Project Spark

Things made in Project Spark 2014-15

Project Spark is a creation engine developed by Team Dakota and published by Microsoft Studios. Project Spark offers pre-made assets, animations, sounds, vfx and a visual scripting language which allows you to create your own games, movies and so on.

Since its reveal in E3 2013, I followed closely its development and was in alpha and beta testing. When the game was in beta, I helped form an advisory body to establish a feedback loop between the developer and community called Community Advisory Group (CAG for short). I also created the wiki for Project Spark which today has 180 pages with helpful material for the engine and game.

Wertandrew2

Winner of Designers GameJam 2015

Total Plays: 194,032

Total Upvotes: 67,991

Times Featured: 20 (in weeks)

Followers: 6607

Featured games: 15

Projects published: 26

Most played game:

A Cotton Tale - 49685 plays

Featured projects by year:

2015:
- In search of...
- Cotton Tale Adventures
- Japan - Mountains of Harmony
- Lord of the Rings - Minas Tirith
- The Nether
- Candy Rush (collab with Charg1nmyLaz0r)
- Genesis
- Orbit 32 - Resilience

2014:
- A Cotton Tale
- A Simple Task
- Eye of Sauron
- Filax the Prequel
- Orbit 32 - Void Origins
- San Francisco
- Conker's Other Bad Day (Tribute)

Gameglobe

My Projects

"Orbit 32 - Resilience" is my latest and biggest project to date. Working as a part of a 6-person team, I was the main coordinator, producer, designer and story teller. The project was made as a submission for Designers Game Jam hosted by Team Dakota and Microsoft Studios. The goal was to build an #epic game that you would play for more than 20 mins. The duration of the gamejam was 7 weeks, and after careful planning and organisation, we delivered a 2-hour long game named "Orbit 32- Resilience", a week before the deadline. Finishing early allowed us to debug the game even further, testing and writing lists after lists of bugs and typos we found. The game has an original story set in a sci-fi universe where aliens and humans have set laws for co-existing, but that balance was broken when an outlaw Kodian (name of the alien race) decided to experiment on the creation of a new race that will exterminate all others. Resilience is the sequel to Orbit 32 - Void Origins, an older first-person adventure that I created in 2014. The sequel is a twin-stick shooter with around 6 times the size of its predecessor.

"In search of..." is an experimental short clip made in Project Spark, mainly as a way to experiment with custom-made animations and recordings using kinect. Audio is a bit funky, but it was recorded using hardware that were made only for human voice, thus its lack in quality.

The movie contains 3 scenes and was created using 2 cropped versions of the same soundtrack, which everything is synced to. Soundtrack was created outside of Project Spark using FL Studio and it was later imported through the use of Kinect. Video contains the quality of the in-game soundtrack. Original soundtrack can be found and downloaded here.

An additional challenge was to not use a single word in the storyline, but instead body language.

And when you think that building without a script will get you nowhere, "The Nether" is a paradox. Based on a dark apocalyptic setting, the Nether sets players to represent humanity as it gets challenged by higher-beings. The price? Whether humans are considered worthy as a species, and eventually their very own existence.

Built in 5 days while streaming, the Nether's layout is based upon laying traps for the player and dropping him in a universe where nothing is known and everything can happen.

An interesting fact to the Nether is that while it was being developed, stream viewers got to comment and add their own ideas, most of which were implemented on the fly.

In overall, the game was hard for Project Spark's standards, being a tough challenge that would make you question (or even fear) what comes next.

Fun Fact

The first iterations had all text to be written in Greek so that the game forced the sense of confusion, but based on player feedback was later changed to English using Greek characters.

Grown in the N64 era, there is a special place in my heart for 3D action-adventures and one of the most distinct was Conker. So, I decided to create a fan-made pre-sequel game that tells the story of Conker after he became the king in Conker's Bad Fur Day. The project is not yet finished (in fact, it cannot be considered a game yet as it is still an Alpha), but there is a playable section (as shown on the left).

One of my most ambitious projects, Conker's Other Bad Day (Tribute) game is based on the original by using the same platforming mechanics and theme created by Rareware, while trying to stay as loyal to the official game as possible. Humor is also a crucial element, as well as attention to detail and non-linear gameplay.

The current Alpha includes 30 mins of gameplay and three main areas (Bull's Horn and outside, The Other Place, Fridge Bottom)

Regarding design, I love recreating famous landmarks or challenging myself to keep raising the bar and learning from the experience. Minas Tirith (from Lord of the Rings) was built in 5 days while streaming on twitch. It stretched up to the maximum of Project Spark's terrain and prop limits, while the city contains 7 floors and the the top is connected to the bottom via a path. When in-game, you can play as Gandalf and walk around all the floors freely. Pippin is also following you around, because why not.