Games at the Show - Fun Guy

Welcome to our Games at the Show feature in which we will be talking to the creators of some of the games being shown at the End of Year Show. Today we have Fun Guy, created by Supreet Kaur, Sam Aldridge, TzePing Tung and Pedro Guera.

What's your game called and what is it about?

Our game is aptly called Fun Guy, our main character is a mushroom with a mission. The dastardly rockers  have stolen the entire colour from 1960’s London, leaving it lifeless and drab, a shell of its former dashing self, and Fun-Guy is going to inject colour using his trusty guitar and hippiness.

What inspired you while designing it?

The team’s inspiration bloomed with music, from any time, genre or theme. There was always a jam session in our little corner of the room. The beat, feeling and lyrics of the music energised us and kept spirits up as deadlines loomed! Other inspirations included participating in traditional art work. Initially we used leaflets and newsletters from around the uni to block out our city scape, so the tactile process was definitely a nice change of scenery and helped when digitising. Maybe it was also the fumes from the glue, but we felt it was quite therapeutic and hippy to be doing hand-drawn art.

Other inspirations were classic side scroller games we played back in our glory days like Super Mario Brothers and Streets of Rage I, II and III, while Little Big Planet made going sideways fresh and exciting in an era when first person shooter and realistic looking stubble is all the rage.

Is there any cool, unexpected stuff you can do in the game?

Cool stuff in our game would be contextual changes in scenery, black and white TV shops become colour TV emporiums, this was especially appropriate since the colour TV was introduce in the 60s. The project brief had an emphasis on narrative and using Henry Jenkins’ four Es in Game Design as Narrative Architecture (2002) – Embedded, enacted, evocative and emergent narrative, conveyed our story in 600 by 800 pixels.

Some of the rockers pace atop of the rooftops, some smoke cigarettes, some lounge on cranes, awaiting Fun-Guy’s wrath. Cool stuff may or may not include the following:

• Knocking out rockers with music

• Knocking out rockers with music who steal colour

• Knocking out rockers with music who steal colour from the 1960s

• Knocking out rockers with music who steal colour from the 1960s in London

• Knocking out rockers with music who steal colour from the 1960s in London while standing on rooftops*

*We do not condone violence against rockers.

The rockers modus operandi include; flick knife slicing and dicing, using their motorbikes as battering rams trying to run you over, hanging from cranes to attack you, using bike chains to beat the mushroom stuffing from you and throwing knives. Why? Because they’ll do anything to keep London monotone.

Sell it to me in one sentence.

Change doom-and-gloom-rocker-occupied-London to hippy-loving-colourful-joyful-London with just Fun Guy and his guitar, peace out!