Skugs is a top down game where players navigate a small spaceship probe in an attempt to gather resources for their mothership. At the same time, the mothership is able to attack (using stored energy) small creatures that are swarming around the map. The game involves players making sure they manage their resources in such a way that they are able to fully charge their mothership while using the resources to defend the mothership and probes.

Skugs was developed as part of the 2011 Global Game Jam. The Global Game Jam is a 48 hour jam where teams around the world work to develop games based on a central theme. This year, the theme was extinction. Skugs was developed in XNA and played with a mouse and keyboard.

On this project I contributed to game design (alongside Carmen Chow) and general production / workflow. From a game design perspective the game posed a significant challenge as the game’s mechanics repeatedly evolved throughout the weekend. In addition to game design I also worked on the game’s animations for weapon attacks and skug movement. This involved animation in Flash and the creation of sprite sheets in Photoshop.

Despite the bumps in refining game design for Skugs, the resulting game was immensely successful and fun to play. Due to time constraints we had to limit ourselves to a single level. As such we opted to tune the difficulty to a level where it posed a significant challenge.