Red Sky - Красное Небо - A Navigation Puzzle Game

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Published on March 11, 2010 12:33:14 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY2nZB9wc6s

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THE EDITOR (2023)

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The Savannah College of Art and Design (Atlanta Campus)
Interactive Design and Game Development
ITGM 350 - User Centered Design for Dynamic Media
Prof. J. Sharp
Completed 03.08.2010

by William S. Bowser
wsbowser@wasabiconcepts.com

Red Sky - Красное Небо - A Navigation Puzzle Game

This is a walkthrough of my finished project for ITGM 350 - User Centered Design for Dynamic Media. The purpose of the class was for students to develop a fully functional device of some kind (board game, website, computer program interface, etc.) via an iterative design process. Initial concepts were decided on and declared in week one from research, then the remainder of weeks 3-4 were spent on user testing the design concept through iterative prototypes to ensure efficiency of function, ease of use, and fun. The final 5 weeks were spent on full production on the concept to be created based on the results of iterative prototyping and user testing within the scope of pre-made personas (imaginary target users made to gear how students were to design their projects.)

Scope:

For my project I chose to design a fully functional game level in Unreal Editor 3. The target audience for prospective users that I attempted to follow, should the game go into production, was for avid 20 something career student college guy gamer types [Persona I] as well as casual 30 something stay at home mom gamer types [Persona II]. The focus of the game mechanic is primarily time based navigation through a series of obstacles with the bear minimum required intel to complete the given task.

Premise:

The game premise is that after an unexpected sand storm on the surface of Mars, Novo Principium, a major colonial metropolis, has recently recovered from a major power outage. All power systems have been restored to the colony, but eerily something has gone wrong. In order to give the colonies on Mars an atmosphere, the same nuclear reactors responsible for powering the city also super heat the subterranean ice just beneath the surface of the planet to produce breathable amounts of atmospheric oxygen. But since the power outage, the support systems responsible for restarting the coolant generators that keep the reactor temperatures under control have failed. Unknowingly the entire city is in danger of a major nuclear melt down that could wipe it right off the face off Mars.

In-game you play as Jones, a worker for the Mars Department of Transportation, who knows the ins and outs of the abandoned tunnel systems that were once used to service the colonies when they were first built. Its up to him to navigate his way through terrible rush hour traffic and decades old ventilation structures to reach the coolant generators in the heart of the reactor cores in time and manually restart them all before all is lost.

Programs used to create the level were: Unreal Editor 3, Maya 2009, Photoshop CS4, Soundbooth CS4, Crazybump.

All in game assets were created by me within the 5 production weeks with the exception of the stock UT3 hover vehicle - the Cicada, and the stock UT3 player character.

All sounds were gathered and edited from online stock free net sfx resources.

All texture were created from reference samples at cgtextures.com.

The music loops are snippets of "Glorification" (Activator And Zatox Mix) - by E-Fect

Theme and aesthetic references were taken from:
The Chernobyl Distaster (1986)
Total Recall (1993)
Post-Industrial Soviet Russia
Cold War
Mars Exploration
Dave Chappelle's 'Black President Bush' Skit

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