The Future of Gaming: Puzzle Bloom
March 2, 2010 | Peter Eykemans
The 2010 IGF Student Winners have been announced and 10 different titles landed in the spotlight. At the festival in March, the 10 will compete for an overall Best Student Game Prize, but to get to this point they definitely had to be special. We’ve dug through them all and contacted their developers in a series of interviews called The Future of Gaming. Because if anyone is going to take over the industry, it’s these bright minds.
The game Puzzle Bloom hit PAX last September as one of their notable choices, and it’s gone on to hit the student showcase at this year’s IGF. It follows the tree spirit Canotila, as they jump from beast to beast, solving puzzles on industrialized islands in order to restore the natural order. Players must figure out how jump from beast to beast, dodge lasers and hit the right switches. You can play Puzzle Bloom at PuzzleBloom.com right now before checking out the interview.
DIYgamer: Can you introduce yourselves and your positions on the project?
Daniel Kromand: I was project manager on the project, but also did some of the QA along the way.
Carina Randløv: I was the game director.
DIY: How did you come together as a team to work on this project? Did the school assign groups or were you able to choose who you wanted to work with?
Daniel: Most of the group had worked together before in some constellation, but for this game we were assigned the team and then had to develop the concept and levels. The administration did this because our team is located quite far apart geographically, so it would be hard to get in touch with each other otherwise.
DIY: What other notable projects had you guys worked on before getting to this point?
Daniel: Some of us have been on similar productions with DADIU (our program) and a few have even been nominated at IGF previously. Otherwise Jess (the game designer) and I have worked on a cooperative shooter called Zombies! which had some success online.
Carina: I was the director of the game “The Windblown Adventure”, an earlier DADIU production.
DIY: Where did the initial concept come from?
Carina: We built the narrative on the top of the game design. In the beginning, [we] developed game design parallel to the narrative design/the storyline. And then it grew together, and became one. As in most DADIU productions, the idea develops as a team-decision rather than a one-person idea.
DIY: Before having the main character jump from creature to creature, had you discussed any other gameplay methods of getting the spirit around?
Daniel: In many ways I think it was the other way around: We wanted the player to jump from creature to creature and mind control them. This proved a bit too sinister a theme, however, and we invented a more friendly setting, i.e. the nature-saving spirit.
DIY: As a student team, what were the most difficult elements you still had to learn to create the finished product?
Daniel: The team had very little [experience] with Unity at the time and only 5 weeks from start to finish. So it was basically a constant evaluation of whether or not we had time to include the various elements we wanted to include.
Carina: We are all students, meaning we are all in a learning process, and we work with the teams we are asked to work with. That can be a challenge in itself. And at the same time, you are supposed to produce a great game, playable, funny, AND you should use this possibility to test things out, be innovative and also allow yourself to fail. That’s a complex circumstance.
DIY: On the game’s website, you have a section for donations and indicate new levels may be in the works. Have you been able to raise any money to continue working on the game?
Daniel: We haven’t really raised any money, but nevertheless are we working on a third level in our spare time. It is currently in an unpolished beta…
DIY: The game has solid graphics that other browser-based titles don’t always have. What made you decide to make the game in-browser rather than standalone?
Daniel: When we decided to go with the Unity engine a strong point was to be able to distribute the game easily. I mean, what’s the point of a student game if no one plays it? So we agreed that it would be better to use the web player rather than a standalone because third party executables are always a bit shady to run, right? I think it makes a psychological difference to run the game in your browser than if you run it from your desktop.
Carina: As you hint to in your question, it is something unusual in a browser-based game. We wanted to focus on having a visual interesting playing experience, even though it was made for the browser.
DIY: What other puzzle games helped inspire you while making this one?
Carina: Portal is a clear experience. Maybe not in terms of mechanics, but rather because it reinvigorated the puzzle genre.
DIY: What parts of the game are you most proud of?
Daniel: Continuing on the notion that the game should be easy to distribute, I think we were quite successful on the learning curve as well as the simple controls in the game. I tested the game on some subjects who had basically never played any games and still they would get around eventually.
Carina: That the game is playable for non-players, as well as more core players. And that it deals well without point-systems and only few GUI hints. Also the way it deals with dying in the game, I think.
DIY: What’s next for all of you?
Daniel: Some of the people in the group are still in school and might still be producing games for DADIU in the near future. Most of the tech people have been recruited by larger companies, while the rest of us are enjoying the recession and all the unpaid work we get to do. =D
Carina: I am right now developing a new game for the DADIU 2010 production.
DIY: Are you guys going to make it out to San Francisco for IGF?
Daniel: Jess (Uhre Rahbek, the game designer) and I will attend the show, so feel free to come by if you are there!
DIY: What advice would you give someone considering pursuing an education in game design?
Daniel: I think all projects still need to have a lot of polish. Even though we all try to pretend otherwise, I think there needs to be some edge or poignant visual art to stir the initial interest. This often means that art and tech people have to start meeting each other, so people should work on some cross-disciplinary connections.
DIY: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Daniel: I hope to see you all in San Francisco.
Thanks again to the Puzzle Bloom team. You can play Puzzle Bloom at PuzzleBloom.com.
Full Series: The Future of Gaming
*Ulitsa Dimitrova
*Puddle
*Devil’s Tuning Fork
*Boryokudan Rue
*Continuity
*Dreamside Maroon
*Igneous
*Paper Cakes
*Puzzle Bloom
*Spectre
