Offered by U-tad
When end of lifeone of the games they are creating postgraduate students in videogames from U-tad, appeared before the press in mid-May was a shooter in which a demigoddess tried to take revenge on humans that one of his powers had been stolen and the action took place in a world divided into modules whose parts were in constant motion, as if it were a Rubik’s cube.
Since then the project has undergone some key modifications to enhance the feature that gives it personality: “Now the game is more related to its world and the importance of its twists, Leaving aside the combat facet a little. The main reason we have made this change is because the world we are proposing is very unique, while the focus on combat that we were proposing is more common to find in other titles”, explains Miguel Ángel López-Tarruella Clavero, designer of Welding Crow, the study that is developing end of life.
This does not mean that combat has disappeared; as clarified by the designer Nicols Nico Sanchez Diaz, end of life “continues to maintain the main characteristics of any shooterbut the complexity that we had raised to show off this aspect has been reduced enough so that is no longer a central pillar of the game.”
Using different gravities in a fragmented world
Welding Crow Now the strength of the game is felt in that peculiar world fragmented into multiple modules, each of which rotates with its own gravity. Getting the variety of gravitational forces was one of the team’s challenges, “fortunately, we have been able to confront it so that today we can freely enjoy using the different gravities at will within our world,” says programmer Fernando Jess Pérez Martín.
How is it possible that this change has occurred in such a short period of time? The answer lies in the U-tad method, according to which the students of the master’s degrees in Game Design, in Videogame Programming and in Art and Visual DesEsports Extrasof Videogames at the university receivetheoretical training for a few months and then create multidisciplinary groups from the three postgraduate courses (and, since this year, they also have the support of students of the Professional Master in Production Management for Animation, VFX and Videogames) to work as if it were a real game studio in which will be his Final Master’s Project. The goal of this method is that integrate as quickly as possible into the world of work after passing through the university.
Dealing with problems that arise during development
Students have full creative control over their projects and must solve problems as they arise, although they always have the advice of a specific team from the university made up of tutors, professors and an academic production company. The time that students have to have a vertical section that shows what their finished game would be like is 10 months, which is why they must make the changes as soon as possible so that by the end of October they can have that demo as polished as possible. sometimes it’s accurate act decisively and thus be able to meet delivery deadlines on time established by the university: “We have felt that time was upon us, feeling that the game was getting big enough for us to not be able to tackle it, causing us a small delay in time. But we have known how to face this problem with a good attitude and We are currently moving faster than planned,” indicates the designer José Ángel Annex Durán Cervio.
The change in the relevance of the combat of end of life It carries other modifications: The protagonist, Nashla, was going to have different types of needles to fight at a distance, but now they will only be of one type, although the idea remains in the chamber and, specifies the designer Adam Leggot Gallardo, “different needles are planned for the player to have in a final version of the game”. What the study does want to include are various special effects to make the game more attractive.
With the U-tad method It is not only about students solving technical problems that may arise, they must also learn to work in a big team, As will happen when they enter the job market, with the addition that at the beginning of the master’s degree almost none had experience in video game development. In this section it seems that Welding Crow is also well focused. As explained by José Miguel Pepe Guilln Fernndez, “at first it was a bit chaotic, but we knew how to organize and understand each other so that We currently have a great work environment, good coordination interdepartmental and intradepartmental and that allows us to face the project with a better attitude”.
Telling the story of Nashla through the voice of her goddess and narrative pills
In addition to the gameplay, Welding Crow wants to tell in its demo part of the story of Nashla who, says the designer Noem Seoane Choucio, “has the help of the voice of his goddess, Disad, which guides him throughout the level. Apart from these conversations, there will be different narrative pills that spread throughout the world, which we can find as statues. We will also have a series of kinematics to achieve a facilitation when the player understands the operation and history of our world”.
With the game’s features readjusted and having clicked together as a team, Welding Crow plans to keep working all summer and thus arrive in the best conditions to the last weeks of development before delivering in U-tad at the end of October the playable demo of end of life“we have established a schedule to adhere to during all this time. However, members of the Welding Crow can request vacations for this summer, even if it’s only for a week,” says designer Javier García Hermosilla.
