In 2024 we won the Rookie award for Best Game Of the Year in the Mobile category.
In this educational video game, you play as hero in the making Five on your way to save the galaxy from Captain Smog. Use traffic signs to guide Five to the Smogmachines to destroy them !
About the game
Learn about road signs and traffic safety
In order to successfully navigate the smog-ridden landscapes and defeat Captain Smog and his Space Pirates - you need to correctly align and enable traffic signs, find keys and avoid the enemies.
In the game, you determine Five's biking speed and change the traffic signs on the roads. Tap the signs in order to interact with them using Five's superpowers!
Defeat Captain Smog
Outsmart the Space Pirates and face off with Captain Smog by playing through thirty well-crafted levels where your goal is to destroy the Smogtaminator machines.
The levels progressively introduce new signs to the player and harder levels challenge them to use all their wits to find their way, avoid getting crushed by trains, and bamboozle the Space Pirates !
Save the Planets from the Smogtaminator machines
Save all three planets from the Smogtaminator machines that are polluting them and face Captain Smog to defeat him once and for all.
Visit the familiar streets of Planet Earth, discover the shiny landscapes on the Crystal Planet and finally reach Captain Smog's home planet, the Space Pirates' secret hideout Smogtopia.
Development
Five Saves the Universe was made by six students in the 2nd grade at Digital Arts and Entertainment. We're all following the major Independent Game Production and we made this game as part of the main assignment of the course Applied Games. The goal of the assignment was to create an educational game over the course of 12 weeks for a real client. We chose to work with High Five who's mission is to incite kids to walk or bike to school.
Playtesting
Our game's design process was heavily influenced by feedback from players. Over the course of three playtest sessions, we collected feedback from over seventy kids aged 6-12, our target group. This allowed us to massively improve the user interface and the level design, so that the game mechanics became easy and intuitive to learn.
Solid code
We didn't want game design creativity and iterations to be limited by code. That's why we focused on programming smart systems that are intuitive to understand and can easily be changed. We're using a node system which acts like waypoints for network agents, statemachines for the game loop and agent behaviour and a custom event system that simplifies linking up interactions between gameplay, animations, UI and sound.
Tools
We also made tools to make everyone's life easier. Our lead engineer made a level editor so that level artists could quickly make an environment. Keyboard shortcuts allowed for quick connections of waypoint nodes and a path editor made specifying the enemies patrol route possible in a matter of clicks.
Art pipeline
We purposefully decided to go with an art pipeline that gave us fast results. A toon shader was made to shade the assets without needing any textures. This made it feasible for us to create enough assets to populate three planets that each have their unique visual style in a matter of weeks.
Thanks
We'd like to extend our thanks to
The teachers at Digital Arts and Entertainment
Authier Degryse from High Five
The principal, the teachers and the kids at Sint-Jan Berchmans Basisschool Avelgem
Nina Haditalab
