

In the spring, the fledging developers test and iterate on those ideas, so they can have a finished game in time for their presentations in May, when the second and final Demo Day takes place. I went back to USC on May 12 to see how the games turned out.

“I was just at the dress rehearsal for this event yesterday. And really seeing those ideas that last year were fresh and new — now, they’re executed. They’re polished. They’re really beautiful,” said USC Games director Tracy Fullerton to GamesBeat. “That is really rewarding. The teams may be not so fresh. They’re tired and a little bit weary from finals and from the last push on their projects. But, hopefully, they’re all in clean clothes and looking as excited as exhausted people can [Laughs]. … No seriously, they’re all super excited.”

Luckily, I didn’t meet any stinky students. All I saw were smiles as family, friends, and potential employers filled the tiny demo room. The students I spoke with felt a mix of different emotions now that the year-long course was coming to a close. While the future of their games is uncertain, they’re immensely proud of their work and grateful for the lessons they learned during the program.

ElemenTerra

What is it?

ElemenTerra is an open-ended VR game that’s more about mastering your skills than seeing a story through its conclusion. You’re a nature spirit who has the power to shape the world of Aisha as you see fit. With your special staff, you can grow plants, carve out caves, and create mountains by just moving your arms and wrists. The developers used an Oculus Rift headset, Razer Hydra motion controllers, and a prototype of Sixense’s STEM motion-tracking system.

How it changed

When I first saw ElemenTerra last year, the basic gameplay elements were in place. I moved the staff with my right hand to create plants and sculpt twisted monuments made of stone. At the time, project director Max Pittsley told me that they had to figure out what to do with the title. Should they make it into more of a traditional game with objectives or keep what they have and polish it to show the possibilities of VR?

They ended up with a compromise. While ElemenTerra is still something you can play at your own pace, the team improved the tutorial and added voice-over dialogue that sets up the lore behind the game. A brief introduction gives an overview of the folk-tale inspired mythos, where Father Sun and Mother Moon (your spirit’s celestial parents) guide the player through their powers.

Pittsley’s team refined the gameplay by recoding it from scratch to address playability issues. They also added creatures who populate the planet when you create a lot of plants and biomes.

Challenges the team faced

“One of the biggest challenges was scoping things because the deadline was that much closer. We had to make sure that anything new we started would be finished and polished in time,” said Pittsley. “Gauging [what is] finished and polished is a little hard because students in general are just used to [finishing projects rather than finishing and polishing them]. We had to kill some babies, as they say … and they were right!”

One of those “babies” was making a 3D model of the nature spirit’s body. The developers only had time to finish the hands, which at least replaced the generic blue hands that were in there before. Programming the otherworldly animals was also a difficult task, partly because they had to figure out how the A.I. creatures would move around a constantly changing landscape.

Plans after graduation 

Initially, ElemenTerra was never meant to become a proper game that anyone could download and play. But that started to change as the students received positive feedback from the people who played it, with many asking when they’d get to try ElemenTerra at home. So a few members from the team founded a start-up called Freeform Labs through the help of an incubator at USC’s Annenberg School.

For now, it’s just Pittsley and art director Camille Kanengiser in the company, and they’re currently figuring out how many other people they should bring in. They want to turn ElemenTerra into a viable commercial product.

King Basil’s Quest for the Crown of Spudly Awesomeness

What is it? 

King Basil’s Quest is a comedic spin on the tower-defense genre. Its development team calls it a “tower assault” game. The titular king has an obsession with a fast-food chain called Tater King, and he’ll go to great lengths to redeem his lifetime supply of free fried potato nuggets. You control King Basil’s army of archers, knights, and powerful towers as it marches up the screen to attack various Tater King franchises.

How it changed 

Last time I spoke with creative director Trevor Taylor, he felt that all his group needed to do in the spring was polish the wealth of content it already had. The team quickly realized that was easier said than done, especially when it came to updating all the placeholder art from the fall. Since King Basil’s Quest is in 2D, the aspiring developers couldn’t just edit textures; they had to completely redraw everything.

It was a time-consuming process. They had difficulty finding many 2D artists on campus, so they outsourced much of their art to students from other schools.

Other changes included tweaking the lighting and re-recording much of the dialogue. The only new piece of content is a tutorial stage.

Challenges the team faced

Iterating a narrative-driven adventure wasn’t easy because certain storytelling elements (like the introductory cutscene) didn’t come together until near the end of the project. Play testers gave feedback based on an incomplete understanding of what was going on. And the story had to adapt to any changes made to the level designs. But it all seemed to work out in the end.

“We had children playing it today. That’s like the ultimate dream: Make it so easy to … understand that even a child could grasp it,” said lead designer Calvin Drake. “That was a really good moment for me. That it all finally came together and suddenly worked.”