A downloadable game

Created for Games Job Live's Game Parade 2020 by Late Camel, this project works on the central theme of the jam - Carpe Diem, Seize the Day. 


The Sovereign butterfly has just one day to find a mate in this infinite runner style game, presented as a BBC nature documentary, with a narrator who isn't everything he appears to be. 

You must avoid an assortment of nature's unpleasantries: from sharp vines, to bees and murderous wasps, this side scroller isn't a walk in the park.

How to play

Use 'W' and 'S' or the up and down keys to avoid hazards as you pursue your mate. Thorns, bees and wasps are bad news for butterflies, and best avoided.

Credits

Charles Sharples - Programming

K.C. Dignan - Writing and Level Design

Neryko - Graphic Art, Illustration and Animation

Samuel Hollywood-Summers - Sound Design, Music and Audio Implementation

https://www.samuelhollywoodsummers.com/

With special thanks to

Anthony Morris - Voice Acting and Dialogue Recording

Post-Mortem

With Sovereign, we set out to make a game that made the most out of our team-members’ skills. We liked the idea of inviting interesting narrative, adaptive music and a hand-drawn visual aesthetic to an arcade style game with a high level of replayability.

The theme, ‘Carpe Diem: Seize the Day’ led us to think of butterflies. Having such a short life, they really do have to seize the day in order to achieve their genetic purpose and find a mate. We invented a species, the Sovereign, for whom this would be especially so: they only live for one day in total. 

The gameplay premise was a simple endless runner. This would allow us to establish a core gameplay loop, which we could add to during the jam, adding difficulty and additional features incrementally. The player would control a male butterfly, and help him to chase a female. The player’s butterfly would always remain one step behind the female, and need to avoid obstacles.

In addition to the gameplay, we spent a lot of time designing a voiceover system to add another layer of depth to the game, and to strengthen the aesthetic identity. The Narrator would commentate the progress of the male Sovereign as you play, in the style of a BBC nature documentary. We were able to enlist the help of an actor friend to record these lines (thanks, Anthony!).

The voiceover was written so that different lines of the same type would be triggered at similar points in the game in terms of progress and difficulty. As the player makes more progress, the narration becomes less about butterflies, and more about the player’s performance. Similarly, the Narrator comments on the death of each butterfly. The more you die, the more the Narrator will direct his comments towards the player, and become more taunting.

The voiceover system, and a similar adaptive music system, were both set up in FMOD. Sadly, due to time pressures, these systems and other game features did not make it into the jam submission build in their entirety. As a team, we chose to prioritise having a satisfying gameplay loop and difficulty gradient in the game, not to mention a working build of the game, before the deadline.

We are proud of what we achieved during the scope of the game jam, and intend to add some more polish, fix some bugs, and fully implement the voiceover and adaptive music systems into the game, afterwards. The audio levels need a good mix, and we look forward to receiving some feedback on the gameplay so that this can be better calibrated for the updated version.

If you enjoyed playing, please leave a comment letting us know, and if you have any suggestions for improvements, we would appreciate them. 

Late Camel


Download

Download
Sovereign.zip 40 MB

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