Train2Game News: Train2Game Student’s game on Kickstarter

ScavengersTrain2Game Student, Robert Ramsay, has been working on a game with London games studio, Boss Level. You can now support the game and your fellow student on Kickstarter.

Boss Level, a digital gaming startup, based in the Dalston area of London, today announced their Kickstarter campaign to fund the beta phase of their upcoming title Scavengers. Scavengers is a turn-based strategy game in the style of X-Com, playable directly through a web browser across PCs, mobiles, tablets and Smart TVs without plug-ins. However, what truly distinguishes Scavengers is that despite playing across these myriad platforms with their different screen sizes and input methods, players will be playing exactly the same game, no matter where they are. This true cross-platform functionality is highlighted by the ability of players on different platforms to play against each other at the same time, a feat not yet achieved by any other games on the market.

Nick Brown, CEO of Boss Level, said “We’re really excited about finally bringing Scavengers to the wider public, both for them to play it, but even more importantly, for them to contribute to it. Scavengers really is a world first in that no matter where you play the game and on what platform, you will be able to play exactly the SAME game with everybody else in the world at the same time. We hope that this Kickstarter campaign is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to working with our players as collectively we build a massively fun and engaging shared experience that is open to all.”

The crowd-funding approach of Kickstarter perfectly incorporates the ethos of Scavengers as being “open-to-all” whether it be via contributing or playing. The Kickstarter “rewards” on offer thank pledgers by enabling them to design large aspects of the game and the Boss Level team are excited to see the level of creativity they expect this to release. In addition, the successful conclusion of the beta stage will see the release of the Editor through which players will be able to freely mod large sections of the game’s graphic, audio and map assets and then distribute these assets via social media. Finally Scavengers is also entirely free-to-play further ensuring one of the most open player bases ever, requiring as it does no up-front purchases of hardware, software or licences to access the game.

Robert Ramsay, from Paisley, has been working at the studio for 10 months as a Graphics Artist. He got the position when he showed the studio his impressive art and the speed and skill he utilised when making 3D models, which proved that he would be confident in the position. When Robert was asked about working on the game he said “I can see how I would approach this game, I know what styles to research and what my job would entail. Talking to Nick, the Boss, we agreed upon various aspects of the sprites and scenery, the angles that things would be viewed at and the types of colouring and tones that would make the game stand out.”

Robert was also asked to implement a workflow for creating and importing the assets because this being a new technology, nobody had really done this before. This was challenging but ultimately fun and really allowed him to draw on the diverse skills he’d picked up over the lifetime of the course.

You can support Robert and Boss Level in their creation of Scavengers by donating to the Kickstarter which you can find, here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/428530696/scavengers-beta

If you want to find out more about the game, go to: www.playscavengers.com